Oh how I’ve been enjoying this series. It has really been very good indeed. We’ve already seen Sue Perkins and Giles Coren gag and wince their way through Restoration food (that was funny) and Wartime food (which was also very entertaining). Last night they had a go at the Victorian era, and I was really looking forward to it – I love all that Charles Dickens shizzle. At the top of the show we were told that the average life expectancy of women in the Victorian period was 48. They either died of cholera, consumption or childbirth. I hoped Sue Perkins would survive the hour.

Giles and Sue bowled up to their residence for the week (a nice-looking Victorian detached number) and met their chef for the week, Sophie Grigson.

Their first breakfast was mutton, fried potatoes, tinned meat (the new thing in Victorian times), oysters wrapped in bacon, oranges, omelette and mackerel and anchovies. They were really quite impressed by the feast but Sue, in a corset that had shrunk her waist by four inches, couldn’t move.

After breakfast, Giles went to a gentleman’s club to eat some curry (everything was Raj obsessed in those times), and he had not-very-nice beef curry, rabbit curry and vegetable curry. With claret. Plenty of claret. While Giles was gadding about town, Sue was reading up on Mrs Beaton, the Victorian domestic goddess.

Dinner that night was whole boiled calf’s head with its brains on the side in a butter sauce. It was awful to watch as they cut away the cheeks to reveal the gums and teeth. Lord knows what it must have been like to eat it, although, judging by Giles and Sue’s expressions, it was pretty bad. As an extra treat, calves’ ear fritters were also on the table. They didn’t like them much either.

The next day – and the spectre of the boiled calf’s head still in their minds - they took a trip to the National History Museum to do a bit of Darwin-style eating. Darwin, mad as a bowl by all accounts, used to be a member of the Glutton Club, whose members ate pretty much everything that moved - hawks, pumas, you name it. Giles and Sue snacked on squirrel (like chicken, apparently) and candied maggots.

They then went off to take in some exercise, which was boomng in Victorian times. Giles did some boxing (to highlight the introduction of the Queensbury Rules to the sport) and Sue did some cycling in her bloomers. The relief of taking off her corset and getting out into the air was almost palpable.

For dinner they had some fish and chips from the oldest chippy in London. Thanks to improvements in transportation (industrial revolution, see?) things like fish and chips could happen. Oh how they enjoyed their fish and chips. Made me quite hungry as well just watching it.

The next day they had a massive dinner party, something that the new middle classes and nouveau rich took to with gusto. In those days you weren’t anyone if you didn’t have a French chef, so Giles and Sue brought in a French fellow to cook up a storm. The four-course meal took them 12 hours to cook, over two days.

For the first course there was red deer, potato croquettes, french beans and claret. For seconds they had Pigeon á la Duchesse (boned birds with veal meat stuffing, covered in Bechamel sauce, dipped in breadcrumbs, fried and then dipped in Bechamel again) and lamb’s tongue with spinach. For thirds they had chicken quinelles, snipe on toast, and some other birds whose names I’ve written down but now can’t read. There was an enormous array of jellies and cakes for dessert. By the end of it they were stuffed.

Sue was also completely bongoed. Apart from the pair’s expressions when they eat horrible things (which makes me laugh out loud), I do enjoy seeing Sue get drunk. She tends to fall off her chair quiet regularly and slump into her food, which, for a Victorian woman is grounds for immediate divorce and social exclusion.

There was a brief dinner the day after where Sue conducted a seance, Giles ate street food (pig guts) and got very drunk in a pub, but it was all about the final, Christmas meal. Christmas as we know it (trees, sparkly lights, falling asleep on the sofa after too much food and sherry and family fun) was all introduced during the Victorian era… you know, like Scrooge and all that. So Giles and Sue invited some guests around and ate and drank and Christmas shits and giggles.

Course one was some sort of soup, potato croquettes and boiled cods’ head. Course two was cold game pie (the biggest pie I have ever seen, stuffed full of eight different meats. The Victorian expert at the table said that in Victorian times, at least 20 per cent of all the meat was off so they crammed it all into pies. Mrs Miggins eat your heart out), red cabbage, and roast goose and stuffing. For pudding they had plum pudding, Bird’s custard (many of the brands we know today originated in Victorian times), furmity (spicy porridge and mince pies (with real mince in).

Once again, Sue was leathered, as was Giles and he tried to get off with one of the guests.

Less food this episode, more what the Victorians got up to, which I didn’t mind. It was still fun and informative. Next week… the 1970s.