I’ve got into a bad and frankly unsustainable habit of staying up until very late, and getting up a bit too early. Where will it all lead? Hallucinations, slurred speech and colour blindness, probably. Anyway, at about 12.30am, just as the evening was getting going, a crowd of youths decided to congregate outside our small block of flats – for the second night running – and, as the modern parlance goes, “hang out”. How dare they, you might think, sarcastically. Thing is, one of them was going into great and noisy detail about various run-ins he’d had with the police, and, whether these altercations were fiction or fact, the sound effects that accompanied the tales were all too real, and began to disturb the citizens of my street. “SHUUUUUT UUUUUP” I heard from a building next door, which prompted the yout’ to laugh uproariously and, er, carry on. After a quick consultation with the internet, I rang Wandsworth Council’s Noise Line, a rare helping hand from a council which prides itself on charging the lowest council tax in the country, and which also prides itself in offering a skeleton range of services in return. I’m surprised the street lights still work, honestly. Anyway, this Noise Line service stops at 2am – like all noise does, obviously – so I got in there just after 1am to point out that some yout’ were making my fellow citizens lives a living hell. As she took my details, Jenny called me in from the next room. “Rhodri, quick.” “What is it?” “I think you should see this.” I finished the call, and walked in. Jenny was watching a channel called Wine TV, and, more specifically, a French cookery show called Le Bretron Gourmand, presented by some jolly chap called Yvan Cadiou and, crucially, translated and dubbed into English. Here’s a 45-second clip of what I saw when I walked in.

By this point I was already transfixed. A relatively serious show about the cuisine of north-western France, they had chosen to overdub a frighteningly literal, completely unsychronised and hilariously deadpan translation of the conversation between the two presenters, with every interjection like “yes”, “right” and “ok” meticulously preserved. The conversation sounds as if the actors doing the overdubbing (although I hesitate to call them actors, maybe accountants is nearer the mark) are distracted by colourful fireworks on the horizon, while they recorded their fantastic exchanges. “You live in a paradise.” “Absolutely, if paradise exists, it is here.” “I believe all this adds to your creativity.” “It’s true.” I looked at Jenny. “This is stunning,” I said, pressing the record button on the Sky+ box. (Had to get that in, thanks Rupert.) The next sequence in the programme – where the two of them visit the local market and buy mushrooms and crabs for dinner – quickly led me down the path towards hysteria, but it was the creation of the dish itself that had me punching the floor with breathless joy, and tears rolling down my face in sheer delight. So, for your delectation, a 7m 30s instruction on How To Prepare An Entrée Of “Fine Celery And Crabs”. I’ve watched this now maybe a dozen times, and each time it just keeps on giving.

I promise you, I’m not laughing at foreigners who can’t speak English very well. How could I? I embrace such people. Many of them form part of my delightful Tooting community. It’s just the wonderful delivery. Oh, I’ve got so many favourite bits. “You see, now. peeled celery. I’ll show you how to slice it in the tinest possible manner, it is important to be tiny to fry them easily.” “You have to watch out all the time not to let the celery take on too much moist so that to become crispy.” Beautiful. But the piece de resistance surely has to be the vinagrette. “It is made on the base of citric juice… olive oil… and citric juice.” This finished me off. At that precise moment – at around 1.30am – my phone rang with a shrill synthy noise, interrupting my helpless laughter. Wandsworth Council. “I understand you’re having some problems with noise,” said a woman. I looked out of the window. “Ah, not any more, it seems that they’ve gone.” “Oh good,” she said. “Bye, then.” “Bye.”

You will gather from the above that my new blog for the Radio Times has been put back another 6 weeks.