I am not a great fan of dining out.

Mastication is best done in the privacy of your own home. How can you have a decent conversation with someone when your mouth is full of food?

So I was interested to hear about the new robot chef being developed by London company Moley Robotics.

This cooking machine, with robot hands, learns by capturing the movements of a human as he or she prepares a meal. It is being trained by the 2011 Masterchef Champion Tim Anderson.

”It’s the ultimate sous-chef,” he said. “You tell it to do something – whether it’s a bit of prep or completing a whole dish from start to finish – and it will do it. And it will do it the same every single time.”

The company is working on improvements so that it will be able to do everything from assembling, preparing and chopping the ingredients, cooking a meal and afterwards do the washing up. They hope to produce a consumer version costing £10,000 within two years.

Robotics is the coming science. Motor vehicle manufacturers are developing cars that drive and park themselves. Dysons are launching a robot vacuum cleaner.

Professor David Lane at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh says: “The example I always like to give is the Docklands Light Railway in London. Everyone gets on it and doesn’t think twice that there’s no driver, no human, at the front.”

As techniques improve, it surely can’t be long before you will be able to buy a robot cook that looks human and has Michelin star ability. I can see celebrity chefs launching their own franchises for five star restaurant dining at home.

Buy a Gordon Ramsay robot and get ripe language with your beef Wellington or enjoy the repartee of Jamie Oliver as he prepares risotto with a lisp. And Nigella Lawson would brighten up any kitchen – well, she would for a bloke.

But how do chaps get the wife to agree?