On TV he cuts an avuncular figure. In real life, too. Despite the temperature creeping towards the nineties, despite the fact that the queue to meet him at Sherborne’s Winstone’s bookshop is snaking round the building. And despite the truth that surely, his adoring public has seen it all before, (a cookbook! About India!) he is still calm and peaceful even when he is heckled about his recipies. And when the store runs out of copies.

That’s the Rick Stein effect. This is the man who turned the Cornish fishing village of Padstow into Padstein, a foodie Mecca catering to the refined tastebuds of high-spending Islingtonites and the holiday destination of choice for those of the Boden persuasion.

Most of the folk queuing at Winstone’s have been with Rick since the early days when he was Britain’s Mr Fish; the days when he was still married to Jill and didn’t have a culinary empire that reached to Australia where he has a new wife and another life outside the UK.

But today it’s all about India. Did he find the place a culture shock?

“I’ve been there quite a few times in the last 30 years so I sort of knew what to expect,” he says.

“But when you first go it is a culture shock. It’s such a large and amazingly overpopulated place but it’s like you hit the ground running. In a place like Calcutta there’s a lot of poverty; a lot of the buildings are in a very bad state of repair, but also there’s this great buzz about the place. In India you have to take the rough with the smooth.”

Did he get better understanding of India during the filming for his new cooking series?

“Previously I thought I had understood the difference between northern and southern food there. But really understanding means you realise it’s almost like a different cuisine in each place,” he says.

“The more time you spend and devote to food and cooking, you do get a better understanding of any country.”

Back in Sherborne he could be forgiven for thinking it was back on the sub-continent as the temperature soars outside and even more inside. Unlike certain celebs who will only sign current works, Rick is happy to sign anything and everything for his fans.

He’s even sanguine when one tells him how she prefers to use butter instead of ghee in her recipe.

“Each to their own,” he smiles.

How unlike Keith Floyd, then, lately of this parish (he famously died after a slap-up meal at the Hix Oyster and Fish House in Lyme Regis) and on whose show Rick was first discovered.

According to the producer David Pritchard there was about Rick: “A kind of self-doubt, simplicity and honesty about him which he retains today. Filming with him is like being on holiday.”

Floyd reckoned telly chefs should be ‘napalmed’.

Following his death Rick paid fulsome tribute.

“At a time when I was experimenting with Provencal dishes like bouillabaisse, he was a Gauloise-smoking, red wine-drinking hero who had actually owned a restaurant next to the Mediterranean,” said Rick.

“I never lost that awe of him. He was the first devil-may-care cook on TV who made cooking something the boys could do.”

His generous spirit does him credit and is probably part of his secret. But surely there is very little more to write on the subject of food? Not so.

He’s had offers to film the cuisine of Argentina and would love to have a crack at the Middle East.

“I’m fired up on Ottolenghi and would like to do a series on Middle Eastern cookery,” he enthuses.

But Stein doesn’t just cook food, he champions it, too, especially Dorset’s Blue Vinny cheese, naming it on his influential Food Heroes website. He likes Dorset and enjoys visiting the county, especially to eat at his friend Mark Hix’s restaurant.

He’s friendly, cheery and absolutely on top of his cooking game so it’s hard to imagine that come the autumn he’ll be doing all this again, promoting his memoirs, Under A Mackerel Sky. The original Mr Fish, it seems, has plenty more to fry.

  • Rick Stein’s India, £25 BBC Books