Katy Hayes: A totaleclipse of the arteries

We visit the Thursday market in ­Dungarvan, Co Waterford, Flynn’s home town and the location of his restaurant, the Tannery. Here he sets up an outdoor stove and cooks up a big pot of mash, flavouring it with bacon, kale and mustard, and lacing it with butter and cream. This is offered to the populace, who munch happily and mumble affirmations, though one woman darkly mutters: “It’s delicious, but you’d have to be careful putting so much butter and cream in, so ... only now and again.” This wise woman of the market has put her finger on the problem with mashed potato: to make it edible, you have to saturate it with fat and render it a coronary risk.

Flynn delivers most of his material to an off-screen presence, who occasionally asks questions. This person is eventually revealed as someone called Rory, but it feels awkward that we never see him. Moving inside to his lovely homely kitchen, Flynn prepares a potato and chorizo gratin. Having smothered the garlic with lashings of salt, he creams it with that flicky-wrist movement of the professional chef, which never fails to impress the likes of me. Doing this he declares: “I love the gadgets. I love the ...” Offscreen, Rory drops the word “salt” into the pause. This is innovative culinary TV; a stinging critique of the cooking is built into the narrative of the programme.

After all the butter, cream and salt, I am lolling on the sofa and my arteries are beginning to seize up, though, admittedly, I am also starting to drool a little.

Then, pouring copious amounts of cream into the gratin, Flynn declares: “I need all the help I can get in the stretchy-pants department.” Once a line like this has been said, it can easily be unsaid; the editor can chop it out in the editing process. Yet once a line like this has been heard, it stays indelibly in the mind. While Flynn is a likable television presence, he clearly doesn’t see himself as a smouldering kitchen god.

The next boulder he attempts to roll up the hill is the apple. Again we get some outdoor cooking in an orchard, and some back story about Ireland’s relationship with this fruit. Returning to the kitchen, a simple apple tart is made with puff pastry. “The secret here is to use more icing sugar than you think you need,” says Flynn, piling it on. The tart bubbles away in the oven in pools of sugary juice. Flynn then makes a sauce of maple syrup, cream, pecans and more sugar. Then sugar is put on the sugar. He doesn’t specify what type of apple he is using, but it looks like a sweet apple. My fingers and toes are beginning to zing in a sympathetic diabetic twitch.

Flynn does a nifty job with the pork roast, which emerges from the oven looking perfect. He gives expert advice on crackling, and excellent pointers on maintaining moisture in the joint. The gravy he makes is lean, fat-free and looks gorgeous. However, the roast potatoes are lathered with goose fat and butter, and there is butter on the cabbage, too. The potatoes are scattered with polenta, which is putting starch on the starch.

With the arteries of my imagination clogged and experiencing a phantom sugar rush, I feel the need to turn to Health of the Nation. Appropriately, last week’s programme analysed diabetes and coeliac disease, both diet-related conditions.

“Type 2 diabetes is the epidemic of the 21st century,” says Dr Anna Clarke of the Diabetes Federation of Ireland as she hooks up with a Health of the Nation mobile clinic in Limerick.

The second series is fronted by Mark Hamilton, a Manchester-based A&E doctor, and Nina Byrnes, a Dublin GP, who are joined by Paula Mee, a dietician. The two presenters and their nutritionist are slim and super-healthy-looking; you can’t imagine they’ve ever committed a single sin of gluttony in their lives. The programme itself, meanwhile, presents basic information about the medical conditions under consideration, but its dramatic value lies in the interface between the struggling patients and the health professionals.

Nineteen-year-old Andrew Tierney is both asthmatic and obese, a terrible combination. He weighs 28 stone and works as a trainee chef. This boy needs help, and the medicine man is going to give it to him. After the big lad manages to lose two stone, a gentle low voice trapped inside him says: “I used to think I wasn’t good enough for anything” — a moving plea about the crippling relationship between food desire and self-esteem.

Derek Farrell is a taxi driver with a body mass index of 37, which makes him clinically obese. Driving a taxi involves long tiring hours, and zero exercise. Derek gets a steely look at the first consultation, and hits the park soon afterwards for long jogs. He tackles his diet, lays off the booze and finds his inner hero. After losing more than two stone, he looks great. Once he achieves his target weight, though, he intends to “buy a six-pack and head to Dollymount Strand” — and therein lies an image of another boulder rolling back down a hill.

Health programmes are always in danger of seeming patronising. This one isn’t, and the makers have a keen instinct for the telling detail. None of them needs any help in the stretchy-pants department, either. And still I wonder, after the cameras stop rolling, do they relax by lolling on their sofas watching Flynn’s cookery show, indulging a forbidden fantasy life of wanton food lust?