Then, from the teeny, tiny town of Crewkerne it’s a taxi (the only taxi, which has to be pre-booked) to Hugh’s rather remote smallholding, Lower Hewood Farm No, Hugh no longer lives at nearby River Cottage. Hugh only ever rented River Cottage and did dearly wish to buy it but the owners, sadly, did not wish to sell. Hugh, of course, made lots of splendid part-cookery, part-lifestyle, part-barmy-rural-folk television programmes from River Cottage, including Escape to River Cottage, Return to River Cottage and River Cottage Forever but not River Cottage Rules, Hurrah for River Cottage, or even River Cottage Test Drives the Fiat Punto as, alas, he seemed to run out of time.Ah, here is Lower Hewood Farm, with its wonderful 40 acres, and here is Hugh, standing in the doorway of the old farmhouse (18th century?) with his three-year-old son, Oscar, and their springer spaniel, Dolly, who may or may not be in the family way. “We introduced her to a couple of husbands last weekend and they entertained her royally,” he says. Hugh has that rather bonkers Greystokes hairdo while Oscar has a similarly mad, vividly blond Boris Johnson one. Obviously, good hairdressers are hard to come by when you decide to live down from London and left a bit.Is Hugh vain at all? He’s said not to be, was once even spotted driving around town in his prescription diving mask because he couldn’t find his glasses Are you vain at all, Hugh? He insists he is A little “I’m vain enough to have started doing some exercise again Just push-ups. I’ve got a little regime going as things were beginning to slide and action had to be taken.” I think he’s rather gorgeous.

Plus I do so love a man who can kill a squirrel with his bare hands. Saves having to run them over.In we go, where Marie, his French wife and a former World Service journalist, makes coffee. Marie is sublimely and naturally elegant, in the way French women always are. Marie appears, even, to be acquainted with that thing called A Hairbrush, which perhaps she keeps all to herself.

Marie comes across as delightful and friendly, but she might have quite a selfish streak I shall have to watch out for that Hugh, Marie, Oscar. Such an enviably happy trio, and Hugh seems particularly chuffed. This, I later discover, may have something to do with his rather brilliant performance at the recent village show where, he says, his Tuscan kale “won first prize in the category of Any Vegetable Not Listed Above” and his chutney won second prize (presumably in the category of Chutney).Well done, I say. Thanks, he says, “although I can’t understand why my chutney didn’t win”. Who judges such things? “The local chutney dignitaries,” he says.

“You have to be trained to be a judge and quite often the judges also enter the show, but obviously don’t enter their categories. It’s, ‘I’m afraid I have to step aside here because I have cooked a Victoria sponge myself.’” Marie thinks the whole thing might be fixed. Marie says the judges are always going: “And first prize goes to… oh look, it’s me!” She suspects it might all be “terribly corrupt”. I think the general feeling is that Hugh might have been robbed on the chutney front. But he can’t know for sure “because I didn’t taste the winner”.Now, Hugh asks, would I like to help feed the pigs? Yes please, I say, because I’ve seen Babe and think pigs are very sweet and extraordinarily clever, to talk as they do and pretend to be sheepdogs Hugh has two pigs, un-named.