Are TV dinners the death knell for romance?

As Masterchef’s John Torode lays into ‘teas on knees’...

HOW ironic that a man who has made a lucrative television career out of eating standing up and talking with his mouth full should suddenly decide to judge how the British public take their own suppers.

Masterchef’s John Torode says that a TV dinner is bad manners and a surefire romance killer. I disagree.

In fact, John, to paraphrase one of your show’s catchphrases: ‘Opinions don’t get much more half-baked than this.’

You see, this is 2021, more than 60 years since America’s Swanson food company invented the grim yet hyper-convenient TV dinner.

We now have frenetic and logistically unpredictable lives. We live versatile and freestyle. The modern way to eat has evolved and progressed in parallel with the modern way of working — Sunday breakfast in bed, Monday lunch in front of the laptop, sushi standing up, sandwich in the car. The gastronomic equivalent of hot-desking.

So after a few days of this, an early evening pasta- and- Pinot- Grigio dinner, on the lap, with one’s wife or girlfriend nestled beside you on the sofa and BBC2’s smartarse game show Only Connect just beginning can seem rather romantic.

Of course, my girlfriend and I don’t manger à l’écran plat (eat in front of the flatscreen) seven days a week. Particularly during the lockdown, it has really depended on what’s on telly . . . and what’s in the oven. A binge on the new series of Succession or Call My Agent will be a strictly after-dinner treat accompanied by a simple glass of chilled Albarino. And it would be wrong, say, to have risotto ai funghi porcini with the idiot box distracting from the aroma of the mushrooms.

Sometimes, at around 8pm, I love to cook, lay a table, arrange napkins, light a pair of candles, maybe put on some music and open a bottle. But doing this every night would make it less special, less romantic.

John, I am aware that you and Lisa Faulkner have teenage kids in the house and want to set a good example and, yes, I know you are still in the honeymoon period of your second marriage and want to be a good husband. But it would be rather gauche to consume, say, a Five Guys burger and fries off a plate, at a table, with a knife and fork.

My love and I are not Masterchef fans, by the way. Don’t know about you, but I can’t bear to watch Torode wolfing down his dinner — in a kitchen, for heaven’s sake — while staring at a TV monitor. I mean, really.

‘A candlelit dinner every night is no longer special’