Hardeep Singh Kohli: Heard about the canaries and the bees?

Talking of colours, I found myself wearing some canary yellow the other day. It's a hoodie and it's absolutely lovely, if a little snug over my ever-increasing belly. I get bored, you see, with the dull greys and browns and blacks that are the mainstay of a man's wardrobe and I yearn for the brighter colours that seem destined only for women's collections.

I have a canary yellow turban which I have been trying to pluck up the courage to wear. When you think about it, it makes sense that women have bright colours. Historically they were meant to attract the attention of us men, to woo us with their brightness and hope that we might mate with them.

They were flowers. We would then be bees; bees are black and yellow but clearly are less colourful than all the flowers in the world. But those days have long since passed and we should be free to enjoy all colours, regardless of age, race or gender.

From slime to sublime: the purple patch on a plate

These curious vegetables that can split a room. Some hate them yet others will walk over broken glass to enjoy a modest mouthful of them. Some call them eggplants, others know them as Brinjal. I talk of the aubergine, my friends.

A staple of all Mediterranean cuisines and South-east Asian cooking, there seems to be no limit to the ways this beautifully deep purple vegetable can be prepared. The Greeks fry it and serve it with the deliciously salty halloumi cheese; the Persian peoples roast it and create a rich, smoky dip called babaganoush; and my mum would either curry it or bathe it in a gram flour batter and deep fry it: god bless the aubergine pakora.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with the aubergine. There are few foods that can be as badly cooked and well cooked as the brinjal and it is this very unpredictability that makes the egg plant such a perilous choice of food. When they are well cooked few dishes are finer; equally a badly concocted bowl of slimy mush is enough to turn anyone's stomach.

Latterly I have sought out only the well cooked version, insuring myself against disappointment. Aubergines and me have been getting on just fine. For the past few weeks I have spent a lot of time with aubergines and I find myself mildly obsessed with them. The other evening in a Turkish restaurant a friend and I ordered five dishes all of which contained aubergines, each cooked or prepared in a subtly different way from each other. A more delicious meal I have not enjoyed for some weeks. A few days later I found a comedy-sized version of the veg in an antique shop and having parted with the best part of 20 quid I now have an over-large item on my mantelpiece. And I acquired a pair of aubergine shaped cuff-links yesterday. Methinks perhaps I may be enjoying this purple patch a little too much.

My deathbed confession

I write this from bed. It is a little before 9pm and I have Radio 4 on, it's comforting burble soothing my weary mind. I have just consumed an evening meal that consisted of two Nurofen caplets (those that are meant to dissolve more quickly), a multivitamin tablet with extra Vitamin E, and an Evening Primrose dose which I only realised after I had swallowed it was a "lady's medicine". At least my sizeable feminine side will have been treated. The only decision left to make is to work out whether whisky and Nurofen are an acceptable combination.

I have man-flu. My throat hurts, my body aches, ma heid's louping and I don't have

any appetite for food. (It's that last phrase that should have you genuinely concerned about me.) I know that any pain I endure as a man is incomparable to any of the pain endured by women, or so we are constantly reminded.

But unlike the stereotype, I am not going to bleat about my sickness or draw unnecessary attention to my condition. No. Instead I will suffer silently and maintain my integrity. Even though I feel really, really rubbish.

A bit green about reality TV

Iwasn't perhaps on my best behaviour last week as I threw a hissy fit on The Apprentice. I would like to take this opportunity to apologise for my tantrums and generally huffy-type outbursts. I have now collected my toys and replaced them in the pram.

I think the one thing I have now realised in undertaking the task of raising money for charity through the gift of primetime television is that I am not what you might refer to as a "team player". This is rather unfortunate since the sine qua non of the concept of The Apprentice is the ability of its participants to form a team. This is a skill I am slowly realising that I simply do not possess.

After years of existing in the world of the freelancer, street-fighting my way into jobs and having to line up the next gig while struggling with the current booking I have become too used to being a loose cannon, a lone ranger, a solo adventurer through the great hurly burly machine they call life.

And this hasn't helped my inherent struggle with authority. I just don't like being told what to do. Ask me nicely and I shall deliver for you the world on a plate. But I have never reacted well to being told what to do. While filming for The Apprentice there were quite a lot of people telling me what to do and very few asking nicely. So I reacted badly. For this I apologise.

I would also like to apologise for wearing quite as much green as I wore; and all at the same time. That would seem to be a far more heinous crime.

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