KEY POINTS:
Saint Jamie Oliver, as I have rudely referred to him in the past, has been in danger of becoming as ubiquitous as the sun-dried tomato. Some people are partial to a sun-dried tomato.
I'd rather eat a bum's boot. And I would rather, I thought, have eaten two bum's boots and a jar of sun-dried tomatoes than watch another Jamie Oliver offering.
This latest one is in that strange spot called The Big Food Fight (TV One, yesterday, 9.30pm), which I thought was one long, ongoing series on how you will go straight to hell if you eat battery chickens. But no, it's a slot in which can be bunged anything to do with food lectures about how you will go to hell if you don't eat right.
The latest offering is Jamie's Ministry of Food. This sounded like more proselytising. He sets up his Ministry of Food along the lines of the one which operated the rationing system during, and after, World War II.
And gave advice on, say, how to turn half an egg and a pair of cow's lips into dinner for eight. Jamie is both more and less ambitious. He gives lessons in meatballs and salmon with basil oil.
In Rotherham. Which is where a stroppy sheila called Julie Critchlow staged a protest against his school dinner campaign by passing junk food through the school fence.
He went to see her. Yes, it was a jack-up, but rather good fun all the same. "I would like an apology off you," she said, "for calling me a big fat scrubber ... "
She found, to her surprise, she quite liked him. Though, "Sometimes you can be a bit pompous ... would you like to meet my mum?"
Jamie said he would, "As long as she's not going to hit me with her handbag".
Julie, who it turns out can cook pretty well, said she'd sign up to help Jamie teach Rotherham to cook, but she had her reservations about his "pass it on" method.
This involves getting the disciples - who answered an ad calling for people who couldn't cook - to learn two Jamie recipes then pass them on to two people who would then pass it on and so on.
The disciples, said Julie, would suck up to Jamie while the cameras were there, then they'd go back to eating crap. Eating crap, in the case of one woman, is 10 bags of chips and a giant chocolate bar every night.
Really? Well, it is reality telly so you have to allow for exaggeration. Then there is Natasha. She gets £80 ($222) a week in benefits and spends £70 on takeaways for her and her two young kids. They eat on the floor, straight out of the takeaway containers and most nights dinner is chips smothered in melted cheese and kebab.
When Natasha cooks her first meal, meatballs, her daughter says "It's lovely". And Jamie is genuinely delighted. And so, oddly, was I.
He is still a plonker. "You live in a bubble," said Julie. Natasha looked like giving up - she'd no money to go on the bus to get food and the takeaway is next door.
Jamie said: "I really feel for her and I also feel I'm intruding. I also know, in the most unpatronising ... way that I'm enriching her life ... well, it makes me feel good. It's totally selfish."
That was honest. And if Jamie can apologise for calling Julie a slapper, I can eat my words and say that this is really good telly. Yes, it's worthy but worthy in a worthwhile and very watchable way.