Food & Drink: The Truffler

EXPECT AS many Michelin-starred chefs as members of the public milling around at the Ludlow Marches Food & Drink Festival this weekend. Everyone must know by now that the Shropshire town has more top restaurants that anywhere else in Britain. Today and tomorrow, the Fair at Ludlow Castle has local suppliers' stalls - smoked foods, historical sauces, wines, cheese and more. A full programme includes a children's marquee, cookery demonstrations, a sausage trail, a cheese quiz, wine-tasting, and a waiters' race. Unusually for a town of 9,000 people, Ludlow also has a train service. For details: 01584 875053.

FOOD FESTIVALS have become the harvest celebrations de nos jours. No vicar, but TV chefs in ritual attendance. Since it's much further afield than Ludlow, here's advance notice of the Skye & Lochalsh Food & Drink Festival - 17 to 25 September. Nick Nairn will be launching a programme of events which include guided wild-mushroom walks, a seafood cruise, wine and local produce tastings. There will be cookery demonstrations by Lady Claire Macdonald, of Kinloch Lodge, and Wendy Barrie at the Three Chimneys. For details: 01478 612137.

WOZZA WATCH I. I've mentioned the ubiquitous Antony Worrall Thompson before, I'm mentioning him again, and it's unlikely to be the last time, because he'll be featuring prominently on TV this autumn. Food & Drink has been down his way filming the next BBC2 series, and the Truffler can offer a taste of what to expect when it returns: the studio has been scrapped, Jilly Goulden becomes the main presenter, and AWT's Henley-on-Thames home and organic "smallholding" becomes the setting for the new Good Life-style look of the programme. Whether this will breathe new life into the programme remains to be seen. I hope the crew don't start singing: "I ain't gonna work on Wozza's farm no more".

WOZZA WATCH II. Meanwhile, Worrall Thompson has closed his London restaurant Bistorganic - what was Woz - in north Kensington, claiming organic produce suppliers have a hippy mentality and can't deliver what he wants, when he wants it. The new president of the laudable Campaign for Real Food, a band of pubs, restaurants and hotels committed to using fresh, natural produce, plans to open an organic restaurant near his home in Whitchurch, Oxfordshire. Yes, it is the one and the same AWT.