French president Charles de Gaulle famously once questioned how anyone could govern a country with 246 different varieties of cheese.  

Actually he was somewhat underestimating: there are well over 1,000 cheeses in France, and last week I was doing my best to taste my way through as many of them as possible at the famous Victor Hugo Market in Toulouse.

It is fascinating to watch the French consumer buy cheese (or any food really).  It is something they take time over, asking searching questions of the market trader, swapping recommendations and recipes with other shoppers, and building up anticipation for the moment when they get their cheese home and serve it.

If you have ever bought your cheese on Norwich Market, as I often do, you will have noticed that there is an element of this obsession creeping in among the British enthusiast, too.  And they are looking for a lot wider variety than just a lump of Cheddar, delicious though that might be.

I have often wondered why our cheesemakers don't seem to embrace this sort of diversity in the cheese we make in Britain, and more specifically in Norfolk.  

And at the weekend, our region's own unofficial cheese ambassador, Jonny Crickmore (who makes the renowned Baron Bigod soft cheese on his farm near Bungay) was quoted in The Observer backing up that view: 'Historically, British cheese has been boring', he said, adding 'The British are into stronger, stinkier, softer cheeses now.'

Not so long ago you would have been regarded as exotic if you served a cheeseboard in Britain with anything more than Cheddar, Edam and Red Leicester, but as in so many other aspects of our culinary life, we have expanded our cheese horizons, learning to love everything from Camembert to Epoisses, Halloumi to Gorgonzola.

You may have spotted that almost all of the more exotic cheeses we now embrace come from overseas.  But as Jonny Crickmore has shown, this doesn't have to be the case.  He started making Baron Bigod - an unpasteurised Brie type cheese - after realising just how popular this kind of product is in the UK, and wondering why no-one in the UK was making a similar type of cheese.

Fast forward a few years, and Baron Bigod is one of the UK's most famous cheeses, served in many Michelin-starred restaurants, and building not just a national but an international reputation.

Although we in Norfolk might like to claim Baron Bigod as our own, it is in fact made just over the border in Suffolk.

In our own county, while we do have some talented cheesemakers, not one of their products is widely known outside Norfolk.

As so often happens with our county's food, we seem to relish keeping our amazing artisan food products a secret from the wider world.  And that is a real pity, because there is a real opportunity here to build a market.  

If the UK consumer's tastes have become more exotic when it comes to cheese, why can't we satisfy that demand?

Those cheesemongers who champion our local producers (such as Jarrolds) find that Norfolk cheese is a minority interest even among local consumers.  And that is because local producers are largely playing it safe, with traditional 'English' cheese styles which have not kept up with consumers' more cosmopolitan tastes.

When I speak to local chefs about serving produce from Norfolk, many of them say they would love to serve customers an all-Norfolk cheeseboard, but fear that such an offering would be rather too one-dimensional for modern tastes.  

That is not to say that there are not delicious cheeses being made in the county, because there are - it's just that the ambition of our cheesemakers seems to be a bit limited.

There is absolutely no reason in the world why our own producers couldn't follow the lead of Jonny Crickmore and make versions of foreign cheeses which could be just as good (or arguably better - I think Baron Bigod surpasses anything made by French Brie-makers) than the originals.

Why are we not making a creamy Gorgonzola dolce? A stinky rind-washed cheese in the style of Epoisses? An equally squeaky Halloumi lookalike for the barbecue? A creamy Burrata?  A sharp and tangy Roquefort?  A nutty Comte?  A Feta clone for our salads?  The opportunities are legion.

Johnny Crickmore at Fen Farm Dairy has shown what can be achieved by not playing it safe and pushing the boundaries.  In little more than a decade (Baron Bigod came onto the scene in 2013), he has made his Suffolk cheese famous.  

I would love to see a similar success story from a Norfolk producer - is anyone willing to take up the challenge?