A celebrity in a search of a fast buck can do a lot worse than lend their name to a range of scoff. Unlike other exercises in brand extension - your fashion line, your perfume, your collection of yogic paraphernalia - food endorsement is the softer, domesticated face of the unseemly celebrity scrabble to screw us for every buck it can. When a famous person promotes a foodstuff, their public persona acquires a nurturing, human edge. We're so hard-wired to confuse those offering food with those offering affection. So God bless you Gary Salt'n'Lineker, Ulrika Ryvita Jonsson, Gordon Ramsay and your chocs, Frankie Dettori and your pizza. You're practically our mums.

Of course, for effective brand endorsement, the celebrity image must sit well with the essence of the product. So 'Liz Hurley' and 'cakes' wouldn't work. 'Loyd Grossman' and 'pasta sauces', however, works gorgeously. But not as gorgeously as the newest food/celeb collaboration on the block. When Nobby's Nuts, a company specialising in pub snacks with Carry On connotations, hit upon the idea of enlisting Noddy Holder (of Slade) to endorse the range, a new bar was set on the whole business. An ageing Black Country rocker with a sense of humour and a residual veneer of pub-ishness? Too perfect. And of course, the names are almost the same.

'Well,' says Noddy (who insists he's lost his Wolverhampton accent, but who actually hasn't), 'it isn't the first time I've been called Nobby. Once, I was walking down the street with Fran and Rick from Status Quo, and a lady shouted: "I know you, you're Nobby Boulder!" They never let me forget that.'

He's ensconced in a corner of an old man's pub in central London, eating steak and kidney pudding, mash and assorted veg at some rate. 'And no, you couldn't say I'm a stranger to pubs, or that I'm a stranger to pub snacks. We cut our teeth gigging in pubs, we could play five pubs a week. Pubs are the backbone of this country. You get a lot sorted out in pubs. I love all pubs, even gastropubs, so long as they don't destroy your proper pubs, because it would be a shame if youngsters only saw all that chrome and glass.'

Noddy Holder also loves food. All food. 'I'll eat anything but ratatouille, because nine times out of 10, it's just slop. The first time I went away gigging I was 17, and it was '63 or '64. There was no such thing as a pizza parlour in this country, but I went to Germany and had my first pizza, and that was great, but what was really fantastic was the little salad that came with it. I'd had salad before, but only ever with salad cream. So I tried this, and it was amazing! And it was French dressing. A revelation So from then on, every country we went to I did my utmost to taste the local delicacies. In Finland it was always reindeer omelette and beetroot soup, Paris was snails and frog's legs. You wouldn't get that in Wolverhampton.' Noddy Holder also likes to cook. He went on Ready Steady Cook and lost, 'but it was fun and I got a clock for my lad.' He mainly likes 'good British fare', although he's developed his own pasta recipe: 'Boursin Tagliatelle. You know Boursin cheese?'

Would Holder consider doing a Paul Newman, creating his own product from scratch? His eyes light up at the prospect. 'Well now, that's an idea! If I could come up with something new... How about offal? I like offal. Offal in a can, no one's done that before, have they?' And then he orders a gin and tonic ('gin for lunch time, vodka later on') and plies me with Nobby's SweetChilli Nuts, which 'are my favourite, though I've had enough of them now'.

Ultimately, you can't resent Noddy Holder for cashing in on the marketing moment. Unlike your average celeb-inspired campaign, Nobby's doesn't suggest you'll get a more fulfilling life, or a better body if you buy the product. 'They're only showing the advert after nine o'clock, after the watershed,' he says, gleefully. 'I go: "Not Noddy's Nuts, it's Nobby's Nuts!" And then I run away. Because of course they're trying to get at my nuts! I love that wink-wink postcard humour.' Celebrities might be plotting a wholesale takeover of the pre-packaged cuisine scene with some money-spinning marketing campaigns. But Noddy Holder just wants you to go down the pub.