Face of the Asda dairy counter/bummer of cheese/apparent chum of Clarkson and Cameron/organiser of in-debted festival/occasional bassist Alex James has written a column about how much he loves KFC, McDonald's and Greggs for The Sun. Gosh we hope the Blur lifetime achievement Brits honour thing brings in some royalties if he's this desperate. Bet you wish you hadn't spunked a million quid on Champagne in three years now, eh, Alex?

The Quietus drew our attention to Alex James' new advertorial column for The Sun. We've included the highlights below, although you might like to click onto the site so you can see the pictures of him with a Greggs pasty lodged in his chin. He apparently drew the line at wearing a The Sun baseball cap, although he doesn't stop short at much else. Lordy, even Antony Worrall Thompson would wince at the stinking cheese wafting out of his arse.

Alex on Greggs

Chief executive Ken McMeikan invited me to see Greggs' brand new £16.4million super bakery in Gosforth, just outside Newcastle.

Getting the chance to get the bonnet up and see how the Greggs machine ticks was brilliant.

The factory visit was real Willy Wonka stuff — the best food factory I've ever been to, and I've been to a lot. There were huge conveyor ovens, and seeing the dough go in at one side and come out as a loaf was like a reverse domino effect.

Doughnut waterfalls tipped dough into sizzling oil to crisp them to perfection and a sausage roll machine — as big as a football pitch and more than 1km long — folded the pastry 92 times before squirting sausagemeat in.

I iced triple chocolate cupcakes with an enormous icing bag full of chocolate cake topping and I squirted jam into doughnuts using a machine controlled by a foot pedal.

I was treated to a huge spread of all the products Greggs have to offer — from ham, leek and cheese bakes to gingerbread men. It was a party right in front of me. I've been to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant and had a tasting menu for upwards of £50 and it wasn't that much fun.

And after seeing how they do things, it makes it more likely that I will eat there, not less.

Alex on McDonald's

My day with McDonald's was absolutely brilliant.

I wanted to look at the whole supply chain, from cow to Big Mac, so we started at a massive building with lorries sticking out of it in Scunthorpe, North Lincs.

All three million burgers produced here every day have to be the same and McDonald's have made it into an art form.

It's like magic seeing how the process binds together a perfect quarter pounder, which pops out of a conveyor belt at the other end.

It's then blasted with liquid nitrogen (Heston Blumenthal got the idea from them, not the other way round) and deep frozen before being eaten somewhere around the UK within 14 to 20 days.

If you think about how long burgers knock around in your freezer, that's pretty good going.

Every half hour a burger is picked off the production line and tested in the kitchen at the back. The testers have a checklist which includes sear evenness, juiciness and chewiness. They tasted good to me even though it was 8am.

It's a pretty simple thing they're doing but McDonald's have totally mastered it.

Next stop was a backstage visit to a McDonald's in Leicester's Fosse Shopping Park, one of 1,196 branches in the UK.

Backstage was brilliant. There's some fantastic gear there and in some ways it's very similar to a Michelin-starred restaurant.

When it's busy in a Michelin kitchen, all the chefs are doing is putting pre-prepared parts of a meal together, which is essentially the same as McDonald's.

There's a mayo gun which gives you the right serving with just one squeeze of the trigger. The bun is toasted in a mega toaster which leaves it crunchy but fluffy.

They gave me a bag of the seasoning which goes on a Big Mac and I've been using it to flavour my home-made bread.

It's awesome and, according to McDonald's, contains just salt and pepper.

You have just the right amount of chopped onion and just two pieces of gherkin... writing this makes me want to eat one straight away.

McDonald's served 90million more people in 2011 than they did in 2010 and after seeing how dazzling the business is I don't think there's anything sinister about that.

My day with McDonald's didn't put me off eating there at all.

I was dazzled by the whole process from farm to factory to burger.

Alex James on KFC

I'm backstage at a KFC in Reading.

It's hot, noisy and everything happens fast. I'm wearing rubber boots, latex gloves and an apron and I'm up to my elbows in a big tub of the Colonel's "secret recipe".

Which is a bit of nonsense, of course. It would be easy to create something fairly similar to the "secret" flour mixture. I'd be tempted to add a bit of rosemary if I was doing it at home.

What would be harder to recreate is the cooking gear. The high-temperature pressure fryers that produce crispy, juicy meat are the Colonel's real secret.

The tray of chicken descends into hot rapeseed oil and after 15 minutes they are lifted to drip dry.

My wife Claire doesn't like the kids eating KFC because she thinks it's unhealthy. You'd certainly be mad to eat there all the time but there's nothing wrong with it as a treat. KFC are obviously responding to a demand for healthier food. They were excited about their new braiser oven, for non-fried chicken breast.

I was impressed with how smoothly the operation ran.

A clever recipe, cutting-edge technology and good training. Plus, they put it in a nice box.

Now I've seen how it works I'm going to try Kentucky Fried grouse at home this weekend.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of Jamie Oliver's tongue exploding.

Seriously, run off back to your country house, Alex, and stop this smug 'gosh, even I - a posh man - likes the fast food chains' bullshit.