I thought as a little Christmas gift I would pass on my favourite recipe for cheesecake this week.

Cheesecake is a bit old hat these days, it comes in all kinds of little E-numbered packets, but when I first obtained this recipe cheesecake was something special. I've never met anyone who didn't like it, but then come to think of it I don't know many people who aren't little piggies about food.

I first came across it when a friend took me to lunch at her daughter's new house. We both raved about this wonderful concoction and she modestly said it was simple to make and I asked for the recipe. There was a slight cooling of the atmosphere and she changed the subject. I knew immediately there was going to be trouble and getting that recipe out of her was going to be like pulling teeth.

I can never really understand why people won't pass on recipes. I mean if it was your great uncle's own invention of toadflax jelly which was claimed to cure everything from warts to acute constipation and which one day was going to make you a fortune I might forgive a reluctance to part with it, but why do people get all coy when you ask for a perfectly simple recipe for oatmeal flapjacks?

I was once doing a restaurant write-up and casually asked how the woman owner had made the nut cutlets (it was a veggie place). She ran through a few fairly obvious ingredients (nuts being one of them) and then flatly refused to tell me what the 'secret ingredient' was. I played the game for about five minutes by naming as many unlikely things as I could think of 'eye of newt' etc., while she crowed 'you'll never guess in a million years' until I wanted to thump her with one of her aubergine crudités.

Anyway, when it came time to leave the cheesecake house, I waited until I was on the doorstop before turning round and saying that silly old me had quite forgotten the recipe and could I have it NOW. With bad grace she reeled it off - me writing it down and she writing me off her Christmas card list.

When I got home I noticed that the list she had given didn't include sugar, which I was certain was in it. That's another ploy of reluctant recipe givers, they try try to leave out one essential ingredient. I guessed at the sugar and it worked fine.

My family adored it, and still do, insisting on it every Christmas and Easter. But the person who loved it more was my friend Terry, who became an instant addict. If we ever invited him and his then wife for a meal he would always hopefully inquire if cheesecake was on the menu. He was the only person who could manage two large slices at one sitting. Once I made one for a picnic we all went on together. While the rest of us went for a walk after lunch we left Terry snoozing. When we got back Terry was missing and so was the remaining half of the cheesecake. A little later we heard the sound of retching in the bushes - that cheesecake sorts the men from the boys.

Terry now lives in America. The last time I went to visit him he asked me wistfully if I could bring him one over. As the United States customs in California treat anyone attempting to bring one single orange into their country as a master criminal I felt that any move on my part to slink in with a whole cheesecake would be folly indeed. We tried to amass the ingredients in local supermarkets but in the land of the no-fat spread we hadn't a prayer.

That's the build up - here's the recipe. You need eight ounces of full fat cream cheese; eight ounces of curd cheese; two small tubs of double cream; two small tubs of soured cream; six ounces of caster sugar; two ounces of cornflour; one large egg; vanilla extract. For the biscuit case: six to eight ounces of digestive biscuit crumbs (make them by placing the whole biscuits in a plastic bag and hitting them hard with a rolling pin, thinking of someone you don't like as you do it), three ounces of melted butter. To decorate, halved white or black grapes, de-seeded. Icing sugar.

To make the crumb case, melt the butter and while still warm stir in the digestive crumbs. Allow to cool and then line one eight inch loose bottomed cake tin, preferably non stick, with the crumbs. Pull them up the sides to halfway, patting them down so they line the tin. Put in the fridge to set.

Beat the cream cheese and the curd cheese together until light and fluffy. Gradually add the two creams, beating in a little at a time to prevent lumps. Mix the sugar and the cornflour together. Beat the egg. When the cheeses and the cream are all mixed, add the sugar and cornflour and the egg a little at a time, beating in well. You should have a smooth mixture. Add a few drops of vanilla extract for flavour. I should add here that the original recipe called for sultanas as well, but ever since someone said they reminded her of little squishy eyes I have never been able to eat them. You might not mind.

Pour the mixture into the biscuit base. Place in a low oven, about gas mark two to three, and bake for about one to one and a half hours or until the cheesecake is solid in the middle. It may brown a little but this doesn't matter. Turn off the heat and allow to go cold in the oven. When cold slide out of tin upside down onto a plate, decorate with grape halves and dust with icing sugar. Other suitable fruit to place on the top could be slices of kiwi, but nothing too sweet.

Serve in small slices - provide your own bush for retching in if you eat too much.

I was a little perturbed last week to note a letter in our letters' page which suggested I might like to occasionally mention my grandmother's good points. Oh dear, have I really given the impression that she didn't have any? She was a dreadful cook, but even if she had realised it I doubt she would have cared. She was always too busy, too anxious to move onto life's next adventure to bother too much about recipes. And as for arranging food in delicate mounds on plates - well, it all went down the same way didn't it?

I remember her as funny, gregarious, bustling, spirited and stubborn. She was one of those redoubtable old ladies knew exactly what Winston Churchill was asking for in the war years - total commitment and an unwavering spirit of undefeat.

My grandmother had it in for Adolf Hitler from the moment she was machine gunned in the street and her best edge to edge crepe two piece was ruined when she was thrown under a milkfloat by a passing milkman She would have happily danced on his bunker in 1945 had she known where it was. Adolf's, not the milkman's, that is.

I don't remember her being particularly outwardly affectionate but somehow I knew she would have swum across shark infested waters to save me.

My mother's favourite story was when, as a child, she fell into the St Lawrence River through the ice and my grandmother yelled to passers-by 'quick, get her out, she's got a new coat on', but burst into tears when they got home. I don't think they make old ladies like her any more, but if they do, I want to be one.