Insisting on remaining on board and in employment on Immanis for this lay-up was one of the best ideas I ever had. Designing menus for the ship is fun – a totally different challenge from anything I’ve done before, largely because of the scale. When you’re overseeing hundreds of culinary staff preparing 30,000 meals per day in about fifty bars and restaurants and your weekly shopping budget is around a million dollars, it’s obviously completely different to planning weekly-changing menus for a fifty-cover restaurant where you can basically import what you want from anywhere in the world (the more pretentious, obscure and expensive the better as far as the clients are concerned) and charge upwards of £200 per head without anyone blinking. But I was ready for a new challenge, as I said in my interview, and had my reasons for wanting to get away, which they didn’t ask about and I, obviously, didn’t mention.

There’s no denying that compared to being executive chef for an entire shipful of passengers, even if I didn’t often have that much to do with them in person, overseeing the catering for the small number of crew on board who are keeping it ticking over is a walk in the park. No waiting staff to drill with daily menu ingredients, no worrying about every tiny detail on dishes which can sometimes run into three-figure sums. Crew meals are simple, cheap and cheerful – I could do it with my eyes closed. Plus I still have my sous chef Andreas with me. In all honesty, he does most of the work while I spend my time in TopSail which I have designated my ‘development kitchen’; it has a nice sunny terrace and I can work on my tan in between experimenting with various food combinations. It also has the best view and facilities of the kitchens on board – I checked them out before I took the job. You can’t cook Michelin-starred food without a Michelin-starred kitchen.

The kitchens on the ship are surprisingly spacious – bigger than some of the ones I worked in in London or Paris. So while I mainly work on development, Andreas oversees most of the cooking for the crew and although the budget isn’t anything like we have per head when catering for paying passengers, it’s generous enough that we can all eat well, which also helps me maintain my reputation. The crew left on board now is for the most part fairly lowly in rank (except for Captain Leo and Doctor Stuart), but you never know where they might end up in the future. It’s important to keep the right people onside.