Pamela, my agents' so called assistant.

I have never been so insulted. I just came off the phone to Viviens’ assistant, Pamela (I have been given her mobile number as the office is quite busy) and she wasn’t even at her desk. At this time! On a Saturday! She was in Sainsburys. Hardly a place to discuss new ideas, although they are stocking Bengali pickle now.

I suggested my idea to her – after having to remind her SEVERAL TIMES who I was – and she said ‘What do you know about food?’. What do I know about food? WHAT DO I KNOW ABOUT FOOD? I advised her to look at my Curriculum Vitae, but she said what with being in Sainsburys she didn’t have a copy to hand. When I then said she should ask them to see the unsuccessful applicants file for the tobacco counter in the personnel file, she declined. She repeated her enquiry about my level of knowledge of food. I reminded her how much food had played a part in the parts I had played

• Yogesh the Radish in The Travelling School players production of ‘Fruit and Veg’
• Dr Richard Onions in ‘The Armageddon’
• Smearing myself and Anna Massey in yoghurt during a love scene in Lady Jane Grey (although technically I wasn’t in that)
• Winston Churchill eating a Melon in ‘Winston – The Melon Eating Years’
• Cyril the Healthy Hamburger on the Streatham High Road

Was this not enough? Of course I am leaving out the scene in ‘Locks’ Fortress’ where myself, Gordon Francis and Bob Muckerjee were rolling around naked in a huge vat of blackberries. That film though may not count as I don’t think it was ever commercially released although I have had a cheque to prove it was recently shown in a club in Brighton called ‘Clench’. I do love these clique movie enthusiasts.

I’d also been eating most of my life, which I hoped counted as research.

“What do you know about food, Tarquin, do you cook?” My food knowledge is – and I am the first to admit this – limited. I had to reply that over a six week shoot my recipe for porridge would become a little repetitive, even if I added jam around episode four as a plot twist.

“You have to know something, Tarquin, about the subject. We can’t just waltz into the BBC with any old crap and expect them to say yes. We’re not Jennifer Saunders”. And the line went dead.

Replacing the handset into the cradle, I pondered her words. I then rang her back and impersonated Jennifer Saunders with the same idea, but got through to her voicemail and had a coughing fit, during which a large gob of phlegm covered the handset and caused much disgusting language from yours truly. So if you see Ms Saunders making flambé Cheese Cauliflower or icing a cake which looks like an Epsom printer, you know it’s all fixed.

Why can I not do cooking on TV? I would be very good. One of my hobbies is cooking, and then eating, and to have someone else, or preferably a couple of million people who can’t interrupt me watching me eat something, that would be ideal.

So now I am planning my McPhereson Delicious Road Trip. I shall visit theatres, radio stations and on location news reporters and cook for them and film the results. And I will send the tape to the BBC myself. Then we will see if the BBC can resist my tasty talents.