READERS' AWARD

1) Jamie's School Dinners

It's not often that a TV show makes a proper, important difference to people's lives; but Jamie's School Dinners did just that. Oliver matured before our eyes from lovable, roguish young chef to a passionate campaigner for real school food, and, by extension, our children's future. Not without personal cost; part of what made the show such essential viewing was the toll a workaholic lifestyle took on his wife Jools and their two small girls. But in the end Jamie succeeded triumphantly. Not just with the Greenwich schoolkids, who were eventually persuaded to occasionally munch on a salad leaf or two, and the dinner ladies, whose morale and professionalism he boosted, but most importantly of all, with a government leveraged into banning junk food and putting more money into school dinners.

2) French Odyssey, Rick Stein

There's no one like Rick Stein for transmitting the sheer sensual pleasure of choosing, touching, smelling, cooking and finally eating great food. His French Odyssey by canal through the Midi was a hymn to French regional flavours, which also beautifully recorded the glorious landscape and unhurried rural pace of France profonde: so evocative you can almost smell that pine resin/Gauloise scent that heralds a good time. A culinary reverie, if you like, featuring, among other foodie fantasies come true, entrecôte bordelaise, shad grilled over vine trimmings, sarladaise potatoes fried in duck fat and an epic bouillabaisse at L'Epuisette in Marseille. All proof that the French still take some beating when it comes to the pleasures of the table.

3) Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares

Brutal honesty, perplexing sex appeal and somewhere deep down a heart of gold: whether cooking, shouting or just plain expleting, Ramsay makes compelling television because you get a real sense of the person. Given just a week to turn around the fortunes of failing, debt-ridden restaurants, Ramsay managed to inspire and move, too, however incompetent, drunk, or plain ignorant his unfortunate subjects. He didn't always haul them into the black, but he certainly kept us tuning in.