Sometimes I like to fantasise that I’m Jamie Oliver's mate.We’d lark about, dribbling unctuous creamy sauces over each other’s manly barbecued meats (my fantasies are always non-gender specific and non-sexual, by the way).

Oh, what a laugh we’d have, sharing a joke over a toasted marshamallow and a bottle of...

Wait a minute... who is THAT? Someone has clearly pipped me to the post: a random American called Christian. AKA DJ Barbecue. Or “bro”.

This bromance was revealed last Monday with the start of Jamie’s Comfort Food (Channel Four, Monday, 8pm). Yes, Jamie has a new cookbook out, sorry, TV show.

And, in the grand style of all lifestyle telly at the moment, especially primetime Channel Four (witness George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces) it is aspirational lifestyle porn.

Food programmes are especially attuned to making your life look squalid. In my experience, your average family feeding time involves a mixture of resentful drudgery, a bit of chitchat and emotional blackmail involving pudding, followed by muttered swearing at the washing up. Dinner chez Nigella, Nigel and Jamie is a more tranquil affair. Fresh flowers. Fairylights. Artfully placed chutneys. But Jamie is the don – he’s been a natural ever since he hopped on a moped and slid down that spiral bannister back in 1999 with the (misleadingly titled) Naked Chef.

Jamie’s Comfort Food takes the whole shebang outside, lumberjack shirts at the ready, so the barbecue bros can rustle up goodies such as (in the first episode) mustard-laced burgers in brioche and (this week) chicken tikka marsala. Grrrr.

As First World problems go, being bored with delicious gastropub food with your gorgeous family is right up there. How can we make it more… authentic, Channel Four seems to have asked, in the same way Kirstie Allsopp is always busy somewhere making upcycling look upper-middle class and George Clarke has a nice line in making life in a caravan look a bit Waitrose.

Let’s be honest: I’m bitter. Jamie is admirably classless (even when he is making mac’n’cheese with lobster) and his recipes and restaurants (including the one in George Street) have made my life a better place. I applied for a job with him once, on the basis that his company’s use of fonts is world-class. But, if I fed my child a pavlova containing half a kilo of sugar, you can bet your bottom dollar she would not behave like the adorable little cherub Buddy Oliver. I’d be peeling her off the ceiling while crying and begging her to go to bed. And because of that, I have finally accepted that Jamie and I are not the same, bro. Now, over on CBBC, Marrying Mum and Dad is in its third series. And if you thought Don’t Tell The Bride (in which half-witted blokes plan their beloved’s big day with hilariously cruel consequences) was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Obviously, this is a kids’ show, and, in the grand tradition of children’s telly, the little treasures call the shots.

So, Marrying Mum and Dad (CBBC, weekdays 9am and 4.30pm) harnesses the ghastliest imaginations of the nippers, throws some money and cameras at the situation and unleashes it at the world.

So far, the youngsters have devised madcap tribal big top, school-themed and vampire weddings, giving them the chance to dress their parents as, respectively, Pocahontas, Harry Potter and Count Duckula.

And, as horrifying as that sounds, you’ve never seen a happier collection of people in your life. While I was bracing myself for bridezilla strops, this bunch have a laugh and crack on with their hard-won moment of merriment, regardless of the fact they’re stood there in a trick-or-treat wig and Lycra. This, at least, is realistic evidence that parenthood is a process that strips you of your self-respect, taste and any notion of cool. And that is a club I can feel part of.

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