Pulling on the gloves, Pip entered the ring with her ‘Wine deer?’, a smart dish flowered with venison carpaccio, chicken and venison sausage, parsnip purée, pickled vegetables and accompanied by a glass of parsnip wine. Delivered on woodland mats, reminiscent of the floor at Sherwood Forest, it showed great promise – Richard Corrigan had scored it highly earlier in the week. But the judges felt that a plate of raw meat, with tiny slivers of sausage was just not good enough for a banquet. Oliver in particular was fairly withering about it all, but the root wine went down well though.

For the fish course, Richard looked to deliver a punch of smoke with his trout-led ‘For home and country’. The other elements would be plums, pickled cucumber, lardo, butternut mousse and nasturtium leaves; and the smoke was to come from charred plum stones, a nod to the waste not, want not regime of the WI. However, Richard overcooked his fish and looked quite reluctant to send it out at first. 'Ma fish! Ah, overcooked ma fish,' he screamed. OK, he didn’t really but the judges were all in agreement that the trout was way overdone. And too smoky too, much to their and his annoyance. Whoops.

At first, Pip’s fishy homage, called ‘Grandma!’ in reference to her Nan over-seasoning food, didn’t look that clever visually. But in the flavour stakes, it made much bigger waves. Comprising of smoked haddock and deep fried potato hotpot with pickled cucumber, lemon purée and cucumber vinegar, the judges spent a while sniffing around with perplexed brows. Once they tasted the food though, opinions were quickly turned around. 'Not very good on the eyes but my, these spuds and fish are good,' said Oliver.

So at the halfway mark, as per usual, things were neck and neck, and when Helen wandered into the kitchen for the regular pep talk, she gave little away. I did like her response to Richard though when he told her that he’d tried to get his Mum into the WI, so he could glean inside information prior to the competition. 'I hope she has good luck trying to get in,' Helen whispered. Thus revealing that the WI is very rigorous in its selection and that blackballing evidently also takes place.

Entering the mains round, both chefs had very strong dishes in their armour, with Pip stepping up first to present her controversial canned rabbit stew called ‘Can cook’. Controversial apparently because the judges had to cook their dinner themselves, which did have Oliver whining 'cook my own dinner?' at one point. However, as they placed the stew complete with potatoes and pickled vegetables (how much pickling has there been in this competition?) on a hot cast iron plate for a pre-requisite three minutes and alarms pinged into life, well, the fun-factor soon won everyone over. Matthew was overjoyed, especially with his lovely little hazelnuts.

Richard’s ‘Betty in the hen house’ was slightly less tempered, but still raised a giggle nonetheless. Inspired by a recipe he found in an old WI magazine, he presented a boned out poussin, stuffed with sausagemeat and chutney and served it with pearl barley, onions, carrot, confit parsnip and herb gravy, all complete with ceramic eggs and hen cages as props. Oliver did begin to question whether the stuffing overpowered the flavour of the poussin, but Prue soon put him in his place by saying that poussin doesn’t have that much flavour in the first place. Get you Prue!

Desserts throughout the competition have always been a stumbling block for the chefs and, so as Pip and Richard came into the final straight, it looked as though this would be the deciding round. Pip had to go first with her ‘Is it scone or is it scone?’, a play on the pronunciation of scones and to be frank, her confidence visibly wilted at this point. With a chiboust flavoured with scone, scone tuiles, scone bases topped with apple, pear and ginger jam and mini scones, in the terrible words of Mr Fort, Pip had 'scone too far' with this one. Her clotted cream ice cream on the other hand was delightful but was it enough to save her?

After seeing the judges’ reaction to Richard’s ‘Inspiring women’ it didn’t look like it. It may have looked rather gimmicky on the surface, but underneath, the dish was underpinned by an obvious devotion to family and loved ones. His Nan was represented by a gorgeous slice of trifle. His sister influenced his Victoria sponge gin cocktail. And his wife made her mark by making all the props. By putting his heart on his sleeve, he put everyone in good mood and that sense of happiness prevailed when the chefs came in at the end for the final announcement. The judges had awarded nine tens no less, which meant that the Central region really did tickle the taste buds in this round.

The winner of course was Richard Bainbridge, on that much-mentioned fourth attempt and, as he tearfully told his Mum on the phone that he had finally, finally made it through, I was reminded of that quote by William Shakespeare: 'Wise men never sit and wail their loss, but cheerily seek how to redress their harms.' A quote that I often wisely use, whenever a soufflé lets me down or should I burn some beloved toast. All whilst smoking an imaginary pipe and talking to no-one in particular.