Alex James: The Great Escape

Published: 25 July 2007

It was the Great British Cheese awards last Friday at The Mill House Hotel in Kingham, and I was more excited than I have been for ages. I was judging in two categories, and my debut cheese was entered in another. There were 900 different cheeses in the competition. That's more than they have in France. Hang on a minute! What? No, it's true.

The astonishing thing is the quality is there, too. Newly christened members of the camembert family, golden inside, made with Jersey milk and better than anything I've had in France, sat among huge wheels with lemony centres like brie wants to be. British food culture has exploded faster than internet pornography in the last 15 years. Our chefs are world famous. Our restaurants are the best in the world. In pubs, where there used to be a dartboard, now there's a blackboard showing the specials. In Shoreditch, where once there was a hat factory, now there's a restaurant containing a Hollywood couple. Maybe it's a bad time to be in the titfer game, but there never was a better time to be cheesing it.

Little Wallop was running in the New Cheeses category. I won't find out how he got on until the Great British Cheese Festival in September, when the award winners and the supreme champion are announced, but I'm very happy with him. I'm in the chase. Someone asked whether a cheese contest was really necessary or whether it was just a bit of fun. It's definitely both. Competitions seem to be fundamental to the whole scheme of things. Maybe that's what culture comes down to, people trying to outplay each other. In the judging tent in the rain on Friday morning, it was an unbelievable sight. A cross between a fairytale about cheese and Old Testament flood imagery – with news cameras. The high-rollers of the cheese firmament were all there, including Jo Schneider who invented Daylesford cheddar. He is now making an unpasteurised blue, an exotic cousin of stilton, probably the most talked about and eagerly anticipated cheese of recent times.

Buyers from retail chains mingled with cheese experts and food writers as the tide rose in the judging tent, which, it gradually became apparent, was pitched in a water meadow. By lunchtime the Waitrose buyer had had enough. He said his feet were too wet, but overall the rain seemed to add glamour, and as the judging broke for lunch, the hotel bar was full of half-undressed foodies. By the time the supreme champion was decided, it was clear something cataclysmic was happening. The hotel bar began to fill with water. The cheese marquee was waist deep by that time.

It was eerily quiet across the valley: just the gentle noise of rain. I watched the water level in the well by the back door rise 2ft in an hour to within an inch of the kitchen, with an odd sense of composure. Homes all around us were flooded without sound. We were lucky. Claire came home in tears. "Judy's under water! That house, that beautiful house!" I cried too.

a.james@independent.co.uk

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