Yesterday I took super-publisher Charlotte Stockting of Hello! to meet super-farmer Jody Scheckter. I’ve known them both for about four years since the early days of Roast. Charlotte had come in for lunch and had liked it so much she asked her waitress if we could meet so that she could congratulate me. At the time we were being knocked about with very bad press, so a thumbs-up from a glamorous diner was a welcome tonic.

To people of my age and beyond, Jody will be familiar to you as a Formula 1 racing champion. Now he runs what is probably Britain’s most sophisticated farm. Laverstoke Park in Hampshire is spread over 2500 acres of organic and biodynamic land. In the half a dozen or so times I’ve had the pleasure of visiting there, he has developed Laverstoke from the country mansion he had originally acquired for his family to live on into a picture of what farming of the future could look like.

Laboratories bigger than my restaurant dissect and analyse soil conditions to make sure the grass, herbs and clovers he grows and which feed his lambs, cattle, pigs, boar, chickens and buffalo bring out an amazing series of flavours and with significant health benefits too.

He has some 80% of the UK’s buffalo population and is using the milk to make a stupendous mozzarella which we often serve at Roast. He’s also using it to make ice creams and the milk itself is now selling at Waitrose.

He always takes guests around the farm and its facilities with a great sense of pride and we were treated to a beautiful lunch in his family home. But he left a special treat till the very end when he showed us his collection of eleven racing cars including the Maclaren in which he nearly died in a famous accident and the Ferrari which won him his world title.

Maybe next time I go he’ll let me drive one around the farm. Or maybe not.