Oh Cook!: The cookbook from James May with simple, easy recipes that any idiot can make.

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It really does seem like it’s only been a few days since the last one, when he went top-bantering around Japan – though a quick glance at my records shows that it was in fact released in January. Easy Recipes That Any Idiot Can Make, the presence of publishers and TV executives on set was an added pressure for The Grand Tour presenter, affectionately dubbed Captain Slow. We all want our families (and ourselves) to eat healthy and fresh, but sometimes we just need to feed everyone in a pinch. It is a reassuring prospect given the Grand Tour presenter's latest venture into the world of home economics.

May is best known as co-presenter of the motoring programme Top Gear alongside Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond. In press interviews released alongside the first series, May stated that he would like to film a second series of the programme abroad, saying he would be interested in learning how to cook a "proper American breakfast". In each episode, May assures us of his ineptitude in the kitchen (“I can’t cook – and welcome to my cookery show”), assembles some ingredients to create a couple of functional meals (it is not really cooking, and I say this as someone who fails to reach even May’s level of competence at least three days out of every seven), drinking a bit of wine, and doling out a few personal and historical facts as he goes. They're telling me how to do it and then they start telling me how to say it and how to present it and I want to go 'look, f*** off, that's the bit I can do'. In a frying pan, add 2 tablespoons olive oil and fry the onion/mushroom mix for a few minutes until soft.I rarely muscle through every chapter introduction, and often skim around the recipes themselves getting only what I need. May says in the recipe the coat will make a “mess,” and he wasn’t kidding, but once they were fried, they looked like something out of a swanky retro Tiki bar and grill. Deliberately, defiantly, overwhelmingly low-wattage May insouciantly shows how easy it is to make decent grub with bonus asides on Fellini, Philip Larkin and William Blake, which you certainly don’t get with The Hairy Bikers.

And he's still partial to Spam, although rarely, and admits it is "a bit of a schtick" that's become part of his brand. Those of you who lived through it will remember the height of luxury in those days was going to a Berni Inn for Sunday lunch. He has presented many solo projects on television – ‘Toy Stories’, BBC2’s six-part series with annual updates, ‘James May’s Man Lab’ which ran for three series, ‘James May’s Cars of the People’ and, most recently, ‘Our Man in Japan’.This is not true if you're making a programme about science or engineering or car history, where you have some authority, but I'm working on a cooking show, where I avowedly can't cook anyway, so everybody is part of the advisory committee and it does get bloody annoying, quite quickly. While there are more Grand Tour episodes ahead, May has – alongside his newfound telly cheffing career – just bought "half a pub". If, like James May, the sight of the kitchen strikes fear into your very heart and you can’t identify a spatula from a fish slice – this is the book for you. May isn’t exactly fond of the way that cooking shows are normally filmed, so he fills the time with his usual brand of random facts about things like history and his life.