I HAVE no idea – nor any say in – what the headline accompanying this column will be and I won’t know what the page looks like until I open my copy of today’s Echo.

You see, many people assume that, as well as writing the words, the writer also designs the page and devises the headline... but it’s not the case.

That’s the job of the unsung ‘sub’ (full title, sub-editor), whose task it is to take my rants and ramblings, oik out all the mistakes and illustrate with a suitable or amusing photo, which can sometimes be a ‘cut-out’, that is, a picture with much or all of the background removed, leaving just the main image, which the words can then snake around in a fancy-pants way.

Basically, your sub gets hold of the raw ingredients – story, photos, etc – and uses them to create a thing of beauty that you, Joan, my dear reader, will take great delight in praising, criticising, wrapping your fish supper in, whatever.

Are you asleep yet?

That was my pitiful attempt at demystifying or, the new buzzword, “deconstructing” the process of making a newspaper page – and wasn’t it really boring?

Yet, when Keith Floyd did the same thing with television, it was a thing of joy to behold, leaving you with the feeling that you’d been let in to a delicious secret.

Pre-Floyd and his amazing performing liver, your average telly presenter tended to be a rather dull, static creature.

And when it came to TV cooks, Fanny Craddock excluded, they were about as exciting as a bowl of boil-in-the-bag rice with a side serving of cold Smash.

Wearing sensible pinnies and pained expressions, they clung to their workstations, plonking and plopping various ingredients into bowls and tins with all the enthusiasm of a turkey going to visit Bernard Matthews. At Christmas.

Show highlights included putting something in an oven but never taking it out again, because there was always a sad, cold one they’d made earlier for us all to marvel at. If you were really lucky, it would all climax in a close-up of a shaky claw hacking a slice off something that could be cake, could be cardboard.

Then in flounced Floyd, like the dickie-bowed Oliver Reed of the olive brigade, with his louche manner, eccentric gilets and voracious appetite for booze as well as food and suddenly we all sat up and started to get into cooking.

But his flamboyant persona was only part of it.

What made him win the hearts of the nation were those frequent moments when he’d suddenly stop waffling about his amazing aioli or his corking cassoulet in order to take a giant glug of rouge then do something unexpected like address the cameraman – or us – direct, or maybe use a tea towel to wipe steam from the lens or, best of all, give the poor director hell.

He made mistakes, he made amazing food, he made us laugh and he made dinosaurs of all his predecessors.

And he shunned the confines of the studio or kitchen and, where possible, took to the road, but not in a slick Jamie’s American Road Trip sort of way, more a “let’s all *** off to Scrabster Harbour and I’ll cook pilchards on the jetty in a howling gale while getting very, very drunk and dropping the pot lid into the sea!” way.

Or “OK, we’re in Italy and that means Parmesano, that means pasta, that means pass me the Chianti again – ciao!” So, it was understandable that the actor and comic Keith Allen, also known to be fond of a snifter and also a bit of a televisual wildcard, cited his maverick namesake as one of his heroes and was curious to find out what the Floydster was up to these days.

But Keith Meets Keith (Monday, Channel 4, 10pm), a documentary made by Allen about what happened when he embarked on a where-are-they-now?-style mission to find the living (though barely) legend, was to prove more poignant than anyone, not least the two Keiths themselves, could ever have dreamed of as the once enfant terrible of the terrine died of a heart attack at his partner Celia’s home in Bridport while about to watch the darn thing.

This shocking news made what was already a brilliant film, where Allen’s easy charm acted as a balm to the frequently erratic, occasionally vicious, but always riveting personality of an obviously seriously ill Floyd, something utterly unmissable and now destined to become cult viewing.

Apart from settling down to die before watching himself on the box, his last hours were spent here in Dorset, at the Hix Oyster & Fish House in Lyme, where he announced that he’d never felt better, before tucking into a marvellous lunch of oysters, potted shrimp, partridge and perry jelly, all washed down with a champagne cocktail, a Pouilly-Vinselles 2006 white burgundy and a good Cote du Rhone – and a fag.

What a way to go, Floydie!