You’ve heard of the jazz age and the jet age, but my wife and I have finally entered the air fryer age.

And I use the word ‘finally’ because it has taken us… well… ages.

I don’t think we have ever taken quite so long to decide to buy anything before, having started thinking about it years ago, long before they became ‘the latest thing’.

My main motive was the prospect of doing something we have never done at home, which is to cook chips.

For various reasons related to unhealthiness, stinking the house out and setting it on fire, we have always avoided cooking chips in fat, and the alternative – oven chips – were a bitter disappointment.

I am the world’s number one fan of potatoes in every form, so to my mind there can be few things in the history of human civilisation that promised so much as oven chips and yet delivered so little.

Unfortunately, if you ask most people about cooking chips in an air fryer, they automatically assume you mean oven chips, but that totally defeats the object.

What I really wanted to know was whether it is possible to cut out the middleman and cook chips from scratch.

In the end, we decided the only thing for it was to buy one and find out for ourselves, which we did last week.

I can report that although they don’t turn out as nice as the chip shop’s or the ones my old mum used to make, our homemade air fryer chips are pretty passable – and much better, obviously, than oven chips.

What’s more, they couldn’t be easier, as we have found from experimentation.

The prevailing ‘wisdom’ is that you have to par boil them for ten minutes first, but don’t waste your time with that nonsense.

All you have to do is drizzle olive oil all over the chips, bung them in – and press go.

Meanwhile, we have discovered that food covered in breadcrumbs comes out crispier, and have also had some success with dehydrating fruit.

So we are regretting not buying an air fryer years ago, but then again we would never have bought one at all if it had been up to my wife.

Most of the delay was down to her fear that it would turn out to be just another kitchen gadget that ends up being a fad.

Only time will tell, but the signs are good, and it has made me come overall philosophical, because I think there is a lesson to be learned.

Life is short, and it doesn’t always have to be governed by practicality, including in the kitchen.

A man needs a gadget from time to time, to perk him up, and even if the air fryer ends up in the gadget graveyard with the Sodastream, the soup maker and the sandwich toaster, it was fun while it lasted.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s just small potatoes.