It must feel good to wake up each morning knowing that you have radically changed someone's life for the better. By which I don't mean just giving them a new Gucci bag for Christmas. I mean to have genuinely changed the way they and those around them live. Andrew Rugasira is such a guy. Without his passionate belief in fair trade, 11,000 Ugandans, many of whom are widows whose husbands have been killed in the war, wouldn't be part of the successful enterprise that now supplies coffee to one of Britain's major traders. Both a business leader and a father figure, he has helped thousands of farmers to give themselves a steady income and provide them with the knowledge that they are at last being given a fair price for their coffee. Tim Adams meets the man on page 44.

I often watch TV reports from war-torn areas of the world and find myself wondering just what the correspondents do about eating and drinking. (I also wonder who irons their shirts but that's another matter.) I mean, they can't exactly pop out to Pret à Manger can they? We asked David Shukman, the BBC's war correspondent, to fill us in on just what the likes of John Pilger and Jeremy Bowen do about eating on the front line.

And talking of war, we have a little battle of our own going on, with two of our favourite foodie heavyweights arguing about whose wine is the better. In the red, white and blue corner we have Raymond Blanc and in the green, white and red we have Antonio Carluccio, both convinced that the wines of their own countries are the most delicious in the world. As I am very much on Antonio's side of the fence we brought in Lynn Barber to be our totally impartial referee. The two of them slug it out good naturedly.

Two chefs who thankfully get on very well are the brothers Chris and Jeff Galvin, who have just opened their own 'bistrot de luxe' in that restaurant wasteland known as London's Baker Street. I ate there (roast partridge, mashed potatoes, Châteauneuf-du-Pape) just as they had put down their paintbrushes and picked up their kitchen knives. Jay Rayner reckons that they are the hot boys of the year, and I certainly wouldn't disagree.

And while we are on the subject of hot boys Edmund White gives us the lowdown on gay men and food. He insists gay couples go to much more trouble about entertaining their guests, and no doubt spend more money doing so, than anyone else. Well let's face it, who on earth besides antique dealers and gay couples actually still give dinner parties? Welcome to Observer Food Monthly's special men's issue - living proof that we are good for more than opening the wine and emptying the dishwasher. Honest.

· Nigel Slater is the Observer's cookery writer