Celebrity chef Tom Kerridge had Pub in the Park revellers in stitches after he compared a cooking blunder made by his nine-year-old son to business as usual on a Simon Rimmer cooking show. The 50-year-old had enlisted his son Ace to play a major role in his cooking demos across four days at the festival he founded in his home town of Marlow, Buckinghamshire.

The Higginson Park event, which is a stone’s throw from Tom’s three pubs, The Hand and Flowers, The Coach and The Butcher’s Tap and Grill, was halted when Ace made a series of blunders, followed by forgetting the name of a key ingredient – apple sauce. Food plummetted to the floor and Ace narrowly avoided burning his eyes while making a chilli sauce, but Tom laughed it all off. He retorted: “Don’t worry about it, it’s the last demo of the day – no-one will know! It’ll be like Saturday morning TV with Simon Rimmer,” adding “You do whatever and everyone goes, ‘Oh, great!'”

During the demo, Ace proudly pointed out that he hadn’t spilled the apple juice the way he had done the previous day – but then, as they were making a chilli sauce accented with garlic, they had a fresh mishap.

“If it’s landed on the floor, just ignore it,” Tom declared as he took over to avert the crisis, telling the audience: “We don’t do the 3 second rule here. No one knows about that in our house. It doesn’t exist, does it?”

The rule refers to a practise where the food can be left on the floor for a maximum of three seconds before it becomes inedible due to bacteria fears – and Tom previously told us that he “definitely” uses it, joking: “If [Ace] drops it on the floor, he’s having it for breakfast. We haven’t got time to make anything else.”

A few seconds later, Tom warned his son about the chillies, cautioning: “Whatever you do, do not rub your eyes after you’ve touched them!”

Then he thought better of it and scooped them up himself, telling him: “When I tell you, ‘Don’t do something’, what’s the first thing that you do?”

Ace confessed: “I do it”, to which Tom replied: “Exactly!”

The chilli sauce, accented by vinegar and cloves of garlic was unusually thick, according to Ace – and Tom knew exactly why.

“Do you know why this sauce is now really thick? Because this is the first time since Thursday we’ve been able to do this properly. We’re taking it all weekend for us to get this right – it’s nobody else’s fault but our own!” he exclaimed.

Despite the awkward blunder, Tom’s appearance was a huge success, with his Butcher’s Tap and Grill food stall selling out and closing hours earlier than expected on Sunday after huge public demand.

Tom also supplied jars of honey from beehives in his own back garden for a tasting session on Sunday, as well as talking Good Food at a live podcast event.