Her accuracy rate is 95%. Most trend forecasters aren’t in business long enough to even have an accuracy rate. That’s why IBM, American Express and McDonalds fall over themselves to employ her. In America, Popcorn is chat-show famous. Even Oprah wanted to meet the 60-year-old woman who predicted the success of four-wheel drive vehicles and the failure of New Coke. Popcorn was the first to identify the stay-at-home syndrome (which she called ‘cocooning’) and the growth in home delivery, home business and home shopping. Back in 1981 she told companies that, because we were ‘cocooning’, we would buy more Haagen-Dazs and babygros. She was right.

Popcorn’s methods are suitably futuristic. To research ideas she conducts ‘Hypnotrend Probes’, which regress volunteers under hypnosis. After they have signed a release form, of course. She has even employed psychics. “I’m not like Nancy Reagan. I don’t interview psychics, and then predict what’s going to happen. I’m more interested in how people in general feel about psychics”. So it’s no surprise to discover she has a Third Eye – although you wouldn’t know it to look at her. It exists in only a ‘spiritual’ way. “Every culture talks about an extra sense. Having a Third Eye is like being in the present, but seeing from the future”. Let’s just say that Popcorn is open to whatever is out there.

When I predict rends, it’s hardly “buckle up – we’re on our way to tomorrowland.” I mean, I’ve got a reasonable success rate. I can show you the press cuttings. But I can’t get too excited about this new branch of what’s now being called social anthropology. I need a mission statement that will appeal to the American self-improvement tradition. The same tradition that underpinned Chicken Soup For The Soul, and Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And a new name. Richard Johnson is just too dull. “We sell okay in Britain” says Popcorn. “But in Britain you don’t think you need to look forward. Even to tomorrow.”

Popcorn has become a multimillionaire by painstakingly identifying the societal trends of the future, and then giving them cutesy little names. There’s ‘99 Lives’ (we’ll all be busy), ‘Egonomics’ (we’ll all be selfish) and ‘Fantasy Adventure’ (we’ll all be wearing hiking boots). “The 17 trends we have right now seem to be pretty stable” says Popcorn. “If I see something that I cannot fit into the 17 trends, I hang on to it. That will kick me into another trend.” Critics say she is merely selling the blindingly obvious. “Well” she says, “Fortune 500 Chairmen don’t think it’s so obvious” says Popcorn. “Otherwise why would they pay me so much money?”

Here are some of my best guesses for next year. Olive Magazine’s 2012 Food Predictions. If they’re correct, I’ll remind you about them in 12 months time……

There was never an Eat My Pies ‘business model’ – Andy Bates isn’t a business model kind of fellah. “I just wanted something to do on a Sunday” he says. “I thought ‘I’ll make pies, run a stall and listen to the cricket’.” But it hasn’t worked out like that – he’s too busy serving the long line of customers who come from far and wide to taste his scotch eggs, pork pies and custard tarts. By the time he’s served them, England are all out. And the Australians are batting again.

Andy had always made pies. Whether it was a highday or a holiday, Andy would never turn up empty handed. “There’s nothing like a pie” he says. “Especially a big pie. To make people smile. I’ve got friends who can afford to buy anything they want, but if I give them a pie which I’ve made myself, you can see how chuffed they are. The feeling lasts for a few days, and then I get a text message saying ‘I’ve just had the last slice – thankyou’. I like that feeling.”

Pies are part of Britain’s history – just think of all the references to pies in the nursery rhymes of our childhood. There was Simple Simon, who met that pieman, going to the fair. And Tom, Tom the piper’s son, who stole a pig and away he run. The ‘pig’ that he stole was actually a sweetmeat pie from a street trader. So, whether it’s a sweet pie, a savoury pie, or a four-and-twenty-blackbirds-baked-into-a-pie, we are pie crazy. Pies are in our very DNA.

Andy, however, didn’t know what to do with his genetic predisposition toward pies. He wasn’t commercially minded. He had been to catering college, and was working – part-time – as a commis chef. “But, at 30-years-old, I got to thinking ‘I want to run my own business’. I had been speaking about setting up a pie stall for two years, and a friend just turned round to me and said ‘Why don’t you do it?’. It was the kick start I needed. ‘Oh’, I said. ‘I will’.”

The early success of Andy’s stalls in Brick Lane and Whitecross Street markets was down to his pastry. He knew the secret – love your pastry, and it will love you in return. From years of watching food programmes, he had learnt not to overhandle it. It just increases the gluten development. The butter is there to separate the gluten lumps – if it melts, the gluten molecules join together and you get tough pastry. That’s why, when you’ve got pastry to make, you need to keep everything cold.

“But I started in the summer” says Andy. “I had a terrible time of it. I bought marble slabs and froze them at night. I would try and get into the kitchen by 6am – before the kitchen got hot – because after 8am it was no good. I was using pate sucree recipes from Gordon Ramsay and, to be honest, I found them a little bit unworkable. The high-end chef’s recipes were a little bit out of my league. So I took a mix of Delia and Gary Rhodes, and developed my own. I think it worked.”

For his meat pies, Andy uses a hot water crust pastry. It’s a classic, old-school recipe that bakes to a rich brown, and holds in the wet pie filling very snugly. When you cut open Andy’s crusts, you will be struck by the colour of what’s inside. It isn’t artificial. It’s wholesome. And whether there’s a lip of untrimmed pastry, hanging over the edge of the pie tin, or slight variations in the colouration on the top, Andy’s pies all feel wonderfully hand-made.

Andy Bates is happy to think of himself as a modern-day pieman. In Victorian times, the pieman would hawk for business on the streets with a large tray of pies on top of his head – or strapped to the front of his chest. If customers wanted a pie with sauce, they would make a hole in the top of the crust with their finger, and the pieman would pour in the gravy. Andy likes the idea. He’s now developing his own range of Eat My Pies sauces and condiments.

Andy has a new kitchen unit (Pieworld, as he likes to call it) and a rickshaw for deliveries – the Piemobile. A sign on its bumper says ‘There are no pies left in this vehicle overnight’ – well, it warns off hungry kids in the neighbourhood. The Piemobile doesn’t have to pay road tax or congestion charge. “And I can park it on double yellow lines” says Andy. “The traffic wardens just stand there, scratching their heads. They’re like ‘We can’t nick you’. I say ‘I know. That’s why I bought it’.”

Andy has recruited a top sales team – Mum and Dad. “Well,” he says, “they watched me struggle during my 20s, when I was a bit wayward, so they’re as chuffed as chips to help out now. My Mum spent 30 years demonstrating kitchens. When I went to work with her, I would sit in the cupboards all day and hear her say, ‘You need a new kitchen don’t you, sir?’ She’s used to rejection. On the stall, I can still take it personally. But she can joke, and have someone buying a pie by the end of it.”

Now the Americans want a slice of Eat My Pies. While he was researching the New York street food scene, he set up shop in Brooklyn. In the middle of an eclectic mix of vintage mink stoles, broken alarm clocks and Star Wars collectibles, he sold out – in three hours. “Everyone was asking for Scottish eggs. I explained that they were called Scotch eggs, and they weren’t actually from Scotland. But when I sliced one in front of them, and the yolk was runny, I got lots of oohs and aahs.”

He wasn’t very taken with what he saw of the New York street food scene. “I wasn’t blown away by anything at all” says Andy. “Too much junk food. And the packaging? Everything came in three or four layers of plastic. I get people in London who won’t buy a slice of custard tart from me because it’s in a plastic box. I thought New Yorkers would be the same. But no. I think we’ve got the best street food in the world right now. I really do. And it’s only going to get better.

“I’ve always been quite a confident driver” Fay told me. “The day after I passed my test, I decided to drive straight to Edinburgh. Which was a little bit of a feat for a 17-year-old. Being a noncy drama student, I was off to tread the boards at the Festival. I seem to remember it was The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui – a Brecht piece, and very, very important. But I didn’t have a car at the time, so I borrowed my brother-in-law’s – a rickety old Hillman Imp.”

“On the way, I opened the door without looking. Which, as it happened, was onto a speeding vehicle. Door schmor. My fault, clearly. But I decided the show must go on, door or no door, and abandoned the Hillman Imp by the roadside. I rang up my brother-in-law, crying. I said ‘By the way, there’s no door on your car’ like I was blaming him for allowing me to drive it. I made him pay for the repairs too. What kind of sister-in-law was I?”

“I had another accident in my first year of driving, but this time it was more serious. It involved me writing off my Mini. I was going round a roundabout, putting my lippy on. I remember looking in the rear-view mirror, and singing quite loudly, when a gentleman drove straight into my driver’s side door. It was his first day in his new company car, and his foot was evidently a bit heavy on the accelerator. The Mini disintegrated completely.”

“It was quite terrifying. My seat lifted right up, and shunted over to the passenger side. It was like I was actually sitting in the passenger seat. The verdict of the insurance company was ‘knock for knock’, which I suppose was fair. But I don’t think I mentioned the fact that I was putting on lipstick at the time. The accident must have made an impression on me. I did own a Citroen 2CV later on, but I certainly didn’t buy another Mini.”

Maybe I should have a back-up judge on stand-by?

Aiken Drum was an odd-bod. What with his hat of cream cheese, and his coat of roast beef, he had what can only be described as the world’s first eating disorder. If I remember the rhyme correctly, Drum (who played upon a ladle, a ladle) had friends who got to eat his clothing. How I wanted to be a friend of Aiken’s. As a young boy I dreamt that we would run away together, and live in a town where the rivers were fat with milk and the hills were moulded from grated cheese.

Well, I’ve found the town. Finally. And it’s not the horizon of my imaginings – it’s on the A49. It’s Ludlow, the foodie capital of England. With a population of only 8,000, this pretty Norman town still manages to support three private bakers. Every Wednesday, a van drives up from the Perigord, packed with truffles and foie gras. And the fishermen arrive with their catches from Cornwall. It’s the sort of place that Aiken could truly kick back, and be himself. And wear his coat of roast beef in peace.

 Ludlow also boasts five private butchers, including Chris Carter’s (well, the man is a respected member of the Institute of Meat) and Reg Martin’s. Both use natural lamb gut for their sausages, so there’s no pellet of indigestible plastic at the end of every mouthful. It’s where I had my sausages made up when I wed a Shropshire lass in Ludlow all those years ago. I love the place. And I couldn’t think of a better place for the first British Street Food Awards.

White was in Manhattan promoting The Devil In The Kitchen – the American edition of his autobiography. His publicists at Bloomsbury were selling him as the original rock-star chef. The one who made Gordon Ramsay cry – who would string up his kitchen juniors by their aprons before dumping them in the dustbin. He was off to do a live cooking demo on The Martha Stewart Show. If he could keep his breakfast down long enough.

Last night it went wrong. It went wrong when White suggested ‘the house cocktail’. The heat of the shot glass threw one member of the drinking party into a blind panic, and she smashed her hand down onto the table. There was flaming sambuca everywhere. White got burnt, and had to ram his hand into a bucket of ice water, and bandage it up in a table napkin, before somebody – nobody quite remembers who – rolled him into a cab.

But somehow he still managed to look handsome – despite a grey demeanour and a tangle of greasy hair. He hadn’t spent any time at the mirror, but it wouldn’t have hurt – The Martha Stewart Show is, after all, the American standard for gracious domestic living. White’s turbot with citrus and cilantro was due to sit alongside a leaf-covered candleholder how-to, and a tip on using old navigational charts as gift wrap. It was the start of one hell of an adventure……

Marco (alongside the equally brilliant and magnificent Mark Hix, Antony Worrall Thompson and Thomasina Miers) will be judging the British Street Food Awards. And by the look of this Marco Pierre White LIDO feature in the Sunday Times magazine, he’s quite excited about it……

At Leon, they serve fast food. As in “food that is fast”. Not “fast food”. Although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Behind the counter was a multi-channelled chute, just like McDonalds. I gave the waitress my order and she turned round to get it, just like McDonalds. But at Leon the chicken is free range, the coffee is fair trade, and – if you sing at the counter – you get a free sticker. Which isn’t just like McDonalds at all.

I decided to eat indoors. Well, even though I love the street, it was raining. The food came in little pots, with no plates. But there was warm pitta to mop up any accidents at the table. The glorious Moroccan meatballs (£2.80) had the taste of grassfed lamb, and the taramasalada (£3) had a clean tang of lemon. But the magic beans (£2.50) were, well, magic. They showed what could be done with just green beans, lemon, rosemary and chilli. And gluten free/lactose free/meat free to boot!

From the two forks the South African waitress gave me, she clearly thought I was expecting company. But I wasn’t. I was just doing my job as a restaurant reviewer. When I ordered two more main courses, she smiled said ‘What you’ve eaten already tonight would feed a family of five for three days where I come from’. She clearly thought I had an eating disorder. I pointed out that I wasn’t finishing every dish I ordered, but she was off serving someone else.

The crunch-coated fish, wrapped in a Lebanese flatbread (£3.90) tasted like a “fast food” fish burger. And I mean that as a compliment. The taste of “fast food” is chemically enhanced, and has more to do with men in lab coats than men in chef’s whites. But the Leon fish burger was cooked in olive oilm and slathered in a tartar sauce, rich with capers. The fact that the fish came from sustainable sources was of secondary importance. This was a really happy meal. I always look out for their entry form when I’m judging the RSPCA Awards http://www.rspcagoodbusinessawards.com/judges.html/.

The Leon idea came from Henry Dimbleby — a former chef at the Michelin-starred Four Seasons Inn On The Park — and John Vincent. The entrepreneurial pair have found a real gap in the market. Their mix of ethical food, that is really big on flavour, has been a huge success. And now they’ve got a chain on their hands. But they still get the whole street food idea, which is why they want to support us instore and online. We are in good company, people……