How the UK forgot to teach its children to cook – and has lost out because of it

Cookery lessons in schools have declined, leaving many young people without basic skills - (Getty/iStock)

Years ago, during Ainsley Harriott’s Ready Steady Cook heyday, a viewer wrote in about a jacket potato he’d made on the show – topped with a little leek and cream cheese. The man explained he didn’t normally cook but had tried the recipe and loved it.

Twenty years later, Harriott ran into him again. “He said, ‘I wrote to you,’ and I said, ‘Yes! I remember!’” Harriott recalls. “Now he’s a chef. I thought, bloody hell…”