Imagine the scene had Cooking With The Stars unveiled its line-up and Carol Vorderman was up against Rachel Riley? TV gold. Rachel doesn’t feature, but other half Pasha does

FOR those of us of a certain vintage (old), a Saturday night wasn’t one worth talking about without a fight. I’m not talking about Elton John’s wholehearted approval, indeed encouragement, for a bit of a dust-up at the weekend, or Rod Hull and Emu getting to grips with Michael Parkinson. No, I’m talking about female fisticuffs.

Yes, an episode of Dynasty was nothing without Alexis Colby and Krystle Carrington — AKA Joan Collins and Linda Evans (or stunt people who looked nothing like them) — knocking seven shades of shoulder pads out of each other.

What a missed opportunity, then, albeit narrowly scraping the goalpost, as Cooking With The Stars returned to ITV this week with another TV dynasty at the fore.

One of the eight ‘celebrities’ signed up this time around is Carol Vorderman.

“For 26 years I was at the beck and call of the Countdown clock, so I’m pretty good on timing,” she told us.

Unfortunately — well, for her, certainly — Channel 4 called time on her numbers-and-letters fun back in 2008, meaning that for 16 years she has fumed quietly while Rachel Riley sauntered in on teetering heels to take over.

I don’t know if the pair have met, I’m sure they have, but can you imagine the scene if Cooking With The Stars unveiled the lineup and Carol was up against Rachel? TV gold.

They didn’t, but it was close, as Rachel’s other half, Pasha Kovalev, joined Carol for week one, with the latter part of the counting dynasty restricted to video footage.

Carol was up against someone else with a more famous other half, Abbey Clancy. Or as host Emma Willis said, “the greatest Abbey since Westminster against the greatest Carol since Ding Dong Merrily On High”. This could well have been the highlight of the show.

The idea is that the eight celebrity contestants are teamed up with well-known chefs, with Peter Crouch’s missus and Carol joined by Pasha and a man off the internet who I didn’t know.

Oh, and Katherine Ryan is there too, mainly to compete next week but also to sit and lob sarky remarks to bring ‘humour’ to the proceedings.

Then again, she’ll be joined by Christopher Biggins, Ellie Simmonds and Linford Christie, so we feel her pain.

This is a shameless attempt to latch on to the Olympics — well, by the latter two at least, unless I’m mistaken and Biggins bagged a BMX bronze in Beijing.

This week’s theme was ultimate dinner party dishes, Clancy given fancy steak and chips to cook by her celeb chef Michael Caines.

“It may seem simple but there’s nowhere to hide,” he said, presumably about the dish and not cruelly about Abbey’s other half.

Meanwhile, Carol, a wellknown fitness fanatic, may have been on the wrong show.

“I have one meal a day and for a snack I literally have a packet of sprouts,” she said, which could explain her figure and why she finds it hard to keep friends.

Carol was tasked with cooking a salmon coulibiac. Eager Countdown fans will have noticed that coulibiac comprises nine letters and they will also have spotted that if your dish takes 30 minutes to cook and you have 20 minutes remaining, you have a conundrum.

The result was a not-cooked salmon coulibiac, the ravenous judges desperately scouring the studio for a spare packet of sprouts while we viewers prayed that Pasha would lose to the ‘content creator.’

His name was Harry Pinero, and he seemed like a nice chap, paired with the world’s hairiest chef, Michael O’hare, of Great British Menu and the like (imagine the offspring of Peter Stringfellow and Brock the Badger and you’ll know who I mean).

“I’m known for food that’s energetic and avant garde,” he told us as he tasked Harry to create a duck dish using a saucepan, blowtorch and a hairdryer.

Okay, we know you have luscious locks but this is ridiculous.

Pasha proudly announced he is a vegan and he made tandoori-spiced cauliflower. It wasn’t his natural go-to, but chef April Jackson said: “I trust you, babes, be at one with the spices.” That’s the sort of chat that could get you kicked out of a dancing show.

Another one is “bangin’”, which Rosemary Shrager used to much hilarity, before the mammy of the judges let herself down by saying she was “up with the kids”.

But Pasha, naturally, waltzed past Harry, meaning there would be no showdown. For now.

This nonsense continues for a few more weeks, by which time there won’t be a fish left in the Mediterranean if Marcus Wareing has his way.

The one-time evil villain of Masterchef has become as soft and cuddly as his beard since Carol was ousted for Rachel, and he was off to Mallorca for a new series on Food Network this week.

We were in Palma — well, occasionally, as we spent most of the time in a kitchen that commanded wonderful views of the mountainside but could well have been a green screen — and Marcus was in Hull.

Oysters, John Dory, squid and the ratfish were wolfed down before we were taken back into the kitchen to make some hake.

Lots of sizzling and shaking and then everything disappeared. You were almost waiting for Matthew Kelly’s booming voice to arrive, as the mists parted, to announce: “Tonight, Marcus, could you give fish a break and have a pastie bap or a tandoori-spiced cauliflower?”

‘Pasha, naturally, waltzed past Harry, meaning no showdown. Well, for now’