"Tresaith has always held a special place in my heart," explains Dudley. "Back in the early '70s in the Rhondda Valley, most of us only saw the beach once a year on the Sunday school outing to Porthcawl or Barry Island. Going to Tresaith was a real change - there was no fair, no candy floss - just lots of fresh air and miles of space."

At that time, many of the pupils at Dudley's school, Ysgol Gyfun Rhydyfelen, were from non-Welsh speaking families. The aim of the Tresaith Youth Centre, run by the Presbyterian Church in Wales, was to immerse those children in the Welsh language for a few days. It was on one of these trips that the fourteen-year-old Dudley was selected to help cook for the six teachers and forty hungry children at Tresaith.

Among the teachers was Marina James, now headmistress of Ysgol Aberaeron. "I owe a lot to Marina," says Dudley. "She's the one who spotted my enthusiasm for cooking and nurtured it. In Tresaith, I found something I loved to do and wanted to carry on doing."

Marina James says, "Dudley was always a popular pupil, a real team player. If ever a child became ill and had to skip a meal, Dudley would make them one of his special toasted sandwiches using whatever he could find in the kitchen. The kids always seemed to make a miraculous recovery after that!"

One thing that hasn't changed since his early days of dishing up food in Tresaith is Dudley's belief in educating children about good food and the importance of using fresh local ingredients.

"I've worked a lot with schools, and the curriculum needs an overhaul," says Dudley. "I think it's quite frightening that parents rely on school lunches as the primary meal of the day. Part of the reason for this is that the parents themselves don't know how to cook the basics. I get people coming up to me saying they can't afford fresh food and they have to use packet alternatives, but in reality it's because they haven't been taught how to cook. It's education that's needed."

To show cooking can be easy and fun, Dudley sets a special Tresaith challenge to pupils from a local school. How will the budding young chefs from Ysgol Aberaeron get on catering for a group of school children, preparing a slap-up meal for Dudley's special guest and cooking a barbecue on the beach?