Keith Floyd is not just passionate about creating food, he also loves talking about it. ALEX KASRIEL speaks to him before his appearance in Potters Bar.

He may be a famous TV personality, but Keith Floyd was not too aloof to spend hours talking to fans at the opening night of his new tour in Gloucestershire without even pausing to drink from the bottle of wine he was given.

"I'm absolutely shattered," he said the next morning. "It should be about one-and-a-half hours with an interval in the middle. It went on for four hours, because the audience wouldn't let me go home. They just wanted more. It was marvellous. It was absolutely terrific. I got back to Oxfordshire at two in the morning."

Which is why it is unsurprising that he allows this interview, conducted the following day, to overrun massively. It is clear that Floyd, famous for quaffing wine as he cooks on TV, is very much at home talking to anyone who will listen.

"The drinking on TV was a contrived artifice," he admitted. "You have got to do something while you're frying onions, or something like that which is boring, so I thought, I'll just have a quick slurp'." "Everyone thinks I'm permanently pissed. Of course, I can't be when I'm actually working, and I do work really quite hard."

It just so happens that his job is a particularly attractive one, and, amazingly, one which he did not try too hard to get. He has fronted many TV cookery shows in which he travels the world sampling delicacies. Famously, in Floyd Uncorked, he travelled the vineyards of France, sampling the wine.

"Shouldn't we wake up each morning thinking, life is great?" he said of his enviable position.

"We have got two things in common as people. We love to sit around the table with plates covered in food, eating, talking, telling tall stories, and we all like to go to bed with our loved partner."

But he does not claim that his shows, and others like them, can change lives. "There are lots of programmes about cooking, DIY and gardening. It strikes me, and I say this in the most amicable way, it hasn't improved gardens, it hasn't improved cookery and it hasn't improved our houses.

The story goes that Floyd was working in his Britsol bistro when he was approached by a TV producer which led to his first show, Floyd on Fish. "I don't have any ambition. If a door in front of me opens, I'm curious enough to walk inside. I have no desire to be famous."

Floyd now lives in Oxfordshire and Avignon, France, with his fourth wife Tess whom he met 11 years ago on a TV set. She was the food stylist. He asked her out for lunch and she said yes.

"My wife and I entertain a great deal both in England and in France. It's extraordinary the number of our friends and business associates we have, and none of them can cook. They get ready cooked meals from Sainsbury's. They sit there with their meal placed happily on their lap, and watch cookery programmes.

"It's not a science, it's not an art. It does take up time. It involves a great deal of love and passion. We have to get on and do it."

The 62-year-old Floyd credits his cooking skills to his mother, Wyn. Growing up in Somerset in the 1950s during rationing meant his family grew a lot of their own vegetables in their garden. His grandfather traded his skills as a shoe repairer for clotted cream and pheasants.

And Floyd and his brother were sent off to gather blackberries, elderberries and mushrooms. "That is how it was. It was idyllic," he said.

Listening to Floyd speak about food is testament to a genuine love. It is a subject which he will talk about until you stop him.

His working class family thought he was a little dim, but he proved them wrong by getting a scholarship to the local public school, which is how he got his cut-glass accent.

He left school at 17 and went to work at the Bristol Evening Post, where he said he was intimidated by the likes of Tom Stoppard, a fellow hack. But it did give him the skills to write the cookery books which made his name.

After watching the Michael Caine film Zulu, Floyd decided to join the army. He says the reality was a lot more boring. But he became a second lieutenant in the Third Royal Tank Regiment, then stationed in Germany. And he brought a little bit of fine cooking to the army, persuading the mess cook to experiment with various kinds of recipes and produce gigot d'agneau romarin' rather than roast lamb and two veg.

After leaving the Army he worked in London and France as a barman, plongeur, vegetable peeler and many other kitchen duties. By 1971 Keith Floyd owned three restaurants in Bristol. Eventually he sold up, bought a boat called Flirty, and spent two years with friends cruising the Mediterranean.

Floyd's zest for life has kept him in front of the cameras for more than 20 years. Talking about the upcoming live shows, he said: "I honestly have to say, I really enjoy doing it. It's terrifying in the sense that there's you and members of the human race. No producers, no music, no digital wizardry I just have to stand up there and do it."

  • Keith Floyd is in Floyd Uncorked: the life of a Bon Viveur, at the Wyllyotts Centre, Darkes Lane, Potters Bar, on October 30, at 7.30pm. Audiences are invited to the pre-show carvery, where Floyd will personally greet them with a glass of wine, at 6pm. Tickets are £13 (£12 concessions) for the show and £10 for the carvery. Call the box office on 01707 645005.