Celebrity chef James Martin dazzled on the final day of the Bolton Food and Drink Festival with his lamb and chicken wings recipes.

It was his seventeenth time at the event with his cooking demonstrations entertaining a crowd inside the town hall today.

The festival had a delayed start due to damage caused by Storm Lilian but food lovers have still came out in force to the shortened three-day event, which has 200 stalls, live entertainment as well as plenty of cooking demonstrations.

The chef spoke of his hatred of air fryers during his first demo and revealed how he had been so impressed with one stall on the market last year that he had arranged for the woman behind it to come on his TV show Saturday Kitchen.

Speaking to The Bolton News about his love for the town, he said: "It's a very special place full of very special people at a very special festival.

"I have been involved in this a long long time and I've seen it morph and grow from what it was to what it is and it's a privilege to be a part of it.

"The demos have increased in size and length and amount of food over the years.

"We are doing three 45-minute demos, four dishes per demo.

"They are accessible, quick, nice fun recipes, a bit of lamb, a bit of chicken, beautiful soup and a nice little desert."

(Image: Dominic Holden)

He added: "Last year I was on my way back here, I met this lady, she took me onto her stall with her daughter and said taste this it was a vegan cakes and it just blew me away.

"Eight weeks later they were on the Saturday show.

"You find people that you have not seen before, you find people who are regulars here, food is an amazing subject you never stop learning."

(Image: NQ)

The chef gave the demos to a packed out room in the town hall.

In the first he added some asparagus to his lamb and told people they were not to snap the ingredient.

He said: "I don't know who told you to do that, it was probably the same people who told you to get an air fryer.

"We have been fine before air fryers, that's what an oven is for."(Image: Dominic Holden)

He revealed his favourite gadget was his chopping board and revealed Koji, a Japanese fermented rice which he used for the chicken wings, can make a ribeye steak from the supermarket taste like a fillet stake from Harrods.

When an audience member asked what three-course meal he would like to have cooked for him if he visited their house he joked "a bacon sandwich, fish and chips and a 99 with a flake."