Andy Richardson: Workaholic? Yeah, so what? Life's sweet

"Go on," he said, egging me on like a pusher would an addict. "Just a mouthful."

I looked at the dessert, a lemon and rhubarb panna cotta with crunchy granola and freshly-picked blueberries and strawberries. It was garnished with a swish of summer berry coulis and rhubarb crisps. Rhubarb crisps, imagine that – I bet Gary Linekar can't.

My eyes met the chef's. He handed me a spoon.

And then I did what he least expected.

"I'm fine," I said, rejecting the dessert like an unpalatable bride at the altar.

The chef's eyelid twitched. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, no thanks, amigo."

The dessert disappeared to the kitchen where the porter pounced on it like a hungry polar bear on a baby seal. Bye bye panna cotta. It was nice photographing you.

On high days and holidays I head to the kitchen. Not my kitchen – but the kitchens of really good chefs. And there I photograph dreamy desserts, majestic mains and sensational starters. And then I stick them together in books. It's what us workaholic, creative junkies do. We spend all day writing stories and taking photographs, then go home and do it all again.

The notion of a 'normal life' – you know, 9-to-5, content wife, kids at a decent school, two holidays a year – is as alien to me as beef on an asteroid. I tried it once, with a woman called Wife One. It worked for two brilliantly happy years: 'Is this what normal people do'? I once thought, as we went shopping on a Saturday afternoon and found the town full of people with happy smiling faces. It didn't last long, however. I started writing a book that landed in the Sunday Times Top Ten Best Seller List at roughly the same time that she'd packed her bags. Oh well. It was a helluva book. I think she'd have liked it.

And so at a time when most of you are settling down to Corrie, Match of the Day or nipping to your local for a pie and a pint, I'm on the phone to Michel Roux Senior at his home in the South of France ghostwriting a foreword for a new book, or sitting at a 27-inch iMac salivating over assiettes of suckling pig. And no, that's not a euphemism.

You'll always find me in the kitchen at parties. Standing over a trusty Nikon, balding head hidden behind the lens, this food-photographing, part-time gourmand will be wondering whether to reflect more light on the beetroot and star anise purée or ask the chef to re-pacotize his dulce de leche ice cream.

Chefs are like rock'n'roll stars. And I love 'em like Cheryl Fernandez-Versini loves Liam Payne. Creative and hard-working, rule-breaking and driven; they spend their days in sunless rooms where the temperatures rise to 40C. From such dire conditions they create works of art that fill their customers with joy. At least the chefs I work with do. Dirty Barry at the Transport Caff doesn't have much use for food porn pictures. More's the pity. I'm sure I could do a thing or two with his breakfast bap.

When chefs work on a photo shoot, they tend to offer the food to the photographer.

It's more a matter of convenience than a perk of the job. The food can't be resold and if the photographer doesn't eat it, it ends up in the bin – or in the kitchen porter's belly. But more often than not, I don't. Like Zammo saying 'no' to Class A drugs on Grange Hill, like Nancy Reagan fronting a doomed anti-narcotics campaign and like Jezza Clarkson being asked if he fancies working again for Auntie Beeb, I Just Say No.

The reasons are pretty simple. I'm a bloke. And as we all know, the notion of a bloke multi-tasking is as likely as a woman choosing what dress to wear in less than three days.

My ManBrain is programmed to do one thing at a time and eating while taking pictures is two. So as much as I like the look of the burlesque dancing panna cotta and as hungry as I am after putting in a 14-hour weekend shift, I'll always say a polite 'no'.

But that's the way life is. The way things are perceived and the way they actually are is always poles apart. Rock stars are really just unwashed drop-outs in smelly rooms dressed with plastic sunflowers behind the stage. And food-photographing workaholics are really nutritionally-deprived skinny fellas who gorge on crisps and Asda pork crunch after photographing chateaubriand.

Always the bridesmaid and never the bride: they might not eat the panna cotta, but their pictures make sure that you want to.