It will be recounted how the chirpy television chef conceived the hubristic idea that if he taught six people in one town how to cook proper-like, then they would pass on their new-found skills to all their friends and relations, who in turn would convey culinary skills to their friends and relations and, before you know it, the entire local population would be subsisting on steamed broccoli and stuffed peppers.

Chips, pizza and kebabs would be things of the past. As would most common health problems. Doctors would be forced to shut up surgery and move on, to some town as yet untouched by Jamie Oliver's crusading zeal.

In outline, of course, this describes the current Channel 4 series Jamie's Ministry of Food, for which Rotherham was selected as the culinary desert to be brought to life by the erstwhile Naked Chef.

And in Rotherham they hate him for it, or at least they hate the patronising way in which a southern TV company is branding the town as a dysfunctional dump where the population lives on takeaway food.

But will Jamie Oliver's project achieve its desired results? Time will tell, but I will eat my hat if it does (having first braised it with a little garlic and tarragon, of course).

Television loves to think it can charge around changing and improving people's lives. But can it really? The first chapter of the book that will one day be written on the subject will probably be set in the picturesque Calderdale village of Luddenden.

It will, of course, deal with the so-called "Baht meat week" staged by the ITV programme World in Action, as long ago as 1975.

This was a Jamie Oliver-type project more than 30 years ahead of its time. The idea was to persuade the stubbornly carniverous people of Luddenden that they could live perfectly acceptably without meat, in the hope that when the TV cameras had departed they would all forswear bacon, sausages, beef and lamb chops for good.

It didn't happen, of course. I dare say that there are a fair number of vegetarians in Luddenden nowadays because (a) vegetarianism has become more common generally and (b) because, well, like Hebden Bridge, Luddenden is the sort of place that veggies like to live in if they can.

But some long ago, dimly remembered television programme had no influence on the outcome. By the same token, Jamie's Ministry of Food will be remembered in Rotherham only as a patronising oddity. And maybe television will finally give up on the idea that it can act as a missionary, making fundamental changes to people's lives.

And heaven knows what all those gardens and front rooms that were given Ground Force and Changing Rooms makeovers look like now…