If God does love a trier, and provided that He’s on the right streaming package, the great Lord Almighty — like every seemingly star-struck guest on With Love, Meghan — must deeply adore the Duchess of Sussex. The 44-year-old cultural icon (that’s Meghan, not God, although …) is launching a new season of her noteworthy “lifestyle” series this week and, apparently, to those in the know, she’s really trying.

Meghan is “pretty good at filleting a fish,” says Clare Smyth, the no-nonsense chef who runs the swank Michelin-starred Notting Hill eatery Core (regular guests include Ed Sheeran, Adele and the Beckhams) and who features in the upcoming series, which airs on Tuesday. Smyth adds: “Meghan is actually really good at cooking and she’s creative, with a good palate.”

This will doubtless come as a huge relief to anyone who sat through the first season, mouth agog, as Meghan madly covered everything from cucumber sandwiches to yoghurt parfait to crudités with flung fistfuls of withered daisies while gurning widely to camera and purring out platitudes such as, “I love feeding people, I think it’s probably my love language.”

Honestly, and being consciously kind (because that’s Meghan’s, like, brand) it was a slightly strange show, somewhere between a Stepford wife’s fever dream and an infernal version of celebrity Stockholm syndrome, where ostensibly trapped Z-listers bleated out badly scripted lines that included compulsory phrases such as “that’s one of my favourite things about you Meghan” while chowing down on sticky doughnuts that seemed to be covered in torn clumps of couch grass and Japanese knotweed.

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I loved the tip, though, about repackaging a heart attack-inducing portion of mass-produced salty, fatty, ultra-processed discount snacks in an unmarked plastic bag, and then leaving it, like a polonium-filled booby trap, on the bedside tables of unsuspecting house guests. Because, well, nothing says “love language” more than waking up next to an indigestible pile of UPFs in a cheap plastic bag.

As for Meghan’s filleting dexterity, I must admit to a certain degree of envy, as my own blade skills are pretty pitiful. I’m the one who insists on carving the turkey alone, in the kitchen, every Christmas, just because I refuse to allow anyone to witness the massacre. I remove unintentional inches while skinning fish, and I can transform a giant bag of potatoes into a handful of tiny yellow marbles when peeling for mash. I probably need to work on my love language. Or maybe there’s a lifestyle show in that, too — Can’t be arsed, Kevin?

Meghan’s knife skills, of course, give new context to the clips that she’s been teasing from the upcoming season. In one, she cuts a thick wedge, with stunning precision, down through a sizeable sourdough loaf and coos, “Look at that!” Great blade work, Meg. You’re a natural.

The subject of sourdough is vaguely contentious, as it transpires that Meghan is a huge fan of the speciality sourdough that Smyth serves in Core. Meghan’s plan, for a sequence in the new series, was to make the very same sourdough bread, hand in hand with Smyth. There was just one problem, Smyth revealed. Her speciality sourdough uses a 20-year-old starter. “I told her the process would be too long for the show,” said the chef.

In other words, that would mean mixing flour and water in a jar, covering it, leaving it overnight at room temperature, then discarding most of the starter, adding more flour and water, stirring it, covering it again and repeating the process, on camera, for 20 years, before they could begin making the actual bread.

There’s a joke in there, obviously, about having seen With Love, Meghan first time round and contemplating the idea of watching a TV show filled only with a fixed shot of a sourdough starter in a glass jar and knowing exactly which one I’d rather see. But, well, that’s just mean.

It’s dame against dame

I see that national treasures Helen Mirren and Emma Thompson are both making waves for very different approaches to the subject of ageing. Thompson, 66, has come out guns blazing, saying that age will not wither her, and that in her latest thriller, The Dead of Winter, she has insisted upon doing her own stunts. “It’s the most I’ve pushed my body on set,” she said, adding that she embraces her senior years with the mantra, “I’m so strong now because I’m older.”

Mirren conversely, speaking to The Times, revealed a far more philosophical approach to ageing at 80, claiming that she has internalised her mother’s view that you should “never be afraid of getting old”. It is, she said, “a natural wave of life.” She has previously revealed, however, that for the past 60 years, every day, she does a 12-minute fitness routine (including sit ups, press-ups and running-on-the-spot) invented by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

This is all, of course, outrageous sexism. Why can’t we just have two successful women without needlessly pitting them against each other? It’s degrading. As if they’re rival cage fighters and we’re taking bets on who’s going to win! Shocking, yes, but my money’s on the one who does Air Force fitness!

Only three pads, Angela?

Poor Angela Rayner. She can’t just buy her properties in peace! The housing secretary, in the middle of a housing crisis, has apparently added a new holiday flat in Hove to her personal housing portfolio (she also owns a home in her constituency and has the run of a grace-and-favour flat in Admiralty House). And no, the problem is not that she seems to be acting like the Cookie Monster during a biscuit shortage. It’s the neighbours. First she was spotted on Hove beach clutching what was described as “a giant glass” of rosé (surely commensurate with Johnny Depp’s “mega pint” of red wine?). And then a local snooper told the Mail on Sunday: “I’ve seen her recently and she was sipping a coffee while leaving the building.” What? She wasn’t mainlining heroin, she was sipping coffee! Goodness me, with neighbours like these … she should probably buy another property.