I’m very keen on Italian food, and a little while ago I took a pasta cooking course with a mate of mine who is our family dentist in Australia and a very good cook. He and I did the course and our wives came as official tasters. I started offstirring risotto, then I learned to make pasta with a little hand machine, which is very therapeutic. If you’ve got it right, you should be able to hold up the pasta to the light and it looks just like tissue paper.

A glass of good wine also helps me to relax. I like a robust red or a white burgundy, French, Australian - or occasionally English.

Every year I have a medical and every year it shows that I don’t seem to suffer from stress. I get up early and work hard and I wind down by playing golf, though I haven’t played much in the past six months because I have been writing my autobiography. The Edgbaston golf course is one of my favourites.

I enjoy golf because it’s such a challenge. You are only up against yourself on the course, you are totally reliant on your own honesty in calling penalties, and there is a great deal of skill - or otherwise - in putting a piece of metal up against that ball and getting it into the hole. I can completely lose myself in trying to turn in a decent score. Golf is probably the best therapy of all.

Former Australian cricket captain Richie Benaud is a television cricket commentator for the BBC, whose autobiography will be published by Hodder and Stoughton in August. He was talking to Pamela Coleman