IF ONLY Jamie Oliver had taught at my school, everything would be so different.

Until last week I thought the so-called Naked Chef was a cocky, arrogant jumped-up... I won't go on. You would not have caught me watching one of his TV programmes.

A colleague mentioned his latest series in which he recruits a group of teenagers to work in his new restaurant. I vowed to give it a miss, but the combination of a broken remote control and extreme laziness led to me watching the first episode.

All I can say is, had someone like him taught me cookery when I was at school I would not be going through the daily nightmare of having every meal I cook rejected by my children - and husband - as inedible.

In no time at all Jamie showed the teenagers - most of whom could not boil an egg - how to rustle up a tasty salmon and vegetable dish. He was encouraging and enthusiastic, and above all the dish was EASY and it was a proper meal. If I'd had a salmon to hand I'd have had a go myself.

When I was at school all I remember making in "housecraft" was bread and butter pudding, rock cakes and Victoria sponge. The teacher, a middle-aged woman, was very nice, but we did not learn how to do anything that would be useful in later life, like peel a potato, roast meat or steam vegetables.

Children are lectured on how nutritious vegetables are and how they are a vital part of any diet, yet they are not taught how to prepare and cook them.

The youngsters in the programme hadn't a clue - I felt particularly sorry for the boy who chopped off and threw away the asparagus tips and was cruelly mocked by an unpleasant female cookery writer. I was in my thirties before I learned what asparagus looked like let alone how it tasted.

When I left home and moved into a sharred flat I lived off take-awa kebabs and tinned pies. Only one person out of my seven flatmates could cook, and he had spent his schooldays at boarding school.

That's why my husband, too, is a dab hand in the kitchen. A boarder from an early age, he made his own meals every weekend, learning from older pupils.

Nowadays children don't appear to have any cookery lessons. You never see them scurrying to school, as we did, with baskets and biscuit tins containing ingredients. It's all "food technology" whatever that is. They learn more about additives, allergies and e-Coli, than more useful skills such as how to make pizza.

Bizarrely, pre-school children seem to do more in the way of cookery than older pupils. Since she was old enough to hold a wooden spoon my daughter has brought home dozens of snacks from nursery - biscuits, cakes and buns. And at playgroup she was recently taught how to make bread, producing a lovely shaped loaf.

They also learn essential skills such as how to butter bread and make sandwiches. This should be carried on, particularly in secondary schools.

If all children were taught how to cook then they wouldn't end up like me.

Young, enthusiastic chefs who know their stuff, people like Jamie Oliver, should be brought in to show them.

Updated: 11:53 Monday, November 11, 2002