Heston Blumenthal. You know him right? Barking mad food wizard with a head like a giant marble? That’s the one. Well, last night he returned to our screens as the veritable mischief maker in the oven with Heston’s Chocolate Factory Feast (Channel 4, Tuesday, 6 April, 9pm) channelling the spirit of Willy Wonka.

Heston has done some outlandish things in his time on our screens. He’s made fictional beasts and roasted them, along with things that erupt dry ice from your nostrils when you eat them. However, last night, he really, really took the piss. Naturally, it was brilliant.

Looking toward fiction, Blumenthal thought he’d make his own dreams come true as well as infuriating all of us lot sat at home who could only fail to grasp how ace and mental the Heston experience was.

We’re talking about our man making chocolate oranges out of ducks, wallpaper you can lick, setting off bombs in a duck’s arse, designing a toadstool that you suck which makes your voice end up sounding like Johnny Cash and, for the cherry on the top, a waterfall that actually separates all the liquid out of some chocolate, leaving you with dust in one hand and distilled booze-chocolate liquid in the other.

Staggering stuff.

However, all this mind-bending fun is not without problems. Whilst his cheffy science and childlike enthusiasm is always a joy to behold, we have to put up with a now depressingly familiar array of tit-headed guests.

Eating this dazzling selection of grub was a gaggle of wankshafts, all hooting about the fun and awe. Step up Mica Paris (who tried far too hard throughout the show), Ben Shephard (drippy no-mark), Mike Read (Cliff Richard’s bessie and boring DJ) and Tim Lovejoy (hateful, insipid little shite). There were others, but I’ll be damned if I can remember them now.

So undeserving were these twerps that it only serves to make you more annoyed that you’ll (probably) never get to step inside Heston Blumenthal‘s mind and wander around in it laughing and puzzling. Nope. Some Z-List clean beat you to it.

As such, this is the pay-off for being given such a wonderful programme. His shows may well be billed as culinary TV, but it’s nothing of the sort. This is experimental, funny and downright weird television that we clearly need more of.

Leave Rick Stein to wander around various fishing ports with tips for broth… leave Hugh to slaughter pigs and make curd from their boiled up eyes… leave Jamie Oliver to nudge and wink vegetables until they turn into soup… they’re all well and good when they are giving us recipes. Blumenthal is giving us something much finer – ideas and a sense of wonder.

If this man does restore your faith in human mentalry, then you’re probably a curmudgeon who is impossible to please.