I've never been much of a dab hand in the kitchen. I put some of it down to a teacher shouting at me at school once for breaking a mixing bowl in home economics. Or the fact that I'm just a bit lazy when it comes to making stuff. Like a lot of people, I have quite a few cookbooks in the kitchen, but I just enjoy salivating over the pictures rather than graduating to actually rustling any of the dishes up.

At university, I used to wait until my housemates got home from a night out, so they could make me a fried egg sandwich. Those are the levels of my aversion to cooking. The microwave is definitely my favourite gadget in the kitchen, and I simply can't understand anyone who doesn't own one.

Mind you, it turns out I'm something of a kitchen whizz compared to 27% of the population, if a new Waitrose report is to be taken at face value. That's the percentage of people who told the people with clipboards that they have never boiled an egg, and moreover that they don't know how to. More than a quarter of people are officially more clueless in the kitchen than me! This is something of a revelation.

When I was counting syns properly, eggs were one of my favourite filling syn-free foods. The only downside was when they became so scarce that the only ones in stock were the super pricey ones. Eggs are great, from poached to fried, boiled to scrambled. A very versatile food! How on earth can anyone not know how to boil one? It blows my mind.

Other findings in the supermarket chain's annual Cooking Report include the fact fewer than a fifth of people have made a salad dressing. That sounds like far too much faff to me, if I'm honest. Less than half (45%) had baked a Victoria sponge cake. I'm amongst those too. When we had a "Bake Off" competition at a radio station I worked at in Doncaster, I made a pineapple upside down cake and was accused of cheating by using Betty Crocker cake mix. I thought it was quite enterprising, but I'm told it circumvented the rules. Spoilsports.

A fifth of us are entertaining more at home due to the cost of living crisis. I stood in the cheese aisle in Asda for ages the other day, and the "entertaining cheese" did nothing to make me smile. A further 34% reckon the term "dinner party" is old fashioned. I've not been to one of those since pre-pandemic, so either they are more scarce, or I'm not being invited to them any more. Perhaps my rants in this column about the follies of Brexit have scared my friends off. They always say you should avoid mentioning religion or politics at dinner parties, after all.

In spite of air fryers soaring in popularity, almost three times as many people said they could not live without their microwave as those who said the same about air fryers, at 32% and 12% respectively. I think the gadgets I'd miss the most would be my two coffee machines. I can't hit the road early for a 6AM start on Tameside Radio without an espresso and a large black coffee, one from each. I'd give up tiger bread, bath bombs and beer before sacrificing caffeine.

Martyn Lee, executive chef for Waitrose, said: "For too long we've been looking down on microwaves. You can do so much more in them than heat a cup of coffee. I make a great sponge in mine". I wonder what this newspaper's resident food guru Lisa Burns would say about that!

Three more interesting revelations from the research - 46% of people ignore the sell-by dates on packaging, 38% use the five-second rule for picking up dropped food from the floor and consuming it, and a third get their ideas from TV programmes on what to cook. I like watching the Great British Bake Off, but have never baked a cake, unless you count the pineapple cheat one. I love reading the Observer's food supplement too, and often cut out recipes I know deep down I'll never make. I suppose it's a bit like buying more books before I've finished any of the ones on my groaning shelves. Must dash & microwave a couple of chapatis to go with the okra curry my wife's made for lunch. Have a good week!