At nine o’clock last night millions of Britons stood in their kitchens and tried to follow the increasingly manic orders of someone best known for roaring abuse at terrified commis-chefs in reality television programmes.

Gordon Ramsay wanted viewers to make a goat’s cheese salad, salmon en croute and a rhubarb crumble. He would cook the meal himself, live on Channel 4. Failure was not an option.

Before going on air, he told The Times: “They may not keep up to perfect time but they will be only 40 seconds behind me.” He did not say what would befall any laggards. This was Cookalong Live, Ramsay’s 288% attempt to stage what he called “the largest ever cookery lesson in the country at any one time”.

He believes his timing is perfect. As recession looms, “no one’s going out, no one’s going off on holiday, everyone’s in the country”. A future Cookalong will show the nation how to provide three courses for £10.

There was a time when celebrity chefs made pre-recorded programmes standing behind an oven, surrounded by an implausible number of bowls full of things they had made earlier, all the while quaffing a huge glass of wine.

Those days are over. Now, as well as writing cookery books, they are expected to improve school dinners, save disaffected youths from crime by teaching them to make soufflés and tackle Britain’s obesity crisis. They may even have to go to Rotherham.

Such was the example of Jamie Oliver, a man now widely regarded as a saint, except in Rotherham, where his missionary work for a series entitled The Ministry of Food has been seen by some as patronising and divisive. Last night Ramsay began his own social improvement programme, with the first of seven live Cookalongs. He was reluctant to name St Jamie of Oliver as his inspiration. “In Rotherham [Jamie Oliver] is . . . caught between a rock and a hard place,” he said.

“He needs to go back there and interact with people without the cameras.” Oliver had hoped to improve people’s diet. Ramsay was attempting something no less ambitious.

“I’m a man on a mission,” he said. “The purpose of Cookalong is to import cooking into our culture.”

Although Britain now has restaurants that are the envy of the world, many of them run by Ramsay himself, he feels we lack the home cooking culture of the French, Italians and Spanish. Cooking programmes, ostensibly aiming to inculcate this culture, have bred and multiplied on British television, but are increasingly “part-entertainment, part-drama”.

Cookalong is intended as public service broadcasting and an attempt to create a live event at a time when the television audience has fractured between digital channels. A pilot programme in January was watched by nearly a tenth of the population. The ground was prepared for last night’s episode with a barrage of advertising, in which Ramsay bounced around like a PE teacher at a football tournament. “I’m a player manager really,” he said. “I’m revving people up.”

By yesterday morning he was feeling the pressure of so many three course meals. “In the dessert, people have to burn off the alcohol, to caramelise the rhubarb.” He feared that entire kitchens could be inadvertently flambéed for the sake of a crumble.

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