I am sorry to say this if you have just eaten your dinner, but this week I would like to talk to you about my stomach.

I think it’s made of iron. I can eat anything, at any time, and can count on the fingers of two hands the number of times it has ever objected to the food I have given it and tried to give it back.

And yet my father had a history of stomach problems, including ulcers. Mine was obviously a gift from my mother.

An iron stomach is one of the reasons for my cavalier approach when it comes to going to the fridge, rooting around and finding something that is past its sell-by date. I believe in the Loch Ness Monster more than I believe in sell-by dates.

You might think they have something to do with how safe it is to eat the food, but I think they are costing the country millions of pounds every year because people are throwing away perfectly edible food. That’s a sin as long as there are people in the world who are starving.

In our house, hardly anything is ever thrown out. Then again, we do have the advantage of having the king of fridges.

It’s a big American-style one and wasn’t cheap, but it’s so efficient that it has paid for itself many times over. Stuff can last in there for weeks.

When some people get to my age they want to show off their hairy chests and drive around in sports cars. Not me. If you really want to be impressed, girls, pop round one evening and I’ll show you my fridge.

Even if the food is left hanging around in there for so long that even our fridge is struggling to prevent it going bad, there is still one more level of protection to save me from getting food poisoning.

It’s called a nose. Lots of people have forgotten they have one of these on the front of their faces, even though it tells us a thousand times more about whether food is safe to eat (or milk is safe to drink) than any silly sell-by date.

All you have to do is stick your nose somewhere near the food and sniff. If the smell doesn’t make your head lurch backwards and your eyes aren’t watering, cut off the mould and eat the rest.

Besides, there comes the time, when you reach a certain age, that you have to start living a bit more dangerously. I don’t drive fast, I wear a helmet on my bike, and you don’t see me on boats very often because I have noticed they have a tendency sink. Eating food that might look a bit dodgy is my way of adding adventure to my middle age.

But my wife says I am to tell you not to try this at home. She points out that eating potentially dodgy food could be dangerous if you have a long-term medical condition, are pregnant, very old or very young.

It’s funny that she thinks people are going to take notice of me when she doesn’t, and it’s also funny that she doesn’t think I am an expert on sell-by dates when I obviously am.

I don’t have any medical qualifications and I haven’t been on any food hygiene courses, but as she is fond of telling me herself, I am past my own sell-by date. So I should know.

It’s not the sell-by date that matters, I tell her, but ‘use-by’. So keep on checking me for smells, avoid the mould, and I’ll be as good as the day you picked me.