I have often wondered why I find myself salivating while listening to a programme about food on the radio when television programmes that cover similar subjects leave me unmoved. The highly respected radio producer Ian Willox, from Clifton, near Deddington, who has been producing radio food programmes since the 1980s, provided me with the answer.

He recalls that when he began putting such programmes together three decades ago, food on radio was limited by recipes delivered at dictation speed.

Ian said: “Now a large part of the radio audience has access to the internet and can download a recipe if they want it, freeing up radio to explore the real nature of food, from producers to consumers, with all the byways of ethics, economics, ecology and so on.”

He explained that, as he sees it, we are so used to images of food misleading us. “Often the contents of a package look nothing like the picture on the outside that persuaded us to buy it in the first pace, so the absence of imagery can paradoxically be more compelling than the most sumptuously art- directed picture.”

In other words, the radio offers thought and the listeners have to imagine the rest for themselves.

“There’s nothing as powerful as imagined sensuality, which means radio has the best tastes,” Ian added while trimming the woody ends from asparagus that he’d just picked from his garden and was preparing for lunch.

Yes — Ian is a foodie, a real foodie who is never happier than when working alongside his wife Tei Williams preparing the fruits and vegetables they grow in their cottage garden. His love of food may well account for those delicious dimensions that season his food programmes.

Ian’s latest project Ruby Murry, was aired last month. It was a half-hour programme on Radio Four, which discussed the history of curry.

He explained that the title is derived from the Cockney rhyming slang.

As the programme suggests, historically the English have been wary of foreign food, making the nation’s long love affair with curry a curious one. Why, for example, has Vindaloo became the unlikely battle-cry for English football fans and why is chicken tikka masala included by the Ministry of Defence in its operational ration packs to bring the troops some home comfort?

The programme, which was presented by Alkarim Jivani, was co-produced by Ian, in collaboration with Catriona Oliphant and executive producer Simon Berthon. It included contributors such as cookery writer Madhur Jaffrey, Michelin-starred chef Atul Kochhar, known for his masterful use of spices and the amazing Indian twist he brings to modern British cuisine, and Namita Panjabi, the group director of Masala World. Neil Hind, who works at the Defence Food Services, took part too.

The programme plotted the way we gradually let curry into our lives. It proved a great success.

What may surprise listeners is the length of time it takes to create a programme such as this and the way an idea for a food programme becomes reality. Ian says it is all to do with Zeitgeist. How else could it be that several people will suddenly come up with a similar idea at the same time?

“I have loads of ideas in my in-tray at any given time, but many will simply sit there, either because they have been done before, or because their time is not right. I find it fascinating that the time suddenly seems right, whereas a year or so before no one would have been interested.”

Ian’s ideas are not accepted straightaway by Radio 4. There are loads of hoops that have to be jumped through before he can begin putting the programme together. Contracts have to be signed, scripts written and contributors gathered. A great deal of research has to be completed, too. When the recording is finally in the can, the arduous edit begins. He remembers the time he was recording a programme to be broadcast in ten episodes, each dealing with a single decade of British cuisine — the programme planners suddenly decided it would go out in eight episodes. Fortunately he managed to convince them otherwise, but only after long discussion. One of his ideas once took eight years to gain approval, others at least a year, sometimes far longer.

‘The fascinating thing about the programmes I put together now is that they are not about recipes as such. Some question eating habits; others look at the life of cooks like Marguerite Patten who have shaped our cuisine over the years, while many investigate the way our food is being produced.

“One of the great things about food is that it has a timeless quality and contains no sex or bad language. Food is something we can all relate to.”