The world is facing some pretty tricky questions at the moment, but one posed by comedian David Baddiel has particularly caught my eye.

He asked Twitter: ‘Just why are potatoes so much nicer than any other vegetables?’

That’s funny because I have been asking myself the same question for the last 50-odd years.It’s been especially on my mind during January because I made a sort of New Year’s resolution to cut down on my meat consumption, for animal welfare reasons, and I have been on the lookout for alternatives.

It’s not so much a resolution as an experiment, to be fair, and I’m not giving up meat altogether.

We’ve been shopping for free range eggs for years, but just lately I started to worry about the cheapness of chicken, and wonder what sort of life that animal must have had for its body to be worth so little when it is dead.

And as by far the highest proportion of the meat I eat was chicken, I thought I would see what happened if I cut down.

Now, I respect people who are vegetarians, and I recognise them as fellow animal lovers, but they do have a fatal flaw.

They think everybody in the world loves vegetables.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to them that the reason some of us eat animal products is because we find them infinitely tastier than anything that used to grow in the ground - with the exception of potatoes, obviously.

Even as I write this, I am expecting well-meaning people to compliment me on trying to cut down on meat, but send me what they think are mouth-watering vegetarian recipes involving, for example, mushrooms.

Please don’t.

Mushrooms are at the top of a very long list of vegetables I would never consider eating, unless I was starving, and yet vegetarians are always intent on trying to convince us how delicious they are.

And don’t even get me started on swede.

Expecting me to develop a love for vegetables is like expecting a Spurs fan to suddenly fall in love with Arsenal.

It just ain’t going to happen. Ever.

So I am seeking out potato recipes, and even trying out new techniques, such as bunging stuff in the slow cooker and seeing what comes out.

Thank God spuds are so versatile, and no matter which way you cook them, they score ten out of ten for taste, and full marks for texture, too.

So although I haven’t completely eliminated dead animals from my diet, I have made a difference, and I am feeling quite good about it.

But the fact is, it has brought meat consumption in our house down by only about one per cent.

It’s partly because I didn’t eat much meat in the first place.

The other problem is sharing the house with two unashamed carnivores with whiskers, cute ears and a liking for Kit-E-Kat, who get through tons of the stuff.

You can’t win.