“We’re really worried about the chicken and prawns,” muses Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards midway through the opening episode of the band’s new YouTube series, Eat in With Little Mix, which is essentially Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me. “We haven’t got time to get food poisoning.” Edwards is right to be concerned, too, given that her and fellow bandmates Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Jade Thirlwall are about to be served a three-course meal made by Jesy Nelson, who, along with opening the episode with a blunt: “You may not know this but I cannot cook for shit”, will later chuck a frozen, shop-bought cheesecake in the oven and allow her friend to dangle a small pomeranian over the aforementioned prawns.

That the band survive says more about their constitutions than it does Jesy’s cooking, although any lingering thoughts of the food are quickly erased by her “entertainment”, which features a mortified male stripper who doesn’t seem to want to a) dance or b) strip.

But why is this happening? Why now? And why food? The perfect storm of dwindling record sales and social media’s quest for total insight into every aspect of a pop star’s life has meant record labels are having to dream up new avenues for relatable content, with food becoming a unifying arena in which to solidify only previously glimpsed personalities. Earlier this month, Ed Sheeran partnered with Heinz to create his own Edchup, while Jessie Ware is already on season six of her dinner-based podcast, Table Manners. Previously, pop stars were so starry that even the thought of them eating was unimaginable, but now that privacy-agnostic YouTubers are the new idols, the parameters have shifted.

So what else do we learn about Little Mix? Well, we find out during Jade’s night that while Jesy has never played bingo before, she’s keen to create some new calls (“Twenty-one; young and full of cum,” for example), and that Jade isn’t about to let gravity stop her when it comes to recreating the Angel of the North in chocolate (spoiler: it melts and slides down the wall like a sticky turd).

That Little Mix have chosen cookery as a new outlet also continues a grand girl band tradition. In 2008, Atomic Kitten’s Liz McClarnon beat Steps’ Claire Richards to be crowned Celebrity MasterChef, while seven years later Pussycat Doll Kimberly Wyatt out sautéed seasoned reality TV star and former Girl Aloud Sarah Harding to win the same crown. And who could forget Liberty X’s Michelle Heaton, who confessed to having the shits after eating Lee Ryan’s cooking on an episode of Celebrity Come Dine With Me? Eat in With Little Mix may never quite reach such lows, but it does show pop’s continued ability to think outside the (Domino’s pizza) box.