On the menu today: total tripe, served with lashings of waffle

The British have an inferiority complex about food. We’re secretly convinced the French and Italians do it so much better. Not that anyone cared, in the days before cheap air fares and the Channel Tunnel. Once upon a time we wouldn’t have swapped sausage and mash for moules marinieres, any sooner than we’d have traded in a Union Jack Mini Cooper for a rusty old 2CV with a chicken on the back seat.

But now we’re ashamed of our plain-and-simple traditions. The only time, for instance, that you’ll see fish and chips being prepared on a cookery show is when the cod is seasoned with ethiopian Berber spices and dipped in curried batter, as it was on Tom Kerridge’s Great British Takeaways a few weeks ago.

That doesn’t only sound revolting, it’s horribly pretentious. No one in the history of seaside holidays has ever wanted to scoff that out of a newspaper. even the seagulls would spit it out.

Yet we’re constantly told that this is the food we should aspire to eating. however much you might want bacon and egg with a slice of fried bread for breakfast, with a mug of tea the colour of mud, celebrity TV chefs will attempt to convince you that smashed avocado on toast with cracked black pepper is a more sophisticated option.

Anyone who has tried smashed avocado knows it tastes like freshly mown grass blended with half a pound of butter. But saying so out loud is practically a hate crime.

Proof that this country is now unable to face its own food heritage came as Great British Menu (BBC2) returned. It claimed to be celebrating 140 years of tennis at Wimbledon, by creating dishes that evoked the english summer.

So what did the contestants prepare? One cooked a Spanish gazpacho, a cold soup, that reminded him of holidays in Marbella. Another did an Aussie-style courgette salad, and the third made cucumber sandwiches. The sarnies at least sounded fit for a vicarage tea party ... until chef Selin Kiazim explained she was flavouring them with Turkish Cypriot spices.

Then Selin announced she was recreating the classic FedererNadal final of 2008, with a barbecued octopus and potato rostis.

It’s a farce, made worse by the fact that the dishes aren’t real meals at all. Some of them look as though the chef has just coughed on the plate.

There are 45 episodes of this bilge, showing every weekday over the next nine weeks.

Perhaps the Beeb could get away with claiming this is a niche programme, appealing to a minority of viewers who like to pretend they’re better than the rest of us because they simply adore authentic Croatian goat’s milk yoghurt.

But the following show, Bake Off: Creme De La Creme was equally ridiculous.

everyone loves a cream bun, but nobody wants an eiffel Tower of choux pastry with a lah-di-dah name like croquembouche. Unless you’re actually French, of course. The fare on Extreme Cake Makers (C4) was no more practical. If these showstoppers are Channel 4’s warm-up for their Great British Bake Off launch later this year, it doesn’t bode well.

So far we’ve seen a 5ft lemon and elderflower sponge that looks like a fish, plus a marzipan chandelier held together with plastic, and we’re promised another cake sculpted to resemble a Shetland pony.

Who looks at a horse and thinks: ‘Mmm, delicious’? Unless you’re actually French, of course.

extreme Cake Makers is also on every day this week. The thought of it is enough to give you indigestion.