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SIMON SCHUBERT, O.T.FIGUR IN EBENEN: folded paper art.

The government harps on about 'priorities', the economy being its first. How very wrong

There is a dangerous piece of rhetoric floating around, increasingly popular with politicians, which says the government should forget gay marriage and concentrate on "the things that really matter".

Defence secretary Philip Hammond is the latest to thump this tub, explaining: "Clearly [gay marriage] is not the number one priority. If you stop people in the street and ask them what their concerns are, they'll talk to you about jobs and economic growth… The government has got to show that it is focused on the things that really matter."

Personally, I never stop people in the street and ask them what their concerns are. I don't know if Philip Hammond does. If so, perhaps this flawed reasoning extends nationwide. Or he's only stopping people in Downing Street.

George Osborne said something nearly identical the week before; that gay marriage is "not a priority of the government" because the government is "focused on the really important issues that matter to people".

Mr Osborne said that he personally is in favour of gay marriage. What a perfect position he finds himself in, politically: pleasing supporters of same-sex matrimony with his own endorsement, while reassuring opponents that the government's not seriously considering it.

Those in his party who are revolted by gay marriage use the same handy argument, that there are "more important things to think about". It's a clever way to reject the issue without screaming: "Ugh, two men at the altar! Probably wearing dresses! And with big moustaches! Big moustaches and dresses at the same time! That reminds me, I must ring my mother."

They know better than to reveal the full terrifying vision of social collapse that a gay wedding triggers in their minds: a church full of crop-haired anarchists, most of them speaking foreign languages; teenagers snorting heroin off the altar, most of them on Facebook; women publicly breastfeeding in the pews, most of them bishops; two newlywed drag queens high-fiving as a vicar in hotpants says: "You may now fist the bride."

No: far better just to say they're more interested in the economy.

I don't mean to suggest that my own first reaction to the idea of gay marriage was free from nerves, uncertainty or reflex stereotyping. But, as with most things, my immediate conservative instincts fell away with a bit of proper thought. I won't explain why I'm now in favour, because that isn't the point. I have my opinions and you'll have yours; my worry is the argument, whether you support change or not, that it's "less important" than the economy.

Please let's not nod along with this idea until it feels like a truism. It's a dangerous way of thinking. It may even be that kind of thinking that got "us" into economic trouble in the first place.

The economy in this country – the basic, central core of what an economy is – is extremely healthy. We have an abundant climate, hardy British labour for building and farming and crafting, and brilliant inventive minds at work. If those gambling international speculators, who create nothing and build nothing, with their massive fantasy "derivatives market" and their mind-blowing "trillions of debt", all disappeared tomorrow, we'd still have an economy. We might not have flat-screen TVs with 200 channels – and City traders might not have private jets – but we'd still have food and coal and tables and new ideas. Greece is about to default on its debt and opt out of the whole mad lending scheme; perhaps we'll watch that country invent democracy for the second time.

We'd also still have love. Stripped of our credit cards, our electronic goods, our super-fast broadband, our international travel – and even of our welfare system based on cash and paperwork rather than simple sharing – we'd still have men and women, and men and men, and women and women, who felt joy and safety and hope, making promises and planning futures, because of this free and powerful human instinct alone.

The stark revelation, a few years ago, that all of the numbers on all of the screens meant nothing, that there was no gold, that it was all debt, that the emperor had no clothes, made us feel terrified and powerless. It's too much to confront directly, like staring at the sun: the realisation that it's merely empty digits on a screen that entitle some people to helipads and swimming pools, others to dying on a trolley in a hospital corridor.

We know now, but we can't seem to change it. The more powerless we feel, the closer we huddle to what we can control: our own promises, to our own loved ones. Those tiny, enormous, emotional contracts between one person and another.

If a historically marginalised group of us want to make those contracts formal, in the sight of God, the way it has been done by the majority for thousands of years, how dare anyone say this is "less important" than money? Stand against it if you will, but don't dismiss it as trivial.

Thoreau wrote, in 1863: "If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I think there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business."

I have a new daydream, of a parallel world, where our democratic leaders say: "We'll do our best for economic growth, but our priority is to concentrate on the things that really matter to people."

www.victoriacoren.com

Children are about to take their final school exams and leave the nest. Nicci Gerrard recalls tears when the moment arrived – and the chance to turn a time of loss into a new sense of liberation

About a year ago, a few months before she left sixth-form college, my youngest daughter asked cheerily: "What will you feel when you have no one left to wave goodbye to in the morning?" And as if someone had pressed a button, I burst into snorting floods of tears.

It felt like a sea of sorrow; I didn't know how I would ever stop. I didn't even know why I was weeping with such abandon: because she was leaving; because the other three had already left; because I missed them so; because I missed the person I was when they were all young; because their childhoods were over and had been happy; because I couldn't recover those days when I knew I could make them safe and protect them from the world; because I was scared of who I would be without them…

And now, all over the country, teenagers are about to take their A-levels and so begins the goodbye, and all over the country parents like me are appalled by an event they must always have known would come. We don't want them to stay; it's shockingly painful to let go.

I sometimes think I'm like scaffolding erected around a building and now the building has gone and just the scaffolding is left. Although I have always worked, since September 1987 when my son was born, the shape of my life has been dictated by my children, their needs and moods (there's a saying that's like a curse: "you're only as happy as your least happy child").

Sleepless nights, early mornings, bottles and bibs, nappies, potty-training, the small thrashing body in your bed, night terrors, dirty clothes, hot, cross, overcrowded cars, mashed-up meals, buggies, bath time, first days at nursery, scraped knees, tantrums, a warm hand in yours, nits, German measles and colds on a loop, sandcastles, school concerts and parents' evenings, childcare and the regular collapse of childcare, the call at work to say they're ill, reading to them at bedtime, shouting to them in the supermarket, helping them with homework, lunch boxes, reports, exams, friendship problems, lost socks, lost PE kit, lost coursework, lost everything, banging doors, bedrooms that throb with mess, late-night calls asking to be collected, beer cans on the lawn, vodka bottles on the lawn, first romances, first holidays away from you, first festivals, first heartbreak, the gradual realisation that they have secrets, the gradual sense that you can no longer make everything all right, the endless juggle that is called parenthood and that you only realise when it's over is also, perhaps, called happiness.

And then, if things go the way you want, if you're lucky, they leave. I have been lucky and they've left – and like a machine evolved to process the daily churn of their needs, I continue spinning uselessly in their absence.

I have been quite taken aback by the strength of my missing, but also by how so many of my friends feel exactly the same, and how physical it is. Missing hurts.

We talk about going into the empty bedrooms – the room whose mess we used to complain about – and about the days that were for years crammed with thankless domestic tasks and now have a kind of spaciousness about them. I have the time I longed for; I can read books, go for walks, see friends, grow chilli plants, paint badly, think about learning a language – but my mind hasn't grasped my new freedom yet.

When a tiny child calls for its mother, I still turn round. The heart takes time to catch up with change that feels like a cinematic jump-cut. You're young and starting out and, all of a sudden, you're middle-aged: a crumpled, creased, pouchy face gazes in startled outrage from the mirror.

The problem is not that they go; it's that you stay behind, in a life that suddenly feels the wrong shape. The terrible story of Georgie Fame's wife, Nicolette Powell, who in 1993 jumped to her death from Clifton Suspension Bridge after her children left, is an extreme example of how for many parents, particularly mothers, the transition can feel like a bereavement, a redundancy, a sudden loss of purpose and worth.

How to turn such loss into adventure and liberation? I know a couple who built a house together when their last child went; others who have gone on long trips, changed jobs, taken up new passions and learned new skills. It feels important to be reckless, selfish and young again – open to change.

For myself, I've been learning how to throw pots on a wheel and last year I trained to become a humanist celebrant. I can now conduct funerals, ritualising farewells, trying to help people to say goodbye to those they have loved. Yet in spite of my best efforts I still often wake in the night with a sense of heart-thumping dread. When the tide goes out, nasty things are found on the sand.

However, I also know that this empty-nest syndrome is a form of happiness. It's an ache of love, a good and proper sadness. And you don't really want them back! Never mind empty-nest syndrome – what about full-nest syndrome, just as problematic? This ache is not a real bereavement, though for a while the heart can be misleading. The children have grown up and gone, as they should and as you in your turn went – but they haven't died and they haven't gone missing. They're probably round the corner with their dirty laundry.

Some young people do go missing, though. That catastrophe lies at the heart of my novel, Missing Persons, which tells of a young man who disappears and the impact this has on his family and his friends. One of the emotional sources of the novel (alongside my general soggy melancholy and anxiety as the last child prepared to leave) was the trial of Rosemary West, which I covered for this newspaper.

Beneath the sheer gothic horror of what the couple did lay the desolating stories of many of their victims: young women with blighted lives who were barely missed and who had fallen out of view long before they disappeared into 25 Cromwell Street. I felt that I had been previously blind to all the people who live like ghosts among us, and to the anguish of those who search for them, wait for them.

When I was writing Missing Persons, I took long walks through London, seeing with new eyes. Doorways, bridges, churchyards, park benches; hands stretched out for money; bodies curled in sleeping bags; people we don't look at. I visited Missing People, a terrific organisation that's a lifeline for those that run away, for multiple reasons, and a support for those left behind. I read stories about the young people who had disappeared.

Every year 250,000 people go missing: that's the population of a town like Brighton. Of course, most of them come back, but how many of them never do and where are they? How many tens of thousands of people have dimmed and darkened from sight?

I read about the number of young people who kill themselves. It is, shockingly, the biggest killer of men under 35 in the UK: it is thought that men are less able than women to communicate their feelings of despair or to seek help for debilitating depression and are therefore more at risk.

I tried – still try – not to ignore the men and women who are homeless in the streets; it's horribly easy, out of discomfort, to dehumanise them – stepping round them as if they were obstacles, not meeting their eye. I think we tend to moralise luck, as if we deserve ours and they are to blame for theirs. This seems truer than ever, in these spooky economic times. We all walk on thin ice and pretend we're on solid ground.

Next Friday, 25 May, is Missing Children's Day, which aims to raise awareness of those who have vanished. For the parents who have really lost a child, the ordinary sadness of the empty nest would be an unimaginable joy.

Nicci Gerrard's Missing Persons is published by Penguin on 24 May

Angela Hartnett's barbecue chicken and Ashley Palmer-Watts' lamb chops will ensure your jubilee party is fit for the Queen

Angela Hartnett's barbecue chicken with watercress mayonnaise

I think the royal family are generally a good thing. The Queen gave me my MBE and I've met Prince Charles a couple of times at events and through working with Slow Food I was lucky enough to tour the gardens at Highgrove. Although I actually met him when I was younger and in the Brownies. We were on a trip to Canterbury Cathedral and he happened to be there, and being a good sport he did a little walkabout. And we've been fortunate enough to have a couple of the royals come to the restaurant, although I can't say who.

When you were younger you used to have pretty bad chicken dishes at parties, like the chicken drumsticks people always seemed to eat in the 70s. This is a more modern, updated take on party food, and still very British.

We're having a street party near where I live in east London. My sister's on the organising committee with the local vicar. I'm just helping out with the food, so I'll do as I'm told.

Serves 8
spatchcock chicken 4

For the marinade
thyme 2 tbsp, chopped
rosemary 2 tbsp, chopped
garlic 4 cloves, crushed
honey 4 tbsp
white wine vinegar 75ml
olive oil 50ml
tomato ketchup 2 tbsp
Dijon mustard 1 tsp
lime 1, rind and juice
sea salt and pepper to taste

For the mayonnaise
readymade mayonnaise 500g
watercress 1 bunch, finely chopped

Mix all the marinade ingredients in a bowl and season to taste. Cut the spatchcocks in half, season well and rub the marinade over the skin. On a barbecue, start to cook and crisp the chicken skin-side down, turn over and move further away from the direct heat until cooked – around 40 minutes.

Remove from the heat and rest. To finish, mix the watercress with the mayo and check seasoning. Serve with crisp green herb salad and watercress mayo.

Angela Hartnett is chef patron of Murano, London W1; muranolondon.com

Ashley Palmer-Watts' lamb chops, cooked over charcoal with broad beans and mint

This recipe is spring on a plate. British produce is incredible in the springtime, and each ingredient in this dish really makes the most of that by being cooked over charcoal. I use the barbecue at home as much as I do my frying pans – and here the delicious spring lamb and the cucumber are chargrilled.

I encourage people to use cucumber. Cooking with cucumber is something not many people would think of doing, but it's a very old thing. When we go through old recipe books for inspiration at the restaurant, it always crops up. The flavour of it hot – particularly barbecued – is something else, and the texture is firm but moist. You won't look back once you've tried it. With the cucumber juice and the chardonnay vinegar it creates a kind of cucumber ketchup that's very similar to one we have at Dinner. It's beautiful, and very elegant – perfect for a jubilee party.

The royal family are very connected to Dinner, actually, because when we're standing in the kitchen we can see the Royal Horse Guards go by each day. I have to pinch myself sometimes.

Serves 4

For the sauce
lamb stock 1 litre
lamb fat (reserved from making the stock) 1 tbsp
sprig of rosemary 1
sprig of mint 1

For the chops
spring lamb chops 8
clove of garlic 1
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper

For the garnish
cucumber 1 large
olive oil
shallot 3 tbsp, finely chopped
chardonnay vinegar 2½ tbsp
broad beans 250g, podded, blanched and peeled
dill 2 tbsp, chopped
flat leaf parsley 2 tbsp, chopped

To make the sauce, place the lamb stock into a saucepan and reduce to 100ml. Remove from the heat and whisk in the lamb fat and rosemary sprig. Set aside.

My preferred method of cooking the lamb chops would be over charcoal on a barbecue, but roasted in a pan over a high heat would also be great.

Cut the garlic clove in half and rub each of the chops with the garlic, then season with sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper – lightly press the seasoning on to the flesh so it sticks and drizzle over a little olive oil. Grill the lamb chops on a barbecue each side for 2–3 minutes until medium rare, and then wrap in foil to rest while cooking the garnish.

Juice a third of the cucumber and reserve the juice. Peel the remaining cucumber and cut in half, then cut the four sides off the cucumber to leave you with just the rectangular heart. Cut the cucumber sides into 5mm pieces and set aside.

Season the cucumber hearts and drizzle with olive oil, place on the barbecue and cook for 2 minutes per side until lightly coloured and soft. Set aside and keep warm.

Pour a thin layer of olive oil into a hot pan and add the cut cucumber pieces. Leave to colour, then gently turn to colour further. Reduce the heat and add the shallot and cook for 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the chardonnay vinegar and reduce until almost all gone.

Add 4 tbsp of the cucumber juice and peeled broad beans and heat gently to ensure the mixture remains moist, season with salt and pepper. Stir in the chopped herbs and serve.

Heat the sauce, add the remaining 2 tbsp of cucumber juice and add the sprig of mint.

Cut the cucumber hearts in half diagonally, place on the centre of large plate, spoon the broad bean and cucumber mix around and place the two chops on top of the garnish. Remove the mint from the sauce and pour a little of the sauce over the lamb chops.

Ashley Palmer-Watts is head chef at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal, London SW1; dinnerbyheston.com

He was the ultimate tastemaker, but Apple co-founder Steve Jobs lived in surprising suburban ordinariness in Silicon Valley. Jonathan Margolis follows his trail

• Click here to see an interactive map showing Jonathan's tour of the valley

The bestselling biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is most notable for revealing that the innovator and aesthete genius behind Apple – the world's most successful company – was in many ways a giant, semi-autistic toddler. With his boundless egomania, temper tantrums and quirks like refusing to wash, Jobs does not come out as your everyday hero. Yet Steve was my hero. His wacky idea of making computers easy appealed to me as a technology writer. That, along with his maverick unpredictability, made him the Brian Clough of electronics – Clough being my other hero.

The second most remarkable thing about Steve, though, was that for someone who changed the world so fundamentally – it's because of him that we all have computers – he seemed to have been brought up, worked and died within a small radius of his childhood home near Palo Alto, California. Somehow I always imagined Steve – barefoot Buddhist, design guru, tastemaker – not as a hometown boy, but someone more metropolitan or bohemian, or who would seek out a remote "spiritual" place to live.

His background also sounded surprisingly suburban. I've always been intrigued by the incongruity of extraordinary people coming from ordinary backgrounds. And when I peered on Google Street View, the addresses Isaacson lists in Palo Alto – where everyone from Apple to Google has their HQ – looked as mundane as Esher or Altrincham. So I had the idea of taking a couple of days out of an upcoming US trip to visit the key spots in Steve's life. I also thought it would be kind of cool – OK, not cool, but amusingly geeky – to be photographed with my iPad at each location. To call what I proposed a "pilgrimage" would be too strong, a "curiosity" too tepid, while to say it was "to seek insight" would be too earnest. It's the same reason I'd love to visit John Lennon's childhood home – a case of informed interest in someone of my generation, who was not only a million times more successful, but who I also wouldn't actually have minded being.

First stop on my personal Via Dolorosa was 2066 Crist Drive, Los Altos. The modest bungalow where the Jobses came to live in 1967 and the garage in which Steve started Apple with his friend Steve Wozniak is as suburban as America gets. What happened here was immense, but there were no signs or tour buses, and someone seemed to live there, so I was emboldened to knock on the door. What a coup if, at my first Station of the Cross, I could get a picture of me, with my iPad, in the founding garage.

An elderly lady answered the door. I apologised and said she must get bothered a lot. No, she said, a couple of hundred a week take photos, but none had knocked until me. Slightly miffed that I wasn't even close to being the first Steve tourist, I was nonetheless relieved that it clearly wasn't that eccentric a thing to be doing.

"I'm Marilyn Jobs," she said. "I married Steve's dad, Paul, after his mom died." This I hadn't bargained for, but she was so friendly I began to think I stood a chance of getting into the holy garage. It turned out Marilyn loved England, especially Harrogate in North Yorkshire. So we spoke at some length about Bettys Tea Rooms there, and I may have agreed to send her some teacakes in the post.

So, how about a peep in the garage? "No," said Mrs Jobs, "there's really nothing in there, just a washing machine and a car. There wouldn't even be room to take a photo." As I was setting up a tripod for an exterior photo of the house, a young guy in a small rental car pulled up. He was from Tooting, wouldn't you know it, and between job interviews was doing the same Steve tour. No, he wouldn't give his name – he didn't want to appear a sad geek – but was happy to take my photo, while two more drive-by tourists slowed down for a shot. "It's so normal you forget that everyone here is living ahead of the curve," said Tooting man. "There are people here who know what the iPhone 6 is going to be like, let alone the 5."

My next stop was 2101 Waverley Street, Palo Alto, the current Jobs home and another surprise. Not only was it quite twee, but it was also relatively modest – and remarkably exposed for a "celebrity" home. One of Steve's trademark grey Mercedes sports cars was parked outside, looking a bit forlorn and splashed with bird poo. I wouldn't have dreamed of disturbing the family, but in case I had any ideas, Donald from Apple security leapt out of a black van to introduce himself. I explained that I just wanted to see where Steve lived and take a photo, and he kindly took it for me.

"We log about 100 to 150 tourists a day," Donald said. "People expect he would have lived in a fortress or a castle, not right here." Donald revealed that although he hadn't been inside the house, "it's apparently in the style of an English cottage". The great taste Nazi and minimalist, living in a Country Living interior? I was shocked. Donald also revealed something else quite bizarre – he's not really called Donald, he's Steve. "So you can't be called Steve if you work for Apple?" Steve/Donald said nothing, but smiled.

Next, the Whole Foods Market on Emerson Street. (It was in the store's small car park just before the iMac was launched in 1998 – a signal event in Apple's history that started the company's rise – where the detail-obsessed Steve was spotted sitting in his car screaming into his phone: "Not. Fucking. Blue. Enough!") Then Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre (Parc) at 3333 Coyote Hill Road, where, in 1979, Steve saw a prototype computer mouse and graphical computer screen with icons and "borrowed" the idea for Apple.

On the way to Jobs's favourite lunch restaurant, Jin Sho, on S California Avenue, it occurred to me that Steve had been wise to maintain a modest, normal lifestyle in a suburban house with a front lawn rather than the celebrity life he could have led. The fact that, as a zillionaire whose company and counsel presidents sought, he could pad around the (organic) equivalent of Sainsbury's unmolested because he'd, well, always been around and was just Steve must have been a secret delight to him.

"Funny, Steve hasn't been in for a long time," my Jin Sho server, Noriko, said. The present tense was unnerving. Should I tell her? Maybe not. "Would you like to sit where Steve has lunch, or where he goes with his family in the evenings?" she asked. I went for his spot on the lunch bar, where she volunteered to take the now standard goofy photo with my iPad. The $16 special was delicious, but had to be one of the smallest lunches ever served in the US.

At Apple's huge but still oddly underwhelming HQ on Infinite Loop in Cupertino, where I expected security to be all over me, I was wholly ignored. The computer store, the Byte Shop at 1063 West El Camino Real, where Jobs and Wozniak sold their first Apple machine in 1976, turned out to be a sex shop in a dodgy part of town. The woman running the place said she had been there 30 years without knowing the store's connection with the world's most successful company.

My last stop was the cheekiest. I wanted to be photographed with my iPad on the stage of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, an hour from Palo Alto, on Mission Street, San Francisco. This was where Steve publicly launched the iPad and many other Apple products. To my amazement, I was allowed in and permitted to go on to the stage, and one of their staff even took the photo. There was only one proviso: that I didn't show the set of the classical play currently on the stage. So with a soupçon of clumsily applied Photoshop, I turned the set black. Just like it always was when Steve strutted the same stage.

Being Steve Jobs, I concluded, standing up there, thinking what it would have been like to have your words and ideas beamed round the world live to breathless geeks like, er, me, must have been, as he would say, kinda cool.

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Home-made salad cream makes Simon Hopkinson's British seasonal salad something entirely wonderful

Simon Hopkinson's high tea salad

A British "high tea salad" should be something to be celebrated, but rarely is. I associate it, also, with that sinking feeling of early Sunday evenings (Songs of Praise on the TV, etc), knowing that it was back to school the following morning. Made well, and with care, such a salad – and made in the summer, preferably – can be an absolute joy.

The lettuce must be as fresh as can be, and have a good heart of pale green leaves with a touch of yellow. A chosen cucumber should have that intense smell of summer green that lifts one's heart. Tomatoes, naturally, need to taste sweet, and good, but must be peeled here, I think. Spring onions, however you buy them, need a brief trim and a soak in iced water after cutting. Ditto the radishes.

The eggs are important: buy the best you can find. Cover in cold water and bring to the boil. Cook for one minute exactly, switch off the heat and leave, covered, for 4 minutes. Cool under cold running water for 5 minutes. The yolks should then be only just firm within. Perfect. Be patient with the watercress, pick it carefully and wash and drain well. I wouldn't dream of leaving out the beetroot, but perhaps it is not your cup of tea. Well, I'm sure it is de rigueur at the palace, on a quiet Sunday evening as the hymns fade away…

However, what truly makes this salad special is a home-made salad cream. Something entirely wonderful and well worth the effort.

Serves 5-6

For the salad cream
eggs 2
caster sugar 1 dssp
tarragon vinegar 5 tbsp
salt a pinch of
whipping cream 250ml

round lettuces 4, trimmed of all floppy outer greenery and separated into leaves
cucumber 1 small, peeled and thickly sliced
ripe tomatoes 6 small, peeled and quartered
spring onions 6, trimmed and sliced into short lengths
radishes 1 bunch, trimmed, washed and quartered
boiled eggs (see above) 4, peeled and quartered or sliced
watercress 1-2 bunches, depending on size, washed and picked into small sprigs
beetroot 3-4 medium-sized, cooked, peeled and cut into thick matchsticks

To make the salad cream, first beat together the eggs, caster sugar, vinegar and salt in the top of a double boiler, or in a stainless steel or china bowl suspended over barely simmering water until thick, mousse-like, and the whisk leaves thick trails through the mixture. (Use an electric hand whisk for the speediest results.) Remove from the heat and continue beating until lukewarm. Leave to cool, then loosely whip the cream and carefully fold it into the sauce. Note: if you feel the salad cream is a touch too thick to pour, thin with a little milk.

Now, delicately wash the lettuce in very cold water, spin or shake dry and lay out on to a handsome large platter. Attractively arrange the cucumber, tomatoes, spring onions, radishes and eggs over the leaves, then strew with the watercress. Finally, scatter over the beetroot, spoon over the dressing and serve at once – and before the beetroot bleeds over everything!

Simon Hopkinson's The Good Cook is out now, published by BBC books, £25

He had a private plane, his own spa and a yacht called Gay Jacqueline. Opening a kitchen window into the extraordinary world of Kenneth Wood

Of all the gadgets I associate with the kitchen of my childhood, it is the Kenwood Chef, sturdy and reliable, that I think of with the greatest affection. My mother owned one, and my stepmother, and for many years I thought that only when I owned one myself would I be fully adult. Only then, of course, I went and blew it. When I finally had enough spare cash, I turned into the worst kind of fashion victim and ordered a KitchenAid Artisan, a machine that might look delightfully cool and retro, but isn't half as efficient or easy to use. Plus – and this is something Nigella neglects to demonstrate on the telly – it weighs about eight tonnes. Stagger with it from cupboard to work surface and you've earned yourself the right to a cup of a tea and an iced bun before you've even started.

Thanks to the fact that I berate myself for this decision almost daily, I'd be lying if I told you my trip to see an exhibition about the history of Kenwood (it's at the wonderful Lightbox in Woking, the town where the mixer was first made) was an entirely happy one. As I toured the glass cabinets, my covetousness rose like the mercury on a hot Athens morning. Imagine Chaucer's Pardoner crossed with Victoria Beckham after a bad row with David, and you're about halfway there. If I hadn't been with a friend, I might have logged on to eBay bang in the middle of the gallery.

It wasn't only the latest machines, either. In the 70s, Kenwood manufactured the Superchef model in orange and brown plastic. Standing in front of a film of this beauty (it is so rare the curator could not turn up a model to put on display), I felt weak-kneed with desire. An orange Kenwood chef. Oh, man. It would look so good against my green tiles.

Kenneth Maynard Wood – his grandfather made Maynard's wine gums – founded his electrical company in 1936; the Kenwood Chef, a snazzy version of the A200 food mixer he developed in the late 40s, went on the market in 1950. It had a unique "planetary action", it cost £19 and it made him very rich indeed. Wood had a private plane called Kenwood, a yacht called Gay Jacqueline, and he spent 10 days a year at his very own hydro, Forest Mere, in Hampshire (Kenwood executives were also sent there twice a year; I picture them lying in bubbling water, dreaming of mincer attachments). At the Lightbox, you can see the gold Kenwood Chef charm he had made for his wife to hang around her neck. His delivery vans, meanwhile, had mixers attached to their roofs – jaunty sentinels that would call out to housewives even as they struggled home with their tartan trolleys.

I know Woking may not sound like a dream day out. You probably think my kitchen-nerd persona is getting beyond a joke. But this little exhibition is remarkable for the way it tells such a big story in so very few words. It's about the journey to the cheap food we now take so disastrously for granted (in the 50s, a third of a household's annual income was spent on food; a good mixer must have seemed like the ultimate investment). There's the way women's roles have changed (in 1961, men were exhorted to buy their wives a mixer for Christmas with the slogan: "The Chef does everything but cook – that's what wives are for!"). And it tells of the shift in tastes (Bircher's Cocktail for the Anaemic, a Kenwood recipe from the 40s which you will definitely not be making any time soon, is made of shin beef, crème de cacao and evaporated milk).

For me, though, what it mostly induced was guilt. Ken Wood succeeded for all sorts of reasons: his mixers had shire-horse motors and his salesmen were adept at pressing accessories (juicer, grinder, potato peeler) on new customers. But perhaps his product spoke, too, to a more sensible customer than me who knew they only needed one truly excellent machine.

Back at home, I wandered disconsolately around my kitchen, contemplating all the gadgets I hardly ever use. The pasta machine. The meat thermometer. The, er, egg slicer. I could go on, given that almost every tool in the kitchen can be substituted with something simpler: knife for mezzaluna, rolling pin for garlic press, tea towel for salad spinner. Finally, I gazed sadly on the one item I would use every single week – if only I could shift it without recourse to chalk on my palms, and a Health and Safety Executive guide to heavy lifting. OFM

rachel.cooke@observer.co.uk

When it comes to mint, don't be shy. Use it boldly to invigorate everything from liver to frozen yogurt

Despite the general advice that mint is a herb to be used with discretion, I like to go in the opposite direction, using it boldly, as in when whole leaves are tucked into a hot, chilli-scorched roast-pork sandwich, or chopped and tossed with fried breadcrumbs and lemon zest to scatter over scallops or chicken livers.

You can soften mint's punch by mixing it with another suitable herb. Classic garden mint works best with coriander and basil. The presence of another strong herb stops the mint dominating the dish and the blend can be intoxicating. Mint is so much part of our culture – from mint sauce with lamb to sweets and chocolate – that is comes as a breath of fresh air to marry it with the flavours of the Mediterranean or the Middle East, when it suddenly becomes exotic.

For mint recipes it's always worth looking east. It goes well with aubergines, especially when they are chargrilled; with meatballs and grills; and chopped and folded into grain salads, such as tabbouleh. Of all the suitable partners for this clean-tasting herb, lemon is perhaps the most neglected. I use lemon and mint in dressings for carrot salads, sometimes with a little cream involved. Lemon and mint also make a sparkling dressing, mixed with olive oil, for courgettes.

The simple salad of crisp, pale lettuce, beanshoots, thinly sliced peppers, mangetout and shredded roast chicken with a dressing containing nam plan and soy that I'd made the day before became worth making again once I added a mixture of chopped mint, coriander and sesame oil. A clear broth made from the chicken bones with mushrooms, dark soy, a little miso paste and beanshoots took on a vitality once a handful of mint leaves was stirred in. Mint freshens, invigorates, excites. It stimulates the appetite.

And that is the point. There is no herb that brings with it such freshness and spark. Of course this will vary according to which mint you use. The variety is virtually endless with all manner of variants, from those with hairy leaves or a slightly smoky note to the sweet mints more suited to dessert.

Try a pesto made not with the usual basil but with mint. Out of step, I know, but I do like put a bunch of mint in with the new potatoes from time to time. It tastes of childhood, though probably only if your mother was the sort of person to put mint in her potatoes.

The wretched, pointless mint sprig still turns up on dessert plates, normally with a shower of icing sugar, usually in the company of an inappropriate raspberry. But there is a place for mint at the end of a meal, often in partnership with chocolate (in a mousse or cake, a tart or as a sauce for a pile of little choux buns). And a favourite way to finish dinner when oranges are at their best is to slice them, steep them in a light sugar syrup with fresh mint, then chill them very thoroughly.

Of all the uses for it as summer comes, by far my favourite has been in a frozen yogurt freckled with dark chocolate chips. Although I have an ice-cream machine, I wanted a recipe that anyone with a freezer could do. Rather than churning the mint syrup and dairy produce (I used yogurt, but it could have been custard), I simply beat the ice particles from the outer edges of the freezing sorbet into the liquid middle with a small whisk. Do this two or three times and you will have a much more light and airy ice than if you freeze it into a block. The yogurt and mint made the most refreshing dessert of the year.

Chicken livers with pea purée and mint gremolata

Serves 4
For the pea purée:
peas 200g, podded weight
butter about 20g

For the livers:
mint 10g
lemon 1
a little butter or oil
chicken livers 200g
breadcrumbs 60g
smoked bacon 4 rashers

Cook the peas in boiling, lightly salted water for 4 or 5 minutes until tender. Drain. Mash the peas with the butter, using a food processor until you have a smooth, thick purée. Season carefully.

Chop the mint leaves finely and grate the lemon. Melt the butter or oil in a nonstick frying pan over a moderate heat then add the breadcrumbs, letting them colour lightly. Stir in the chopped mint leaves and lemon zest, season with salt and set aside.

Wipe the pan with kitchen paper, melt a little more butter then add the seasoned chicken livers and bacon. I like to keep a lid handy, as the livers have a habit of spitting and popping. Turn the livers over as they start to colour, but try to avoid cooking them for more than 4 or 5 minutes. They are best when their insides are rose pink.

To serve, divide the pea purée between four plates, add the chicken livers and the bacon, then scatter over the mint and lemon breadcrumbs.

Mint frozen yogurt

A mint and chocolate sorbet, without the need for an ice-cream maker. Serves 8-10.

caster sugar 250g
mint sprigs 15g
water 250ml
yogurt 650g
dark chocolate 60g

Blitz the sugar with 10g of the mint sprigs, leaves and stalk, in a food processor. You should end up with moist, green sugar. Put the sugar and water into a saucepan and bring to the boil. As soon as the sugar has dissolved, remove from the heat and cool the mixture – either by putting the pan in a sink of cold water, or by pouring the syrup into a bowl set in a larger basin of ice cubes.

Blitz the remaining mint briefly with the yogurt, then stir into the cooled syrup and mix gently. Transfer the mixture to a plastic freezer box. Keep in the freezer for a couple of hours or until ice crystals start to form on the edges, then stir or whisk them into the liquid centre and return to the freezer. Repeat a couple of times until almost frozen, then roughly chop the chocolate into small pieces and gently fold it in. Return the mixture to the freezer and leave until frozen. Scoop into bowls and serve.

Email Nigel at nigel.slater@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/nigelslater for all his recipes in one place

If you want to know what it's like to drive Bentley's beautiful new GTC soft-top, just ask the chauffeur…

Price £149,350
MPG 17.1
Top speed 185mph

We all know chauffeurs drive, but having spent a day chauffeuring at my cousin's wedding, I can tell you that that's the easy part of the job. The hard part is the waiting. To sit at the wheel of a spectacularly beautiful supercar, its 2.5-tonnes of buffed steel, double-stitched leather and burnished walnut held in abeyance, like a crouching sprinter waiting for the gun that never comes, requires reserves of self-control you can only guess at. To idle and feel a peerless 6-litre twin-turbocharged engine burble beneath your poised foot and know that if you moved that foot just 6in you'd hit 100mph in a shade over 10 seconds, but also to know you are going nowhere fast, is… well, let's just say that Tantalus had it easy. At the end of my day's chauffeuring in this 186mph car, my average speed was a staggering 13mph! But weddings are days to linger over, and my slow day at the wheel of one of the most rapid cars on the road gave me a chance to sit back and squeeze every ounce of savour from it.

The new Bentley GTC – the convertible version of the hard-topped GT which has been dazzling self-made millionaires in China and America since it arrived in showrooms at the end of last year – is a sumptuous four-seat cloth-top decked out in marshmallow-soft leather, deep-pile carpets and polished wood. It oozes effortless class all the way from its jewel-like daylight running lamps at the front to the double-horseshoe design of its rear lights.

There's a new man at the helm of Crewe's great ship, the amiable Wolfgang Dürheimer, who has come from Porsche. And though there is talk of hybrid engines and even an SUV in the future, he knows that what Bentley does well is the past. It's the Julian Fellowes of cars. And nothing expresses that better than Bentley's exhaustive, pathological attention to detail. Whether it's panel gaps thinner than credit cards or the gentle snap of a slow-closing glovebox, nothing seems too insignificant to have the magnifying glasses of the designers pausing over it. An almost imperceptible change of background colour to the winged "B" motif, for instance, is accompanied by a flurry of press releases.

As a chauffeur sitting patiently in this great car – I feel really I should have been driving in white gloves – I had time to soak up some of the flawless craftsmanship that is at the heart of these unparalleled cars. Everything is carved, burnished, lacquered, stretched and stitched with solicitous care. The walnut used in the veneer which wraps itself around the chrome dials and shining organ-stop buttons of the dashboard all comes from the trees in 81-year-old Cyrus Jones's orchard in the US.

But all chauffeurs have a guilty secret. When the client gets out, it's their time – and the car's. The leading rein comes off and it's a chance to shake out the enforced stillness. After dropping my cousin and his new wife off at the end of their first day as a married couple, I turned the GTC for home. The all-wheel drive car isn't some stately lady to be treated like a fragile maiden aunt. It's a car built for drivers. Hit the throttle and the vast engine ignites. Power pours over you like an avalanche. It's exhilarating, breathtaking, joyous, spine-tingling… and yet rock solid. It's everything I hope their marriage will be.

Why bother with real jewellery when the costume version is so exciting? Here's a user's guide to faking it

Diamonds were famously Marilyn Monroe's best friend, which, if you think about it, doesn't exactly speak to their efficacy as a reliable source of happiness. Perhaps if Marilyn's BFF hadn't been pear cut and kept in a safe, the lady herself would still be with us.

Of course I don't have anything against "real" jewellery. There's just something irresistible about costume stuff. I blame my past as a maximalist magpie: I spent my teens trawling second-hand shops searching for sparkle, then piling my treasure high in a manner Mr T would consider gauche, possibly worthy of actual fool-pitying. You can't do that with real jewellery. (You can? Don't. You'll look like a dick.)

Then there's the appealing aesthetic: costume's non-serious status lends itself to witty designs, while its unprecious nature hints at something similar in the wearer… could anything sound more uptight than a "choker"? Less sporty than a "tennis bracelet"? These are pieces that can (indeed might) spontaneously take you dancing on a Tuesday and roll home with you at 3am. One earring down? No biggie.

Of course costume jewellery was popularised by Coco Chanel, who famously – scandalously – mixed the faux with the fauxing expensive. Her stance on the subject ("It's disgusting to walk around with millions around the neck because one happens to be rich. I only like fake jewellery… because it's provocative") may have been more of a marketing ploy for her label's line of trinkets than a manifesto, but the echo of her élan still inhabits simulation stones.

So. I'm singing the praises of my favourite fakers. After all, to quote Rita Rudner: "I don't want something around my neck that's worth more than my head."

EABurns (notjustalabel.com)

I'm obsessed with my fluorescent necklace from EABurns – experimental and ethical (it's made from recut, disused leather) it gets compliments wherever I wear it.

Tatty Devine (tattydevine.com)

Accept no imitations! This London label's laser-cut collections have been shamelessly copied by big, bad brands, but the indie-originals are still the best.

Sophie Hulme (sophiehulme.com)

This womenswear designer boasts an übercool line of charms. Being from a seaside town, I wear (and use!) my gold-plated chip fork with pride.

Silo (silostudio.net) For something completely unique, Silo has developed a technique which remoulds polystyrene into beautiful bangles, among other things.

Peculiar Vintage (peculiarvintage.co.uk) These pieces are "real" but affordable. Owl-rings, key charms and cufflinks, handcrafted in recycled silver, here in the UK.

The taxidermist-artist shows us round her factory-conversion flat

Polly Morgan is resourceful – if things aren't the way she wants, she'll find a way to make them so. This is, after all, how she got into taxidermy. "I wanted to furnish my flat with animals in less conventional poses," she says. There were none to be found, so in 2005 she learned to make them herself. Today her pieces can command up to £85,000.

Two works in progress sit in the dining area of her recently purchased apartment in Hackney Wick, east London. Having taxidermied the fox (roadkill found by a friend), Morgan will be adding an octopus bursting out of its stomach and "maybe" a tentacle coming out of his eye. She suggests the idea was spawned from her own recent burst appendix and infection. The pig, which friend and restaurateur Mark Hix helped her source, is a resin cast that will be suckling a rotten tree with sap dripping down its chin.

"My next show is about the host-parasite relationship," she says, "about things getting plump and living off the dead."

On the wall of the factory conversion is a print of a crushed butterfly on a high-resolution scanner by her YBA artist boyfriend Mat Collishaw. "Get up close and you can see juices coming out of it," she says. Reproduction lights with carbon filament bulbs and a candlestick made from plumbing stopcocks are sympathetic with the building's design.

The dining table was made in situ by a friend who poured concrete between two large sheets of glass. It took six men to hoist it on to the legs. Every evening, having finished work in her ground-floor studio, Morgan cooks a "proper meal" here.

Her dog, Tony (upon whom she would never perform taxidermy), isn't generally interested in her work, but did once attack 30 chicks' heads Morgan had made. "I was furious with him," she says, "but I guess it's natural, isn't it?"

Polly Morgan will be at the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair, Brick Lane Yard, London E1 (artcarbootfair.com) on 27 May

A man who has always judged his girlfriends by their looks wants to find true love. Mariella Frostrup says he's on the right track, but that it will take time…

The dilemma I'm a 33-year-old who's poor at long-term relationships with women; looks rather than love have been the priority. It's taken me a while to understand what love is. I've suffered depression since my early 20s and feel that this has had a significant effect. Four years ago I spent a year abroad and ended up spending an awful lot of time with a colleague which towards the end became more intimate. Four months ago I came out of a three-year relationship – someone chosen for looks, primarily – and now I'm thinking about the original girl a lot. I know I've not felt the way I felt with her with other girls. I've learned lessons and don't want to make the same mistakes. Do I enter the dating scene again or tell this ex how I feel?

Mariella replies Whoa, cowboy! No need to leap so enthusiastically back into the saddle. You say you've learned lessons, but I'm not convinced. If you were emerging any the wiser from this recent separation you'd be savouring the contemplative opportunities of your own company rather than looking for another "dolly" into whose arms you can gratefully fall.

The description "dolly", an anathema in my teens, is back with a vengeance I'm assured by my lothario brother. You've no idea how shocking that is to a woman indoctrinated by the feminists of the 70s. Back then "dolly bird" was as derogatory a description as could be conceived for members of my sex. Four decades later I learn that its abbreviated form is considered a term of endearment as women embrace the shackles of objectification with increasing enthusiasm. So how can you be blamed for being swayed by looks when the opposite sex seem to spend the majority of their waking hours doing DIY on their desirability? You wouldn't be a man if you weren't prey to such witchcraft, and having highlighted their physical charms, these "dollies" would no doubt be desperately dejected if you failed to respond.

I'm not taking the high ground here – at my age you don't turn your nose up at opportunities to prevent scaring young children in the streets with your hideous wrinkles – but I can't help thinking it's all a little bit desperate. As a schoolgirl if I dared venture to school with even a dab of lip gloss it would be scrubbed off with a filthy dishcloth before I could muster a pout. Yet the other day I faced a class of 13-year-olds wearing more slap than Dickensian streetwalkers. As for the girls… Seriously, what sort of culture persuades kids at the peak of physical perfection that they need the help of cosmetics to maximize their assets before they've even passed their GCSEs?

Anyway, back to you. It's no comfort I suppose being merely the product of your cultural surroundings? All I'm saying is that with so much emphasis on the superficial it's no wonder we all get distracted. Luckily for you the fog is clearing. You've judged your preceding relationships unsatisfactory and are now focused on achieving a more fulfilling union. First of all, stop berating yourself for crimes of which you are innocent. At 33, to be slowly waking up to the emptiness of unfulfilling coupling is positively precocious these days. Three years with one partner doesn't qualify as the caddish commitment of a serial shagger. Take pride that your liaison lasted longer than many showbiz marriages. Like sex, it's not the duration but the quality of the experience that counts in our partnerships with others. You say you've been four months single as though it's an eternity, when it's the minimum mourning period any serious relationship deserves. Lessons and illuminations generally only present themselves once the high emoting of loss has passed.

So take a step back before you rush forwards. By all means send this girl an email, but keep your expectations low. After three years I hope for her sake her life has moved on, but she has already given you something important: recognition of the sort of relationship you desire. I'm not convinced she's the one – and she's definitely not the only one – but the experience you had is a helpful example of how much richer a relationship can be when deeper currents run beneath the surface stuff.

Get on with your life and accept no substitutes. Swerve all the appealing, perfectly toned arms that open up to you and clear the path for the pair that feels like home.

If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. To have your say on this week's column, go to guardian.co.uk/dearmariella. Follow Mariella on Twitter @mariellaf1

Stars of the small screen talk TV

The total package: Zawe Ashton

I'm a massive disappointment," says Zawe Ashton, star of C4's Fresh Meat. Ashton's wayward, partying character Violet, better known as Vod, won the hearts of viewers in the first series – so much so that when Ashton meets people at parties they expect her to be the last one standing. "It's a compliment that people think I'm going to be like her – it means I'm doing my job properly. But I can see the disappointment in people's eyes when I switch to fizzy water before heading for the door at a decent hour!"

Ashton's star has been on the ascent for a couple of years now. She's appeared on stage as well as screen, and she's also honing her skills as a writer, including a stint as writer-in-residence for production company Clean Break. Having just finished her run in Here by Michael Frayn at the Kingston Theatre, she says she "loves theatre" although it's "never, ever glamorous, but it is fun", and writing full time would never be an option either. "I'd start seeing things if I were on my own that much. I need to act."

So what does the future hold? She's just come back from Los Angeles, having had "promising" meetings with agents and managers. "It's nice to be stoking LA coals." But the most important thing, Ashton says, is that she's in work. "The actor's life is [one of] constantly treading a line between complete self-belief and complete self-doubt. To say that I'm working until August is the best thing – you just never know when your next job will be."

Favourite TV? Luther season two was groundbreaking, thrilling TV.
Favourite childhood show? The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and I still love it now.
Guilty pleasure? E! – anything on that channel is hilarious.
Favourite newsreader? Moira Stewart because she broke down boundaries for women, and black women, in her industry.
TV icon? I will always adore Del Boy. And Hyacinth Bucket. SS

The heir apparent: Alfie Allen

Alfie Allen swans into the photo-shoot grinning from ear to ear. "I've just found out that I've been put forward by my producers for a best supporting actor Emmy – it's like a pat on the back to say I'm doing well." Allen's potentially award-wining role is that of Theon Greyjoy in HBO's hit fantasy drama Game of Thrones, now in its second season on Sky Atlantic.

Filming is in Belfast and the crew, he says, feels like a family. "It's off the scale – there are so many people involved in making it, but we work together brilliantly. And it feels special to be a part of something right from the start."

He's just come back from LA, where he had "interesting meetings about interesting roles". But, he admits, "I'm a real homebody. I'm not a big fan of living out of a suitcase."

Favourite childhood TV? I was forced to watch Home & Away because my family were into it. I'm a sportsman so I've always watched a lot of football and cricket.
Favourite television show of the past year? Black Mirror, but don't watch it with your partner – it exposes paranoia in relationships.
Best documentary? Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss about a man on death row; my dad's [Keith Allen] doc on Nick Griffin.
Favourite newsreader? Riz Lateef – her name sounds like she's stealing Rizlas! SS

The double act: Vic and Bob

Did you know," asks Vic, as Bob rests his little round head on Vic's chest, "Did you know that Downton Abbey is filmed in Nairobi?" Bob snuggles in deeper under Vic's arm. They belong together these two, even now, 22 years after they first appeared side-by-side on TV on Vic Reeves Big Night Out. "What do you eat while you're watching telly, Bob?" asks Vic. "There's nowhere I'd rather be than in front of the telly, me," Bob replies. "I sit there from the start of The One Show and eat. Last night I had a bar of butterscotch chocolate, some monkey nuts, prawn crisps and stilton on crackers. And some lager." "I had celery, hummus, goat's cheese, Snack a Jacks and a pint of orange squash. I feel naked without snacks," adds Vic. They love TV. "Except for the freak-show stuff – you know, Embarrassing Bodies, 16-Year-Old Fat Bastard." "If there was a hanging," muses Vic, "we'd all tune in."

What's your TV routine?
Vic Every night we put the kids to bed and I'm obliged to watch EastEnders and Corrie. Then I watch Criminal Minds and I'm knocked out by the first break.
Favourite dramas?
Bob Breaking Bad, 24, Alcatraz, Fringe, Touch, The Killing, Spiral – I love them all…
Vic Mud Men with Johnny Vaughan. EW

Stars of the small screen reveal their TV secrets

The stand up: Jo Brand

Jo Brand bats away the suggestion that she's a national treasure. "To me that's someone who has a global reach, like Helen Mirren, or someone who's extremely good, like Stephen Fry. I don't have that. I've just calmed down a bit, and that's only because once I had children I was so bloody knackered I could be nothing but calm." Though her audience has widened as she's written novels, appeared on panel shows and acted in the superlative comedy Getting On, Brand says she's planning to go back to stand-up. "The world has become a horrible place for women again and I want to be gobby about it." Before then, though, she's very happy to talk about TV. "I had aspirational working-class parents who thought you shouldn't let your kids watch crap on telly. If my parents read this – it's your fault I'm a complete telly addict now."

Favourite TV? I like news programmes, especially Newsnight. It's opinionated, like a naughty adolescent trying to get away with provoking people.
Favourite reality show? I love it all. I like Big Brother, I'm a Celebrity. They're all interesting psychologically.
New TV discovery? I love Sarah Solemani on Him & Her. It's so nice to see a woman given a part where she doesn't have to cook her boyfriend's tea.

The writer: Charlie Higson

Charlie Higson says that The Fast Show fans are very kind. "There was never a backlash against the show, everyone remembers it fondly." Swiss Tony, Competitive Dad and Ted and Ralph have also found new fans with its recent online revival. "It was a laugh working with everyone again, and lovely to see Caroline Aherne. I hadn't seen her in over 10 years." Higson now has a new set of fans – avid followers of his series of zombie books for young adults. "The age group I write for speak their minds. I did an event recently where a kid stuck his hand up and said: 'I don't mean to be rude, but don't you think you could have done more with your life than writing about zombies?' It stopped me in my tracks. Maybe he's right."

Favourite TV? I've really enjoyed that whole raft of Scandinavians killing each other – The Killing, The Bridge. I thought Borgen was brilliant, too. I watched Homeland like everyone else and got furious at the ending.
New TV discovery? Breaking Bad. It's just brilliant. I love the way Bryan Cranston allows himself to look so awful. It's very unAmerican.
Guilty pleasure? I always have one reality show. At the moment it's The Apprentice. I love The X Factor. It was a disaster without Simon Cowell, he's my TV God.

The serious actor: Rebecca Front

I'm not a comedian," says Rebecca Front, casually confounding all your expectations. She may be loved for her roles in Grandma's House, The Thick of It and Nighty Night ("People still come up to me in the street to talk about Alan Partridge," she says), but she sees herself purely as an actor. "I'm always surprised I'm not doing more drama." She does confess to getting the giggles during The Thick of It, though – "I've close to disgraced myself" – but not too often as it's "genuinely scary being shouted at by Peter Capaldi" [as spin doctor Malcolm Tucker]. Serious actor she may be, but Front's also had to get used to being herself on TV as she notches up the panel-show appearances on the likes of Have I Got News For You and Would I Lie to You? "I have a character who's Rebecca Front for all that. I make the jokes I normally make, but as a heightened version of me."

Favourite TV? I feel real warmth towards shows I watch with my family – The Apprentice and Outnumbered.
Favourite newsreaders? I love Sian Williams – she's good at being serious and chatty; and Jeremy Paxman sets the heart aflutter.
Favourite TV Detective? Obviously I'm in Lewis, but I used to love Morse, so it was a thrill doing an episode of Kavanagh QC years ago with John Thaw.

Should doctors be allowed to make social judgements?

We're exhorted to lead healthy lives. (We used to be commanded to lead godly, righteous and sober lives; the sober bit being hard enough without the other two.) Some of the new advice is sensible enough: we should sleep and exercise more, stuff in fewer buns. But it's more sinister when it's suggested that doctors should refuse certain treatments to those who are obese and/or smokers until they've slimmed or kicked the habit. Of course a surgeon who only treats not very ill patients may have a better record, but the one who gives a really difficult patient a few more years may actually have done a harder job.

What worries me is anything that smacks of the concept of the Deserving Patient, of doctors making what amounts to social judgements. Losing weight may be easy for some but desperately difficult for others, who've had a bad enough time being called fatty and failing to find fashions to fit you'd think, without being told they can't be helped when they're sick. And yes, smoking's bad for you – but maybe it's only the calming effect of fags that stops a social worker kicking her awful "clients" down the stairs.

People shouldn't drive cars too fast either – but no one is seriously suggesting that doctors should refuse treatment to the survivor of an accident; I'm not sure the moral obligation's all that different.

Three good reasons to put southern European bottles in your wine rack

Marks & Spencer Tapada de Villar Vinho Verde, Portugal 2011 (£6.99, M&S) For many people, Vinho Verde, like Soave and German wine, will forever be associated with the Abigail's Party era when wine first hit the British mainstream. This wine is no mere 1970s throwback, however. It's a delightfully floral and lemon-fresh white blend; subtle, dainty even, but not at all dilute despite its 11% alcohol. Try it with the Portuguese speciality of fishcakes made from bacalão.

La Garnacha, Salvaje del Moncayo, Spain 2010 (£9.99, or £7.99 if you buy two bottles, Majestic) Despite being the main variety in famous wines such as Châteauneuf-du-Pape, grenache – or garnacha as it is known in Spain – has never had the cachet of more famous red grapes. Things have been changing recently, though, thanks to glorious reds such as this one, which has a truly delectable freshness beneath its exuberant raspberry and blackberry fruit.

Vie di Romans Flors di Uis, Friuli Isonzo DOC, Italy 2009 (£25, Laithwaites) Owing to its location on the borders of Austria and Slovenia, Friuli has always been a cultural melting pot, with a collection of wine-making influences that puts it at one remove from the rest of Italy. In the hands of top producers such as Vie di Romans, the results, particularly when it comes to whites, can be thrilling: in this case a heady, intense mix of honeysuckle, herbs and almonds with a mineral kick.

My local supermarket has starting putting bacon into larger plastic sleeves. Is it time for a new crackdown on packaging?

Thanks for sending me photographic rather than physical evidence, as old bacon packets are not pleasant. This is how great anti-waste campaigns start. Our last investigation into packaging started with a reader's photographs of coconuts wrapped in plastic. Ian Bates of Less Packaging has seen such travesties as your bacon packet before. "It's a fairly typical approach to reduce cost and to try to increase perceived value," he says. "It looks to me as if the extra cost of shipping and handling the bulky pack has probably not been considered, nor the extra cost of displaying the packs in-store. We still find that very few companies actually measure the true cost of their packaging holistically."

What's odd is that the big retailers are falling over themselves to present green packaging initiatives. Sainsbury's, for example, recently celebrated a loo-roll victory: reducing the diameter of the inner cardboard tube apparently cuts 140,000kg of CO2 by cutting the number of delivery lorries. And Bates says that Tesco has done well on its pre-school toy range, where you no longer find a "single frustrating plastic or metal twisty tie. Hooray!"

Hooray indeed, but probably not enough to quell your anger, given that we still chuck away 10m tonnes of packaging waste a year. Nearly 67% is supposedly recovered, and companies pay levies through a complex system of Packaging Recovery Notes. Yet you end up spending £470 a year on single-use packaging that you don't want.

This is a good time to campaign. Most retailers are signed up to the Courtauld Commitment to reduce packaging. Phase three, announced in March, will see target rates for the recovery of plastics double by 2017. Already the packaging industry is kicking against this. Consumer ire is important if targets are to be met.

For inspiration look to the Women's Institute 2006 packaging campaign. It is no longer officially live but so many members are still actively reporting overpackaging that, when I called them, there was a suggestion it might be revived. Their tips for you include the provocative stance of "unwrapping products at the till and leaving the packaging for the store to dispose of" if necessary. The lineage of this checkout campaigning? Austrian hausfraus in the 1980s who clogged up checkouts by removing packaging and decanting groceries into their own reusable receptacles. I can tell you, things soon changed.

Green crush of the week

Industrial designer Ross Lovegrove calls himself a "translator of 21st technology" and believes that only natural growth patterns and organic forms can "create maximum beauty". His 6m tall solar tree, manufactured by Artemide, stores enough energy even on cloudy days to light up all night long. It comes to London as part of the Clerkenwell Design Week (clerkenwelldesignweek.com), but you can witness its beatific glow in St John's Square, London EC1 until September.