I get all my beef from Donald Russell. It comes in a polystyrene box, still frozen on arrival. They are ludicrously expensive but the meat is unfailingly superb, with that old-fashioned beefy flavour. I never pay the proper price for anything, so I pounce when their special offers come in, and then I'm paying local butcher prices. At the moment their minced steak is about twenty quid for six packs, same as you'd pay for those three-for-a-tenner offers in Waitrose and Tesco, etc., but infinitely superior. Their brisket is to die for, and there's no wasteful sinew. As for local butcher, Moores in Bude sell the best pork sausages you can get your hands on, and their lamb (from their own farm) is to die for. His other pork, unfortunately, is from a local source I'm not keen on, so I get all my pork, believe it or not, from Gloucester Services on the M5. It's Gloucester Old Spot we're talking about here, and the pork shoulder with crackling is sublime, as are their man-sized pork chops. The prices are very reasonable.

I've found the Herb-Fed poultry company's stuff to be absolutely excellent, and, failing that, the Creedy Carver free-range chickens from Credition, Devon, are superb. I won't bother with any chicken under 2kg. I want texture and mature flavour, and you never get that from skinny little birds, and non-free-range chickens are invariably watery, flavourless and nasty. Even if one was forced on me, I still wouldn't boil up its bones for stock.