Andy Richardson: Fad gadget? No way, it's a real scoop

Let me open a window to my world; this is what the message says: "The fact you won't say means I would scoff at the ridiculousness of a fad appliance that will eventually get resigned to a cupboard!!!"

Now, before we get started, let's count those exclamation marks. Not one, not two, but three of the long-limbed, decisively-dotted bad boys. They serve to ram home the point like an Anthony Joshua finger jabbed in the chest of Charles Martin. Oh, keep up, non-sports fans: AJ and Prince are fighting in a couple of weeks in London for the Heavyweight Championship of the Woooooorld.

Little Ms Perfect is talking about my new ice cream maker, the cost of which I've diplomatically decided not to reveal. Money can't buy me love, but it can buy me really lovely ice cream. And I'm in the market like a hungry bull in a rapidly-inflating stock exchange. Step aside, Mr Whippy, I'm coming through. And don't spare the sprinkles.

Two of my best friends recently closed their restaurant and decided to sell off their kit. I made a winning bid on their Swiss-made, highly-engineered, ice-cream-whipping kitchen gizmo. It makes ethereal gelato, silky sorbet and ice cream smoother than a Lionel Richie lyric. Ms Perfect thinks it's a waste of money – and she might be right. Though she doesn't know quite how much I've burnt. And it's better that she doesn't.

Curiously, Ms Perfect's favourite description of me is this: 'judgemental'. And she's absolutely right. Give me an album, I'll give it a ranking; give me a dinner, I'll mark it out of five; give me an intellectual theory, I'll give you an exposition. But what my very own metacritic fails to understand is this: she's just as bad. Actually, she's worse. Give her a book, she'll decode it in four seconds; show her a photograph, she'll evaluate the subject instantly; stick her in a room with Ronnie O'Sullivan, she'll tell him how to put more side on the ball. Pot + kettle = black.

She's part-beaver, part-pitbull; an intellectually curious, culturally enlightened, maker-doer-builder whose ferocious advocacy for her favourite causes makes Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa look like a bunch of slackers.

I've bitten off more than I can chew in penning an ersatz skit about her opinions on Tom & (Ben &) Jerry. When she reads this week's Man Column she'll take a silent vow to steal all my Ocean Colour Scene CDs and replace them with singles by Steps – that's her idea of a joke. And it would be funny, but I've already replaced all of her Steps singles with OCS CDs; so she'll in fact just be tidying up. Bless. I might play The Riverboat Song while I watch her do it.

But I digress. And I really ought to put away my Häagen-DazsGate flame-fanning device before she sticks a tin of Pedigree Chum in my ice cream maker and presses 'churn'.

Before I was swept away by a tsunami of work, I used to cook. It was singularly the most satisfying and therapeutic, non-work pastime I found. I cooked for the owners of a Michelin-starred restaurant: they gave me seven out of 10, liked a beef dish and told me not to forget silly little details like warming their plates. I knocked out seven-course, Saturday-night dinners that made the Gods swoon. Actually, not the Gods; my guests were a humble bunch and only one of them knew his Ambrosia from his Dionysus. There were few things I enjoyed more than labouring for eight hours in 'prep' before serving food that would take eight minutes to dispatch.

I could cut a steak like Billy Duffy smashing out a riff on a Rickenbacker; cook a soufflé that rose like an SLS rocket and conjure desserts that made James Martin look like a kitchen porter. And I'm only half joking. I told my other friend, we'll call him Mr Harmonica, about my ice cream maker and the way its super-fast titanium blades created fluffy, airy textures. "You can even use it with fish bones," I told him, beginning a sentence that I'd hoped to end with. . .: "If you ever want to make fish soup."

Except I didn't get that far. He interrupted after the word 'bones'.

"Fish?" he said.

"Yes."

"What, fish ice cream?" Something had been lost in translation.

I wanted to say: "I cod do better."

But Mr Harmonica would have accused me of krilling him with puns.

The conversation didn't end and now I plan to invite Ms Perfect and Mr Harmonica to a dinner party. It will be an Ocean Colour Scene/fish-themed menu. We'll start with Steve Cradock cakes; made by blending crab and haddock. Then we'll dolphinitely finish with a brill ice cream. Any fin is possible.