Alex James: Blessed are the cheese makers

Why does someone with a successful life in the city want to give it up to make cheese? Actually, I should think there's a time in lots of people's lives when they think, right, that's it, I'm going to give it all up and move to the country and make cheese. It's just that most people never actually do it.

But for those of us who have done it, it can be incredibly rewarding. People imagine that cheese is boring. Perhaps it is. So is being in a band. A lot of work involves repetitive tasks - drudgery, if you like. Music certainly does. But that can be quite pleasant, really.

What makes any work worthwhile is where it leaves you afterwards, spiritually and emotionally.

I find the pace of cheese-making very satisfying. There's a lot of pouring and slow stirring - it's a bit like sculpture - with big, nice satisfying amounts of liquid. I'm sure you could sell cheese-making kits to children.

It's quite easy to make reasonably good cheese - soft cheese is a doddle. It's doing it really well that's difficult.

But anything is learnable, and I think someone who comes from the city, and who has the conviction and enthusiasm, is quite likely to do very well. You need a lot of dynamism to succeed in the metropolis and when people go to the country they often take some of that with them.

Even so, Richard Hodgson has done incredibly well, because that part of the market - cow's milk cheese - is pretty saturated. There's been a real proliferation of what you might call haute couture cheeses. It's amazing how far we've come in this country, since the Seventies: we've become a nation of foodies.

I've been very lucky, because I've got a good cheese maker on board, and there are a lot of real experts round here. Taking up cheese-making here in the Cotswolds was like coming on to the cheese superhighway. The foodie scene round here is like the art crowd or the music crowd, everyone is trying to outdo each other. But it's a great way to learn, and it's all good for British cheese.

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