MY LIFE IN FOOD

My dad was a dairy farmer on the edge of the Lake District. It was a stereotypical farmhouse and an old-fashioned, outdoorsy childhood. I wasn’t up at the crack of dawn as much as Dad would have liked, but I was up more often than my brother, helping look after lambs and calves.

On Sunday nights we always had ‘easy tea’ because everyone had been running around all day. Do you remember Findus crispy pancakes? They were the food of the 80s. You’d have a bath, watch Bullseye and tuck into those.

My mum used to send us down to the yard to get milk in a jug. For me, even full-fat milk still tastes watered down compared to what I grew up on.

Mum did all the cooking. Jacket potatoes, roast dinners, rice puddings, crumble with rhubarb from the garden – all that jazz.

It wasn’t cool to be farm-y. Now everyone thinks farmer’s markets are niche and Agas are posh. For Mum, it was this old thing she’d inherited. She was always saying that she’d do anything for a normal oven or a microwave.

I enjoy eating cereal out of a big mug. Idothatalot. Any cereal will do.

It’s monumentally hilarious how bad I am in the kitchen.

For my first job in television – Newsround on CBBC – I had moved from rural Cumbria to Central London, so that chapter in my life was very much about ham and cheese toasties because it’s all I ever made. It’s all I ever could make.

Tina Turner is someone I’d like to have shared a meal with. I just feel she would have had a lot of stories to tell. I wouldn’t have cooked for her, obviously, so we’d 100 per cent have had to go out. I’d have taken her out in the Lake District, and we’d have had a riot.

The best place I’ve ever eaten was Ellen’s Stardust Diner on Broadway. I’d just done the New York Marathon in a little over four hours. It’s that place where actors between jobs perform show tunes as they cut your churros. The day after a marathon, you want to eat bagels, eggs, the works.

Some of the food experiences presenting Blue Peter were mad. We went to Peru, had ceviche and ate deep-fried guinea pig. Would I eat a guinea pig usually? Gosh, no. I’ve had them as pets. In a fancy restaurant you could say, ‘Do you know what, that’s not for me.’ But it’s part of their culture – when you’re in someone’s house and they’re rolling out the red carpet, you can’t really say no.

When I kayaked the length of the Amazon, basically all we ate was rice, fish and bananas. Quite often we’d eat fish that just landed in the boat.

I did a show in Sierra Leone for Comic Relief and we ate plantain cooked for us by a group of teenagers living beside a rubbish dump. They didn’t have a lot of food to go round, so to share some of theirs was the ultimate show of generosity.

I don’t like lamb, which is ironic as I’m a farmer’s daughter. It’s almost a bit disrespectful. I just don’t like the smell.

I appeared on The Great Sport Relief Bake Off and was so bad that [stand-up] Ed Byrne thanked me for bringing the comedy element. I wasn’t even trying to be funny. I made a chocolate cake that had big holes in it, so I filled them with icing. It was therefore 80 per cent icing. I made eccles cakes and dropped them but didn’t realise anyone had seen me. I tried to give them to Mary Berry, and they told me they’d caught me on camera. They didn’t even bother telling me areas I could improve in. They just said, ‘Thanks for coming’.

For information on Helen’s fundraising for Mind, go to mind.org.uk

even thickness, then season. Fry the chicken for 2 minutes on each side so they’ve just taken on some colour, then set aside.

Lower the heat to medium and add 2 crushed garlic cloves, cooking for 30 seconds. Tip in the tin of tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.