Rick Stein’s Mediterranean Escapes (BBC2, Wednesday, 8pm) sees TVs most kind hearted chef go on a food odyssey throughout, well, the Mediterranean. Sometimes, I don’t really know how I feel about Rick Stein. Mostly, I find him to be warm, affable and generally pleasant to watch. That said, when I’ve got a head on me (it’s a Northern phrase if you’re not familiar with it) I grumble at his lack of spite and backbone. In fact, my good lady pointed at the screen and said “that’s the most apologetic face on TV”, and guess what? She’s right.

Stein, for all his enthusiasm and skill is without doubt, a simperer of the highest order, often throwing apologetic looks to people for no reason at all. In one aside to camera, during a trip to Sardinia, he said “That’s the trouble with doing shows like this. You come to these great places and then the tourists follow… and then it just isn’t the same…” So maybe that’s the source of his furrowed brow?

As ever, the viewer had the chance to become supremely jealous of a TV chef going off on a jaunt around the world to visit beautiful looking places, meet beautiful people and eat even more beautiful looking food. Imagine getting paid to do that? He traveled through Corsica to eat the most gorgeous sheep’s cheese and sausages whilst chatting with the locals at a folk festival with chatter and accordions rattling away in the background (ie my perfect holiday). Then, off to Sardinia where again, a village festival was underway with very handsome men and women scoffing handsome food and dancing into the wee smalls.

Stein scurried around both places with his notepad, scribbling down new ideas for recipes and the like, quite often getting fevered about the produce and cooking methods. It’s nice to see someone enjoying their work so much. Of course, these trips were interspersed with Stein back at home in his kitchen (complete with a picture of Chalky – his dog – in the background) trying out all these new ideas. Sadly for Rick, he couldn’t get hold of all the ingredients that these villages had… presumably because they wanted to keep them all for themselves.

As ever with Simpering Stein, he was almost apologising for his luck. ‘I got to try all this amazing food in glorious settings… and you’ll have to make do with a chorizo sausage.’ Rick! For god’s sake man! We love chorizo! Yes you are a jammy sod, but don’t worry! What is nice to see is Stein clearly hasn’t lost his passion for cooking. Watching someone like, say, Gordon Ramsay, you get the impression that he likes to be Billy Big Bollocks (his phrase, not mine) before cooking. Stein however is more than happy for the food to do the talking… after all, that’s the star of any cookery show no? [Mof Gimmers]