TV Dinners

This episode features amateur chefs Jon Ashton and Marguerite Vincent. Jon, 24, is a chirpy Liverpudlian who spends his spare time trying out dishes on friends and family alike. But now, he and girlfriend Mary are off to travel the world and he's cooking a farewell barbie for 30 from his holiday caravan on the Wirral. Meanwhile, in Surrey, Marguerite Vincent's culinary expertise is in demand once again. As social secretary of her local Conservative club, Marguerite has issued a three-line whip to local ward members for a fund-raising evening to swell party coffers. In her Richmond flat, Marguerite is "queen of the kitchen" according to husband, Edward, who keeps a low profile while the preparations get under way. Hugh, sensibly, keeps to the sidelines too, as Marguerite proficiently prepares a dazzling array of food.

Hugh meets Bob Wootton and his wife Liz whose obsession with all things fungal reaches a climax as they plan to combine mushrooms in every course at a dinner party for colleagues. Plus, he takes the bull by the horns at a tapas party hosted by Deborah Chaplain in Lancashire. Bob's passion for modern design is matched only by his passion for hunting for wild mushrooms. Bob is now planning to subject six dinner guests to another mushroom bonanza, a four-course fungal feast with each dish featuring at least one mushroom variety. Deborah is another party-giver who does nothing by halves. When she puts on a "beat the holiday blues" party for her friends in Rawtenstall, near Manchester, she goes to great lengths to make the experience entirely authentic. This time it's "Viva Espana" - and that means Spanish food, Spanish clothes and even Spanish hairstyles.

Rose Billaud left Borneo to marry a French oil executive. Rose invites her Chinese family and their English spouses to share in a sumptuous, eight-course feast at her home on Harrow on the Hill. For Southampton, schoolteacher Holly Waghorn and her ex-naval husband John there are few more important dates than October 21st. Each year they press gang 12 of their friends to help them celebrate Britain's most famous sea battle in which Nelson defeated the French at Trafalgar. For John, the courage and patriotism displayed by the sailors is paramount and feels that all should celebrate this day.

Hugh visits two very different clubs: an elderly slimming club in Chichester and a dining club in the ornate surroundings of Hamden House in Buckinghamshire. When you get to the age of 80, you might think that losing weight was not particularly important. But for Marion Postma - or Pozzi to her friends - the weekly meetings of her informal slimming club have become a ritual not to be missed; a ritual that has been going on for 30 years. For Pozzi, it's the little indulgences that make life worthwhile and once in a while, the Monday night weigh-in becomes a waistband-expanding blow-out. When you're the caretaker of a stately home, one of the perks of the job is getting to use the big house occasionally. So when Jonathan Hutchinson and his friends set up a gentleman's luncheon club, where better to hold the lunches than in the Big House? For the eight men, what started out as a casual get-together to watch the horse-racing has now become a formal gathering called "The Other Club". With their wives safely out of the way the members meet half a dozen times a year to indulge in good hearty food and fine wines.

Hugh joins baby Indie Mo's Welcome to the World party, where a very unusual ingredient is on the menu - a mother's placenta. Ninteen-year-old Rosie and her partner Lee have just had a little boy - Indie Mo - and to celebrate his birth, his grandmother Mary is throwing a Welcome to the World Party as an alternative Heather Matuozzo is a 38-year-old divorced single mum from Solihull. For 12 years she lived in Sorrento with her Italian husband, where she found herself very homesick and missing the curries of Birmingham. Thanks to the food parcels from her two loyal school chums, she was able to ease the homesickness by introducing the familiar tastes of home to traditional Italian fare. Now back in the Midlands, Heather serves up some of these hybrid dishes to her school friends for their annual reunion - but not before she has welcomed them with their old school favourites: cold baked bean, beetroot and crisp sandwiches and a quick swig of barley wine.

Hugh heads into the Welsh countryside and explores the secrets of a truly perfectly balanced meal. Hilary Waterhouse is a Welsh countrywoman born and bred. She strongly believes in living off the land wherever possible and loves to go out shooting rabbits, pigeon and other game - "It's an honest way of collecting your food," she says. Last year she and her husband had a fire which could have caused colossal damage if not for the help of her farming neighbours. She intends to cook them a thank you meal using meat she has hunted and butchered herself. Brought up in Halifax, West Yorkshire, Shaila Parthasarathi took the food and culture of her Indian background for granted. Now, as a busy career woman, she's rediscovered the ancient science of Ayurveda, the all-embracing Indian philosophy which teaches that the secret of health and happiness is found in the harmonisation of mind, body and spirit. The occasion is the Indian rice eating ceremony known as Bhaat which celebrates a baby's progression from milk to solid food. The star of the show is Shaila's four-month-old nephew Alex and whilst he is tucking in to a meal of ground rice mixed with expressed milk, the rest of the family enjoy a stunning array of fish and vegetable dishes.

Holding a dinner party for 60 in your back garden requires military precision, but when you are a police sergeant and a member of the Territorial Army, nothing fazes you. When Paul Francey entertains, it's never on a small scale and nothing is too much trouble. A marquee which covers the entire back garden of his East Barnet home, two hundred pieces of crockery and several hundred glasses is the norm. With most of the guests members of the police force, Territorial Army or regular army, you would have thought the food would be hearty and sustaining, but Paul's cooking is more stylish than you'd find in most mess halls. Hugh's next visit is to Marina Schofield. "We've never celebrated his birthday before and he's going to be 70 so I wanted to mark the occasion". Marina has spent months organising a surprise birthday party for her father, Andrew and, as part of a large and close-knit Italian/Greek London family, keeping it a secret has not been easy. With all the guests invited, Marina concentrates on her lavish menu of more than 20 Italian and Greek dishes to feed over 30 hungry family and friends.

Hugh heads west to Llansteffan in Wales for a wintery celebration and to Cheshire where a wedding anniversary is cause for a feast with a Highland flavour. Not many people rejoice at the start of Winter, but for artist Ozi Osmond and his wife Hilary, it's a time to celebrate - and how better than with the Celtic Feast of Samhain. Traditionally held on November 1st, Samhain is mystical time, when spirits are abroad, strange happenings occur and prophesies come true. Described by his wife as "the original hunter-gatherer", nothing short of fresh ingredients is good enough for Ozi, even if it means an early morning trip to the beach with Hilary to collect the main ingredients of his first course. Hugh's next culinary visit takes him to Cheshire, where June Ainsworth, a self proclaimed Hyacinth Bucket is planning another social foray to celebrate her 3rd wedding anniversary. Whilst most of us are catching up on our beauty sleep, June spends the wee small hours planning her next dinner party. Having recently married for the second time June has launched herself into a social whirl of entertaining in her neat Cheshire home and in the search for perfection, nothing is left to chance.

Hugh joins Michael Dudgeon and his mother Mary as Michael prepares a celebratory dinner, using ingredients to be found on his 4,000 acre estate in the Highlands. The West Essex Gourmet Club offer Hugh a taste of the 70s and 80s as the men don the aprons and look to their favourite decades to provide some dinner party delights. Michael Dugeon runs a 4,000 acre family estate in Sutherland, just 30 miles south of John O'Groats in the Highlands of Scotland. He not only hunts and butchers his own deer, fishes from trout in his own pool and grows his own vegetables, he's also an accomplished cook. Michael proudly prepares a formal dinner for a select group of his mother's oldest friends. Meanwhile the West Essex Gourmet Club is preparing to cook up some nostalgic delights from their book of menus, which translates like a history book of the suburban dinner party. In 1963, Ron and Pam Heath and four friends formed the Gourmet Club and have held regular dinner parties at each others houses ever since, with the men unusually stepping into the kitchen. This meal will be the Gourmets' 35th anniversary and Ron plans to cook some of the dishes they have enjoyed over the decades.

Brenlen Jinkens invites Hugh to an exotic apartment warming celebration with lively - literally - flavours from his native New Orleans. "I recommend it to any girl to find a man who can cook," says the contented girlfriend of international management consultant Brenlen Jinkens. Brenlen has just moved in to a stunning new Thameside loft apartment and he has invited his jet set pals to a cool Creole brunch to celebrate. Moving on to sleepy Cambridgeshire Hugh meets Leah Scott, the youngest TV Dinners chef to be featured, who is planning a sophisticated sleepover. Leah has always enjoyed helping her mum in the kitchen, and now cooks for the family three times a week. But it's her best friends from school that will enjoy the fruits of her labour this time. Hugh is put through his paces as never before as the teenager bosses him around in the kitchen, before finally barring him from entry to the "girls-only" event.

Hugh joins amateur cook Gerry Mansfield as he tackles the prospect of making a Five Nations' themed curry for his local rugby team in Kent. Gerry and his teammates turn out for a game of rugby every Sunday morning and always end up at the local curry house. This time however, Gerry's inviting the veterans to his own home for a curry ambitiously themed around the Five Nations Tournament. Liz Kabbara met the dashing Abed Kabbara from Lebanon while she was teaching English in Ghana. Twenty-six years of experience later, she is now an accomplished Lebanese cook. Liz is preparing a welcome home meal for Abed who has just returned from a trip to the Lebanon.

The amateur cooks sharing their culinary skills with Hugh are ex-reggae drummer and strict vegetarian Matthew Fraser, and Staff Nurse Bobby Gangar who is bringing a taste of the West Indies to Hampstead. Fifteen years on the road with his band and enough junk food to fill several supermarkets made Mat Fraser desperate for some healthy living. He now lives with partner Patou Foult and they both accept that healthy living demands dedication and discipline. They keep fit through the high-kicking martial art of Chio Kwang Do and are strict vegetarians preferring to eat only fresh and organic foods. Hugh heads to Hampstead in north London to meet Staff Nurse Bobby Gangar as he prepares to help his friends unwind and bring a bit of West Indian sunshine to his home. Famous for his flamboyant events, party animal Bobby throws himself wholeheartedly into the role of host, and after customising his house with the colours and sounds of the Caribbean, he sets about cooking up a selection of tasty dishes to complement the theme.

Hugh joins Colin Beattie and his partner Duncan Sutherland from Edinburgh for more culinary delights. Colin and Duncan have always enjoyed the good life, but to celebrate Duncan's early retirement, something rather special is called for. A real perfectionist, Colin demands that his food doesn't just taste fantastic, it has to look amazing too. And as an avid collector of silverware, he likes nothing better than an excuse to show it off. A group of their closest friends are invited to the all-male event and settle down for an evening of indulgence. Feeding a family of seven makes a huge demand on your time, ingenuity and enthusiasm, but Lena Warboys not only loves to cook traditional English food for her large family, she also loves to experiment with new ideas. So far Lena's catered for all of her children's weddings and her grandchildren's christenings. Now it's the turn of her ninth grandchild, Perry, who is christened in a beautiful 800-year-old church in Shepperton, Surrey. After the ceremony, family and friends retire to the Hampton Social Club for a gargantuan feast.

A feast of continental cuisine is lined up for the final episode of TV Dinners with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Hugh joins passionate amateur cook Nicky Samengo-Turner as he prepares some mouth-watering traditional Italian dishes for a birthday feast. Third generation Italian Nicky Samengo-Turner likes nothing better than getting into the kitchen and preparing a lavish Italian feast, and he doesn't mind whose kitchen it is. Four years ago Nicky cooked his friend Amanda Forrest an Italian birthday spread and it has now become an annual tradition. Amanda and her husband live in a beautiful house near Oundle and have invited friends to a birthday Sunday lunch, to be completely prepared by Nicky. Every Sunday is open house at music teacher Howard Morgan's Blackpool flat. When his mother was alive, Howard used to cook enough food on Sunday to last her all week. When she died, he couldn't get out of the habit and now his wide collection of friends are the beneficiaries of his toil. For them, Howard's Sundays are very special, a time in their week when they can indulge in good company and delicious, if eccentric, food. Howard gets his inspiration from music, films and travel and this Sunday the theme is Moroccan.