With the influx of Christmas cooking shows on at the moment, it got me thinking: where is the dedicated vegetarian TV chef? A bit of online research shows that about 6% of the world population is vegetarian (more in India, Israel and the UK, less in US and Europe, about 2% in NZ). There must be some excellent chefs out there who don’t eat meat, can pitch an exciting show and have a face for TV! And it doesn’t have to be promoted as a ‘vegetarian cooking show’ as that may turn the ignorant general public right off, but a new kind of format that’s fun and healthy, with family favourites, international cuisine, gourmet, food for holidays, a road show…

I can think of these carnivore ‘celebrity’ cooks off the top of my head: Ramsay, Oliver, Lawson, Hay, Stein, Fearnley-Whittingstall, Mathias, Langbein, Wickes, Brown, Till, Ray, Bourdain. That’s 13, so it’s about time we have a chef that promotes no killing of animals, isn’t it?

Don’t get me wrong, these guys can still do what they do, and I appreciate all the non-meat recipes, I just get bored sometimes fast-forwarding the lengthy preparations for meat (because, as it seems, it can take ages to cook to make edible and needs a lot of seasoning). And not every dinner has to have a meat component to be a ‘whole’ meal – ever heard of legumes? Nuts? Tofu? What about raw?

Peter Chaplin, we need you!