SO when did you last peel a potato? Possibly some time ago. We are cooking fewer potatoes than ever. Half the potatoes we eat now are already peeled and processed for us - crisps, frozen chips, waffles, potato-topped ready-made pies, even ready-bought roast potatoes.

At this rate, real live potatoes with skins, peel and bits of mud could soon be listed under exotic vegetables.

Already this summer I've encountered check out girls who didn't recognise peas and beans in their pods. The humble spud in its skin could be next.

Does it really matter?

We are all getting further and further away from producing our food. There aren't many of us left who bake our own bread, kill our own chickens, brew our own beer or even make our own biscuits at home. The world has changed. Difficult to keep a cabbage patch and a pig when you live in a tower block or an executive housing estate. My dear, just think what a pig would do to the decking.

But the problem with potatoes is that the processed versions a) cost more - a lot more, and b) tend to be coated with fat to turn a simple healthy food into a slow-burning death-trap.

Children are now spending £400m a year on junk food. Which can't be good. Food has ceased to be functional or even just tasty and interesting, but has to be fun, fun, fun all the way. The latest idiot idea is from Heinz, who have launched a new range of sauces called Easy Squirt, for children to "express themselves" while smothering their food with gloop. They have even, heaven help us, called it the Play With Your Food Campaign.

Now when my children played with their food, I always threatened to take their plate away and replace it with knife and fork and a box of Lego - but I am clearly a hard-hearted old bat.

Supermarkets don't help, of course. Too often the only potatoes on offer are the ubiquitous "white potatoes" which go to mush in the water and never crisp up as chips or roasties. Or there are "new" potatoes all the year round, which taste of absolutely nothing. Faced with a choice between those, a packet of frozen chips seems a sensible option.

But real potatoes - King Edwards, Maris Piper, Charlotte or any good local varieties - are worth fighting for. Whether mashed with a bit of butter or new in their skins with a sprig of mint, they are delicious, food of the gods.

So keep buying them, cooking them, eating them - before they become museum pieces, or so rare that only the rich will bother.

And, who knows, your children might grow to like the taste of them - even without the gloop.

MOST writers-in-residence get to work in prisons or theatres or universities. But novelist Fay Weldon has done much better for herself - she's writer in residence at the swish Savoy Hotel, with a £300 a night room whenever she wants it and as much breakfast as she can eat.

Excellent. Always good to hear of writers getting perks for their work.

On the other hand, Fay Weldon is a very successful lady. If she really wanted to, she could buy her own room at the Savoy. Perhaps it would be better to offer the treat to poorer, struggling writers who could do with a bit of luxury in their lives. If they're looking for volunteers, I'd be happy to oblige.

Forget breakfast. If they gave me enough of their legendary dry martinis, I'm sure I could write them a masterpiece.

SO farewell then Bainbridges... The Newcastle store isn't going anywhere, isn't changing ownership or much else, but its historic name is going. From now on, it's going to be known simply as John Lewis.

Just like all the other John Lewises up and down the country.

And, admirable though the store might be, it's just another step on the road that makes every High Street the same, every town centre indistinguishable from one another. Faced with identical rows of identical shops with identical fascias with identical names, it will soon be impossible to tell where we are.

Bainbridges was Bainbridges long before it was John Lewis and it would have been so much more interesting to retain the name and a little bit of local history. But, whatever the sign says, I bet it will be years before locals call it anything else.

OF course immigrants must learn to speak English as quickly as possible, if only because it is bound to make their lives in this country so much easier. But David Blunkett's suggestion that ethnic communities should speak English in their own homes is a classic example of a very good idea that is absolutely wrong.

For if we cannot speak our own language in our own homes, than what hope is there? Generations of Welsh children were banned from speaking their own language in school - and humiliated if they did - but at least at home they were safe.

Then there are the German Jewish parents of an old friend. They fled Hitler's Germany and met and married in England, learning and speaking English in public and at home - except when they didn't want their children to understand what was being said.

At over 80, they had spoken English for much the larger part of their lives, so fluently that, they said, they even thought in English now.

"But," said my friend's father wistfully, "when I dream it is different. When I dream, I still dream in German."

And not even David Blunkett could do anything about that.

NEW research shows that women with big bums are often healthier than those with tiny, pert little bottoms.

Frankly, this is little consolation.

Published: 18/09/2002