Mrs No Name and the rumour mongers!

Rick Stein walks with Denham Productions' producer Arezoo Farahzad and harbour commissioner Nick Howell early on Tuesday alongside the market.

This week, Penwith's local paper The Cornishman reports on an anonymous woman who told them she had seen Rick Stein in the town earlier this week and asked him not to turn Newlyn into a "new Padstow"! Given the current state of affairs, as the harbour commissioners are hard at work preparing their business plan for the future of the harbour, any activity or interest shown by such influential people as Rick Stein should surely be welcomed - as it was, his presence was entirely innocent of course, filming for a BBC2 Christmas special.

Rick Stein, along with the late Keith Floyd, two highly influential chefs whom, back in the 80s, were responsible for changing the eating habits of a generation in this country - mainly for fish. Rick Stein's book, English Seafood Cookery was recently rated at number 16 in the Guardian's top 50 cook books of all time. Hotels and restaurants all over the UK began to source fish locally and put langoustine, red mullet, monkfish, squid and hake on the menu with the confidence that they would sell to a more knowledgeable public - unheard of prior to the screening of the eponymous Floyd on Fish or Stein's Taste of the Sea.

Newlyn is not about to turn into another Padstow, even if Mr Stein decided that it was the ideal place in which to open a new venture.  At the moment Newlyn needs to celebrate all aspects of the fishing industry and its heritage. TV programmes, especially food related, create interest and potentially increases awareness and therefore sales of locally caught fish - all to the good.

Remember, many years ago, St Austell, by far the biggest town in Cornwall at the time, said no to Marks & Spencers - so they opened a store in the small (at the time) central town of Truro - and the rest, anonymous Newlyn resident, is history.