Until last week Antony Worrall Thompson was solely a man of food. He had nifty ways with Raspberry Fool. He could show you how to knock up a Shepherd's Pie. He believed in shop-bought custard and stock cubes. Then, last Tuesday, he turned up on the platform at the Conservative Party Conference in Bournemouth giving William Hague the backing of his substantial celebrity - along with Jim Davidson, Mike Yarwood and Dana. Instantly, Antony Worrall Thompson became a man of politics.

Now, as a man of politics, he must have policies. Here he is, then, on fox hunting: 'I think it's awful the way foxes are finally killed but the hunt is still the only way to get the animals out of the ground. So, once they've got them out of the ground, then they should shoot the poor things.'As definitions of caring Conservatism go, they don't get much better than that: keep fox hunting. Just make sure the fox is killed nicely.

So how do you get the fox away from the baying hounds? He looks pensive for a moment. 'It's a difficult one, isn't it,' he says. 'You're never going to please everyone, are you?' We are sitting in the carefully tended back garden of his five-acre estate in Oxfordshire, an inherited property made beautiful on the proceeds of his various successful restaurant businesses. Around us a BBC crew are setting up the next shot for the Food and Drink show of which, for the past two series, Worrall Thompson, 49, has been main presenter and which is now recorded here at his home, hard by the Thames. He lights a cigarette - one of many - and points away towards the fields out front of the house where his three dozen chickens are penned. 'Personally I catch the foxes over there and then release them in woods 20 miles away.' But it wouldn't work if everybody did that would it, because people would come and release their foxes by your fields? He agrees. That wouldn't work either. Tricky business, this politics. No matter. He's still keen to be involved. 'I would like to be a politician some day,' he announces. What? An MP? Really? He nods. There has only just been a selection process for a new MP in his local constituency of Henley, currently occupied by Michael Heseltine who is stepping down. The local Conservative Party chose Boris Johnson, editor of the Spectator , to succeed him. 'In five years time I might have gone for it,' Worrall Thompson says, 'But Heseltine resigned too early for me. I'm not ready just yet.'

The prospect of Antony Worrall Thompson MP seems at first absurd. He has a cosy, soft, even huggsy persona which is reflected perfectly in the kind of modern comfort food he now cooks on screen; the fishcakes and stews and roasts. He does not seem at all suited to the flinty cut and thrust of political life. Then again perhaps the world of television chefdom has provided him with the ideal training. Last month, during a interview, Delia Smith laid into Worrall Thompson. She called him 'dreadful, just repulsive' and described Food and Drink as 'the most disgusting thing on television'. He hit back, calling her 'the coldest woman on television'.

'I also called her the Volvo of cooking which I meant as a term of endearment.' He shrugs. 'I just meant she was safe but obviously she thought I meant she was boring. But she does make lousy scrambled eggs. They're horrible and runny.'

And what about Gordon Ramsay, who came to Delia's defence, announcing that he always gives her books to his wife as Christmas presents? 'Ramsay and I have always had a spat,' Worrall Thompson says. 'The sort of food he cooks is outmoded, outdated and not what people want any more. It's destined to sit next to the dinosaurs in the Natural History Museum.' The honourable member for Henley smiles. He may want the fox dispatched humanely but he's clearly more than happy to see Mr Gordon Ramsay ripped limb from metaphorical limb.

For all his political ambitions the TV chef is undoubtedly happiest talking about food. Last week Tim Yeo, Shadow Agriculture Minister, announced that he would appoint him as an adviser on organic food if the Conservatives win the next election. Worrall Thompson is definitely up for the job. 'I want to get the message across that food is an important part of people's lives,' he says. 'Nobody's working out what's wrong with our food production. I mean, why in the age of more sprays and pesticides are we suffering from more allergies? Our immune systems are shot to hell and organic food can change that.'

He practises what he preaches: as well as the chickens, he keeps pigs, two Middle Whites called Lunch and Dinner, from which he hopes to breed. He uses their manure to fertilise a large organic vegetable garden which supplies both of his London restaurants and a nearby pub that he has recently taken over. At weekends he and his wife Jay run a stall in a farmer's market at Henley selling organic chutneys and eggs. He is, in short, a big believer in the organic food movement. Unfortunately it turns out that he's not such a big believer in the Conservatives' policy on food. 'Tim Yeo said we should push ahead with GM testing in this country. Well, I'm against that. This country is too small. If we get it wrong then we've ruined nature for life and you can't go back.'

So why give his support to the Tory party if he doesn't agree with them? 'I want to change them. I believe they can be changed.' OK, then, he doesn't see eye to eye with them on food policy. And, I suggest, while we're at it, he can't really agree with their stance on single mothers, can he? After all, now into his third marriage, he's created a few of those himself. He has two teenage sons living in Australia by one former wife, whom he supports, and another child by a previous relationship whom he does not see. (He now has two more children by Jay, Toby-Jack, five and Billie-Lara, three.) 'No,' he says, 'I don't agree with that. But then I'm not going to agree with any government on every policy, am I?'

What about Ann Widdecombe's stance on cannabis? Have you, Mr Worrall Thompson, ever been stoned? 'No.' What, you've never smoked dope? 'Oh yeah, I've smoked dope. It just made my legs go to sleep. All right, no, I didn't agree with Widdecombe on that. Yes, we must get tough on law and order. We all want that but the police haven't got time to go chasing after every cannabis user.'

We move on. Asylum seekers? 'The majority of the people in this country don't want us to be a dumping ground for every foreign national,' he says. 'Yes, they want the deserving ones to get in but not every chancer.' Ah, progress. That sounds like the voice of Toryism. 'But I don't agree with the idea of penning them all up in compounds.' Oh dear. And we were so close to what political pundits call consensus.

On taxation Worrall Thompson has a whole raft of policies. He would like to see VAT raised to 21 per cent and direct taxation lowered. But at the same time he thinks that a 50 per cent tax rate on high earnings of £150,000-£200,000 might not be the worst idea in the world. These are both interesting policies in themselves, innovative policies perhaps. They just don't happen to be Conservative Party policies at the moment. Finally we find something he does agree with the Tories on: the retention of Clause 28. 'I'm an open-minded person but most of the country do not want homosexual education stuffed down their kids' throats.' He thinks William Hague is 'a great orator - he knocks spots off Blair. But I do sometimes wonder if Hague is the right leader. He does have to create an image outside the chamber. He's a brilliant politician but maybe he's not number one.'

Still, for the moment, Hague's the man. 'More Tories have to come out of the closet,' he says. 'I reckon there are a lot out there but I think they're frightened to admit it. You've got to be brave to be in the Tory party right now.' Perhaps you have to be particularly brave if you are in the restaurant business. It is driven almost entirely by fashion and Worrall Thompson knows that. He made his name in the Eighties with a restaurant called Ménage à Trois, which served only starters and puddings and caught the mood of diners who wanted to go to restaurants to see and be seen rather than to eat. (It was a favourite of Princess Diana.) In the late Eighties he moved on to restaurants like dell'Ugo, serving up an early form of fusion cooking. Now, with his London restaurant Woz, which does one set menu a day, served family style in the middle of the table, he has simplified everything just when it was becoming hip to do so.

Is he concerned that some punters might not want to eat in his restaurants because of his unfashionable politics? He drags deeply on another unfashionable cigarette. 'I'll lose the 10 per cent who are radical, maybe, but that's not much is it?'

Anyway, he says, he has never pursued trends. 'I'm the one who sets the fashions that others follow.' Perhaps he's right. If so, expect the Conservatives to come up with new policies on GM foods, fox hunting, asylum seekers, single mothers, taxation and drugs any day soon.