Judy and Lisa have been on a bread-making course, and tonight we’re going to make pizzas. And eat them. At Dixie’s house, we carefully carry in our trays of pizza-dough balls, that are more-or-less round, but nicely natural-looking, as if made by hand (which they are). They look great. Until we see the pizza dough that Giorgio has brought. It’s an unfair comparison, of course: Giorgio is Michelin-starred chef and restaurateur, Giorgio Locatelli, and his dough is beautiful: smooth, round, perfect. The big table is covered with boxes of toppings: mozzarella, artichokes, dried tomatoes, ham, sausage, mushrooms, anchovies, tuna, oil-soaked garlic cloves, basil, onions… and lovely wines.

Giorgio is showing us how to make the pizza shape, by kneading with flat hands, and fingers pressing and turning, on the big wooden butcher’s block, then spooning his smooth tomato paste on, spreading it with the ladle; then it’s away to choose the toppings. The children are drawing and writing their names in the semolina flour, then rush off to dismantle the sofa and build a stack of cushions and themselves, a living sandwich, shouting with joy until joy inevitably turns to tears.

Meanwhile, I make a not-too-misshapen base, and load it simply with artichokes, sausage, tomatoes and garlic (oh and anchovies), and Giorgio slides it into the wood-burning oven in the garden. I hover in hope. But the dough is broken and the pizza becomes a calzoni-shape on shovelling, which would be sort-of fine if it weren’t for the nuggets of raw sausage in it.

Meanwhile, pizzas are being churned out thick and fast and thin, and the crusts are soft, light yet chewy and sweet, and I’m sampling as many as I can. I take a gulp of this gorgeous red, put my glass down, put more toppings on, can’t remember where I put my glass, fill another, more topping, sample this, lost my my glass, fill another… Sofas reassembled, the adults are sitting around, and Giorgio is reminiscing about Lucien Freud, while I just try this one last slice…