HOSPITAL food is bad for you but can Loyd Grossman make it better? He's the figurehead for a £40m campaign to improve the food in British hospitals. And boy, does it need improving.

An NHS report last year found that 40 per cent of patients in hospitals were actually malnourished. Think about it - you go in to get your bunions fixed and you come out like Weightwatchers' Winner of the Year.

There is absolutely no excuse for hospital food to be as appalling as it is. Hospitals are full of sick people. They, more than anyone, need good decent wholesome food. It should be as much a part of the treatment as surgery and medicines. How can they recover if they're not given the proper fuel?

Why spend all that money on state of the art operations, only to ruin it all by feeding patients so badly that they haven't got the strength to recover?

The same NHS report reckoned that ten per cent of patients would get better sooner if the food were better. Which means they could go home earlier and save the NHS more dosh. I still have nightmares about one of my hospital meals. As I recovered from the anaesthetic I had fantasies about icy cold orange juice, a crisp salad, some fresh fruit.

What I actually got was a sip of tepid chlorinated water and a plate of beetroot, bleeding gently into some grey and greasy corned beef and a dollop of lumpy mashed potato. It did not hasten my recovery.

Very different in a private hospital, where I was presented with a plate of tiny delicious sandwiches and tea in a china cup, which made me feel better immediately. It does make a difference.

Loyd Grossman has a team of top chefs to help him. Perhaps they could start by realising that hospital food should be different from the stuff dished up in works canteens.

It is a world of limp lettuces, stodgy puddings, congealed gravy and unnameable things in pies, a world in which it seems impossible to produce an appetising vegetable or piece of fruit. (A glorious exception was The Mount, Northallerton's long-gone maternity hospital. There were only a handful of us there one day, when the message came up from the kitchen, "I've got some nice cooking apples - would you prefer pie or crumble?" That was what I call service. They also made decent drinkable coffee - another rarity).

Even if the food is fine when it leaves the kitchens, by the time it's meandered along the corridors, sat in the wards and by the bedside, it has usually congealed gently into a sad and mournful death, beyond all hope of resuscitation.

Chefs in the past say they couldn't produce decent food on the money allocated for patients. But thousands of tons of food a year are just thrown out, rejected uneaten and wasted. In a pilot scheme in Nottingham, there is a housekeeper attached to each ward specifically to help people with their meals. The amount of food wasted has decreased by 40 per cent - which should buy a couple of decent oranges for a start.

Most people I know don't take grapes when they visit hospitals any more. Instead, they smuggle in Red Cross parcels of Marks and Spencer sandwiches and those little bowls of fresh fruit salads. Simple, appetising and delicious - and just what sick people need.

Now M&S has made a mess of selling clothes, maybe they should just go for the NHS catering contract instead. It could do us all the world of good.

RADIO 4 is finding it difficult to recruit listeners to The Archers because people aren't used to listening to speech on radio. Without visual clues, they apparently can't follow the plot or differentiate between characters.

Come on, the goings on in Ambridge aren't exactly Dostoyevskian in their complexity. The problem is that a younger generation is just not used to concentrating on listening. They're too used to looking at the pictures. They never sat comfortably and Listened With Mother. They probably didn't have a bedtime story. Listening properly is a vital social skill, one that our children need to acquire. How otherwise do they cope with following instructions in school or at work, listening to politicians, doctors, court proceedings or debates?

It's not just The Archers - there's a whole world to be listened to out there. If only you know how.

HERE'S a hint... Took Granny to the MetroCentre for a spot of Christmas shopping on Monday. We were there at 10am and parked right outside M&S, no problem. By 11am, when I went staggering out with the first batch of shopping, the car park was in chaos, drivers trailed me and my trolley hoping for my parking space, or hovered ready to pounce when I left. But I didn't - which reduced them to fury or tears. Others parked on double yellow lines, while yet more sent passengers up and down the rows to scout out spaces. So, forget the lazy breakfast and the second cup of coffee - the early bird gets the parking space.

Time for Teletubski

THE Teletubbies are going to Russia. Instead of toast they'll eat blinis, but I don't know how pink custard translates.

The programmes have only just arrived, but already the merchandising has started, with products trickling into the shops.

Once upon a time, in pre-capitalist days, the Russians queued for bread and sausages. Now Moscow mothers will be beating each other up in the race for the last for Tinky Vinky.

Is this what we call progress?

Sharon Griffiths: www.thisisthe northeast.co.uk/news/griffiths.htm