Of all the Christmas presents Rick Stein received as a child, there was one clear favourite. “One year, I was given a push-pedal car,” he says. “I was still tiny, and we were living in the Cotswolds. I don’t think they exist now. You sat in the car and pushed the two pedals, and went round and round the sitting room in it. I loved it.”
Those were simpler times. Seven decades on, Stein’s hoping for a far less joyful but more practical gift this year — from Keir Starmer, rather than Santa.
