TV presenter and author Richard Osman escaped facing his food hell as he appeared on Saturday Kitchen as the audience was instead given the choice to decide on two of his favourite dishes due to the “mood of the nation”.

The popular BBC show, hosted by chef Matt Tebbutt, normally has the audience voting for dishes a guest either has as their heaven or their hell – but this week, the choice was between two favourites.

As the programme kicked off, Tebbutt said to Osman: “Now Richard, usually you know how this works, usually at the end of the show you’re facing food heaven and food hell, but with the mood of the nation, this week we’re going to let the audience decide on two of your favourite dishes.”

Former Pointless presenter Osman chose as his two dishes a ham and cheese toastie, and a pasta dish he said he’d recently tried in Italy while on holiday called cacio e pepe.

He explained his choices saying: “I love a cheese and ham toastie, is there a way to chef-ify that? If there is, I’ll bet you find it – bung a bit of fennel on it or something.

Saturday Kitchen guests
Osman appeared on Saturday Kitchen (BBC)

“And then this summer I was in Italy and we had a dish called cacio e pepe, and I had absolutely no idea what it was, right, but I really liked it, so I’d love you to maybe make that and then I’ll see what it is.”

Tebbutt explained the choices to viewers, saying: “It’s down to you guys at home”, whether he made his “next level ham and cheese toastie” which he said was based on a Sicilian sandwich recipe, or the second dish, a chicken milanese served with cacio e pepe.

Cacio e pepe is pasta “tossed with butter and black pepper sauce, parmesan and pecorino, that’s basically it, it couldn’t be more simple or more delicious,” Tebbutt said.

Osman, 51, announced in April this year that he was stepping back from Pointless after nearly 13 years on the BBC show, having co-hosted the programme alongside Alexander Armstrong, since it debuted in 2009.

The TV star said he was leaving to focus on his writing, with his debut novel, The Thursday Murder Club, published in September 2020.

It became a bestseller, with its global film rights later snapped up by Steven Spielberg’s production company Amblin Entertainment.

A sequel, The Man Who Died Twice, was published in September last year, with the third of the four Thursday Murder Club books, The Bullet That Missed, out now.

Appearing alongside Osman on Saturday Morning were chef Ravneet Gill, MasterChef: The Professionals judge Anna Haugh, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and wine expert Olly Smith.

Dishes cooked included Haugh’s “take on Gleneagles pate”, a dish thought to have been a favourite of the Queen’s, with a recipe using “smoked salmon, trout and mackerel with fresh dill and lemon”, and also a “winter-warming apple and blackberry crumble” from Fearnley-Whittingstall.

Gill previously baked for the King at a charity function and said on the show she was making “mini versions of the cake I made for King Charles, small, Victoria sponges”.

Osman ended up having Matt’s Ultimate Ham and Cheese Toastie made for him as 61% of votes decided his food fate.