TEENAGERS should all have Saturday jobs, our work and pensions secretary hit the headlines as saying last weekend – and I must say, I agree.

But that’s because not only did my Saturday job help me pay my way through university, but also introduced me to the wonderful world of cheese.

Coming from a small Devon town, the options available to teenagers for part time work was at best limited, and at worst mind-numbingly dull. So like 85 per cent of my school’s sixth form, I found myself working at the town’s only large supermarket.

At the time, it had just been transformed from a Safeway into a Morrisons (showing my age there…) and there was a large amount of distrust in the northern brand, especially when the doughnuts from the bakery started appearing in different sized packs. (If memory serves me correctly, they went from four to five, but remained the same price. Still, it was a local scandal).

I found myself working behind the deli, and after the initial embarrassment of having to wear a striped apron and boater hat – this was thankfully before the days of camera phones – I found I was actually quite taken with the task of selling these varying shapes and weights of varying smell and texture.

Rather ignorantly, I had assumed that all cheese was yellow and best served grated on toast, but soon I found myself surrounded by cloth-bound golden Quicke's cheddar, the deep red of Orkney cheese, and the questionable gooeyness of Gorgonzola, which I am still not entirely comfortable with. Rene Artois was quite right to make it the butt of all his jokes in ‘Allo ‘Allo. Trying to slice that on a cheeseboard was a fine art that I was never able to master without covering every surface behind the counter first with melting blue (green?!) cheese.

Then there was the rather striking orange and cream of the red Leicester whirl, pin pricked with tiny pieces of cracked black pepper, and the logs of goats cheese, which inexplicable came wrapped in plastic straws. I learned far more about the geography of the UK from the labels in the counter than I ever could have hoped to during GCSE geography.

There was the fabulously named St Endellion brie from neighbouring Cornwall, and the rather popular Five Counties – which is made up of cheddar, Cheshire, Derby, Double Gloucester and Red Leicester cheeses, for all those pub quizzers among you.

Don’t get me wrong, working in retail is a tough gig – but chances are I would never have taken such an interest in cheese had it not been for that grounding. Did it instil me with relevant lifeskills to prepare me for the wider world?

Probably. So Esther has my backing on that. But I would probably now be two stone lighter had I chosen a job that involved fewer calories...