In 1979, broadcaster Derek Cooper persuaded BBC Radio 4 to let him make a series of six programmes called The Food Programme: a first on radio, linking politics and good food. The Food Programme is now a national institution and essential listening for all foodies — though ‘foodie’ is a word Derek loathed.

When radio presenter Sheila Dillon heard this programme in 1986, she knew immediately that working with Derek Cooper on it would be the perfect job. She applied for a position on Derek’s team and was hired as a reporter the next year. She became a senior reporter a year later. Now her voice can be heard at least twice a week in homes across the country, and her investigative work has won many awards, including the Glaxo Science Prize, the Caroline Walker Award and several prestigious Glenfiddich Awards, most recently for her documentary on the history of the American meat industry. She is also a patron of Oxford Gastronomic.

It is no wonder, then, that Sheila was asked to deliver the fourth annual Ken Hom lecture at Oxford Brookes University. Dressed in a sumptuous black evening gown equal to anything worn by the first television cook Fanny Cradock when performing with her ever-submissive husband Johnnie, Sheila delivered a superb and lively lecture entitled The Bollinger Bolsheviks verses The Foodies.

To set the scene, a member of the school’s lecture team, Richard Watson, took to the stage, too, though there was nothing submissive about Richard, who is in charge of the school’s restaurant kitchen. While Sheila spoke, Richard painstakingly prepared the many vegetables needed to make a traditional Spanish omelette, which was cooked and served 1950s-style for the audience to taste the moment the lecture was over.

Sheila began by pointing out that Britain is the only country in the world where a food revolution was kicked off by a socialist — the first of the ‘Bollinger Bolsheviks’, classical scholar, novelist and historian Raymond Postgate.

It was after the Second World War that Postgate began what he called a “campaign against cruelty to food”, which led to the publication of the first edition of The Good Food Guide in 1951. Using recommendations of like-minded people throughout the country, this guide began to encourage the catering industry to reform its ways, to give up Bisto and Bird’s custard powder and buy real ingredients to make good food, thereby encouraging farmers and food producers. It was Postgate’s belief that good food (and wine) should be available to everyone as good food was part of democracy — it was a doctrine that was to influence a whole generation of journalists.

Socialists Cyril Ray and Eddie Penning-Rowsell were the best wine writers of their day and Derek Cooper’s The Bad Food Guide, published in 1967, established him as the man who brought wit into the good-food-for-all battle, though he was as serious about the importance of food in a civilised society as Postgate.

Sheila explained that the early editions of The Good Food Guide showed that Postgate had tapped a rich vein as recommendations flooded in to be checked by other members of his Good Food Club.

Elizabeth David triggered our use of food as self expression. Her first books were published in the 1950s. Sheila believes they expanded her own food horizons and helped remove those little bottles of olive oil from the chemists’ shelves and place them instead in the grocer’s shop. Thanks to David, olive oil was one of the first ingredients to bring Mediterranean sunshine into our kitchens. Other ingredients soon followed — and other food writers and television chefs, beginning with Philip Harben, who in collaboration with Marguerite Patten brought What’s Cooking to the small screen in 1956. It was Philip who provided the first ‘live’ television moment when — having cracked an egg that turned out to be bad — he and the studio crew burst out into uncontrollable laughter.

By the end of the 1960s, we had Graham Kerr — the Galloping Gourmet, who made his show into sheer entertainment, by jumping over chairs, cooking in a suit of armour and setting fire to things.

Sheila concluded by highlighting contributions made by Madhur Jaffrey, Jamie Oliver, Rick Stein and other talented celebrity chefs who attempt to make the world a better place, by campaigning for real food, produced in conditions that give the animals we eat a better life too. So, campaigns for good food, which began after the Second World War, continue. Jamie’s Food For Life is one of the most influential as more than 4,000 schools are enrolled in this programme and more than 300,000 children are eating FFL-accredited meals. Unfortunately, the lottery funding that made this all possible runs out at the end of the year, as Sheila reminded us.