As I rush into The Goring hotel for lunch with Clarissa Dickson Wright, I worry that a long, languid conversation just isn’t on the cards. We have both sandwiched the appointment between other commitments. I am just back from New York and have early deadline to meet on a story for the sports editor. Dickson Wright, meanwhile, is on the last day of a packed trip to London to promote her memoir, Spilling the Beans, a good part of which is profoundly depressing – another potential problem for both interviewer and interviewee.

In fact, when I meet Dickson Wright in the bar, she looks so deflated that I almost don’t recognise her as a member of one of the most ebullient partnerships in television history, the unforgettable Two Fat Ladies cooking series.