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I began eating at a young age

E – Eating

I’m a bit peckish now, after all that. Shall we grab something to eat? What do you fancy? A sandwich? Anything in particular? Oh, you don’t mind? Great.

What do I want?

Oh blimey, where do I start?

I’ve never tried cocaine, acid or even ecstasy. I haven’t had a joint or smoked a cigarette in nearly twenty years. I have maybe six drinks a year. Baileys on the rocks, usually, but I can take it or leave it.

Food, on the other hand – that’s my vice. This thing here ain’t no beer belly. This is chocolate and chips, cakes and crêpes, croissants and croutons and copious amounts of crisps. When I’m eating breakfast, I’m wondering what to have for lunch. When I’m eating lunch, I’m musing on whether I’ll make it through to supper without needing a snack along the way. In bed, cursing my aching tum after yet another Roman banquet, I’ll munch a handful of Minstrels before dreaming of macaroons.

It wasn’t always thus. I started eating in earnest around the age of maybe eleven or twelve. I’d had puppy fat until then, like many kids, but by the time I was heading for secondary school, I was a big fat pudding.

It was announced one day in assembly, a year or two before I left primary school, that the canteen was changing. Until then school dinners were free and you ate what you were given or you went hungry. It was the usual fare – corned beef or Spam, a scoop of salty mashed potato from a packet, veg that had been boiled for what tasted like hours and, for afters, semolina, sago or sponge in custard.

The government was privatising school dinners. It was sold to us as a positive thing – although we would now have to pay for our meals, we would get to choose what we wanted to eat. Obviously eager to turn a profit, the contractors simply served up junk food. And what ten-year-old wouldn’t just choose nuggets or pizza or burgers for lunch every day? I don’t think anything green ever touched my plate in that school again.

At my secondary school, Haberdashers’, old-fashioned dinners were served – and again, you ate what you were given. Things should have calmed down a little then weight-wise, but unlike before – when I would walk from home to school and back – I was now heading up the road to catch the school coach from Stanmore station, where there was a kiosk. Each day on my way to school and on my way home, I’d stop there and buy something sugary.

At school there was a tuck shop. While the other kids spent their lunch break playing football, I would queue up, wolf down a jam doughnut or a Marathon (as they were back then) and then head to the back of the queue and start all over again.

My parents’ divorce, my father’s imprisonment, my discomfort at being bald, my increasing unease at my growing attraction for other boys, my anxiety at my persistently low grades and the ever-increasing workload – I struggled to talk about any of this. Instead I just ate and ate and ate.

Back home after school, I would dissolve some chicken stock cubes in boiling water and add huge amounts of pasta, devouring the lot during Neighbours. A couple of hours later I’d be raiding the freezer and whacking some Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills and Alphabites in the oven.

Things came to an inevitable head. While I was out one day, my suspicious brother pulled my bed away from the wall to reveal hundreds of discarded chocolate-bar wrappers beneath.

It was decided that something really had to be done about it and so I enrolled in a weekly Weight Watchers class. My mum wasn’t overweight but joined me in an act of solidarity. I was put on a strict diet and was thrilled to lose nearly half a stone in the first couple of weeks.

Each Wednesday evening we’d line up for the weigh-in – ‘we’ being about twenty-five women, one man and Matthew, the fat little boy with no hair.

The course leader was a bright, chirpy lady called Barbara, who would begin each meeting by asking if we had any ‘noooooo members’ – sound familiar? The longer you spent in the programme, and (hopefully) the greater the weight loss, the more the eating plan opened out to include previously forbidden foods. At the beginning I came to regard a slice of brown bread or a digestive biscuit as the height of naughtiness. Eventually I was permitted the occasional Hula Hoop or maybe even a Birds Eye Supermousse.

Over the next few months I stuck diligently to the diet and went from being a fatty bum-bum to – well, not quite stick-thin but certainly noticeably thinner. Throughout my teens I managed to stay just about the right side of chubby, but then eventually lardiness descended again.

And I’ve been there ever since. I go through phases where I get myself together, lose a couple of stone, but I always seem to return to my solace, my pleasure, my pain – food.

I think it would be easier for me if I wasn’t such a fusspot when it came to food. I’m a bit like one of those freaky eaters you used to see on BBC Three. I’m not quite as extreme, but there are foods that most people love that I don’t enjoy at all. For instance, fish.

Why don’t I like fish?

Because it smells of fish. Also because people sometimes serve it with the face still on. Eeeeeuwwww.

Actually I quite liked fish as a nipper, but I had a traumatic experience with a fish finger when I was about fourteen and I’ve never got over it. I bit into one and it didn’t taste right. I looked inside and there was this big hard green cube of something very icky-looking, about an inch long and an inch wide, and I haven’t been able to touch one since.

There were two occasions in the last few years when I ate very high-quality fish, and I still didn’t take to it. One was when I was on a date with a guy I really liked, and he ordered this very tender black cod with miso. It was the restaurant’s signature dish. So I tried a bit, to make myself look all cultured and open-minded, but it wasn’t for me.

The other time I had some was when I was on BBC One’s Saturday Kitchen, and the chef cooked up some curried haddock. I couldn’t very well say no because I was on live TV, so I had a little. What I would say is, if you like curried haddock then you would probably have really really liked this one, because it was the most curryish haddocky thing I’ve ever tasted. Fortunately they then cut to an insert which meant I had a chance to swan around the studio, telling everyone how wonderful it was and insisting that all the crew try some. Not only did I manage to return with an empty plate, but I also looked generous – even selfless – in the process.

I don’t mind egg as an ingredient, but I would never eat just an egg. I realise that makes me sound ridiculous, but then I used to dress up as a baby on TV so I’m already fairly ridiculous anyway.

Condiments are in general a bit too much for me. Mayonnaise is an offender. Brown sauce, HP Sauce – all that stuff. It’s got too much flavour. The worst is vinegar. I can’t get past the smell of it. It makes me sad.

Not a fan of quiche. Ditto pâté.

Chocolate liqueurs are the ultimate act of betrayal. Ask any seven-year-old who picks one out of the box, expecting something lovely and caramelly, and ends up with their throat on fire.

Game is too red and small.

Truffle makes me gag. It’s overly savoury. And pungent.

But the worst offender – and this might shock you, because for many it’s their most favourite food in the world – is cheese.

I don’t get it. I just don’t get it.

Here’s the thing . . .

We were born with taste buds and the power of scent to save us from danger.

Hence . . .

‘Oh, what’s that smell? It’s a burning curtain’ = run from house fire.

‘Oh, I just bit into some chicken and blood gushed out’ = decline undercooked poultry.

But then – even though we consider ourselves no longer primitive beings – unfathomably . . .

‘Oh, lovely, some rancid mouldy yellow hardened fatty congealed liquid from the belly of a cow that smells of week-old socks and tastes of death’ = eat lots of it, as if nice.

Seriously, cheese is the most disgusting thing on earth, bar none. I hate cheese: the taste, the smell, the texture. And don’t try none of that ‘Oh, but this is goat’s cheese’ nonsense on me, either. It’s cheese, okay? It’s CHEESE.

When I sit opposite you in an Italian restaurant and the man comes round with the block of parmesan and the grater, a part of me dies inside.

In fact, cheese upsets me even more than when you read in the Daily Mail about a spinster getting bludgeoned to death by a crack-addled teenager and it turns out she only had 12p in her purse. That’s how bad it is.

I think I can figure out how cheese was invented. It would have been back in the days when almost everyone was poor and starving and no one dared waste anything. Every part of every animal had to be utilised. Even the bull’s testicles were probably used for snooker.

And I can accept that somebody might have come down one morning and it was a hot day and the milk had turned. And they would have thought ‘Right, I’ll chuck that out, then’, but then maybe they got distracted by, I dunno, a man playing a lute or a woman with bubonic plague walking past or something.

And so the next day, when they suddenly remembered about the milk, they would have looked at it and seen that it had now solidified. And they would have had a sniff and gone ‘Pooh, well, that stinks to high heaven. I’m definitely getting rid of that.’

And then the village idiot, passing by, might have spotted this and gone, ‘I’ll have it’.

And the other person would have said, ‘Nah, mate, you don’t want this.’ And the idiot would have said, ‘Look, there’s a famine on. I haven’t eaten for months. It’s either that block of stale milky yuck or I’ll have to eat the wife. It’s literally come to that.’

And so cheese was born.

Fine. Needs must, any port in a storm, and what have you.

But that was then. In the twenty-first century we are supposed to be a civilised bunch. We’ve developed in all sorts of ways. Smints, bubble bath, pyramid-shaped teabags – this is progress. So there is no excuse for the over-abundance of cheese that contaminates the Western world. It’s everywhere.

The worst, by the way, is on a plane. Never have I been offered so much cheese as when I am flying over the Atlantic. I’m already trapped in a giant can of farts and now you want to walk around the cabin shoving some Brie in my face?!

I was on one flight recently where the guy next to me was fast asleep and blew off so much it was honestly like being inside a shit. Then they woke him up, served him a cheese sandwich; he wolfed it down, nodded off again and farted the whole thing straight back out.

Cheese. Is. The Worst.

Anyway (breathe in, breathe out, it’s all going to be all right), rather than go on about the food I don’t like, I thought I’d do a Gallup Chart-style run-down of the food I love.

Please note, while this is correct at the time of publication, things do change. For instance, I didn’t get into mushrooms until my mid-twenties. Shocking, I know.

I should also add, this was not easy to compile. There are plenty of lovely things that didn’t make it in. For instance poppadoms, a quarter crispy aromatic duck with pancakes, macadamia nuts, chicken gyoza from Wagamama and melon (cantaloupe and watermelon, not so much honeydew). It took me a long time to whittle it down, but whittle it down I did. Here goes . . .

In at number 10, it’s fruity chews. I’m not talking Chewits – I find they get too hard in winter. I’m talking Fruit-tella and – a little more subtle flavour-wise but gorgeously waxy – the Moam or Maom or Maoaoaoam or however it’s spelt. Not the hard balls – no, thank you – but the sticks and the flat strips. Wonderful. If I had done nothing else on this earth but come up with the raspberry one, I would regard myself as someone who has greatly enriched the planet. So synthetic it makes plastic look like kale. But who cares?

At number 9, down three places, it’s ice cream. Baskin Robbins do a sort of frozen white and milk chocolate mousse which is creamy heaven and of course you have to eat it all at once because it’ll melt before you get home and then if you re-freeze it you’ll get botulism. Probably. The Cornetto is also a trusty friend. Häagen-Dazs is fine, but – and I know this may shock you – I would probably opt for a slice of Viennetta first.

Some of my most favouritest ice creams have come and gone, sadly. In the late eighties I used to enjoy Wall’s short-lived Magnifico. It was part of the Cornetto family, but a lot bigger, which of course is always better. There was briefly a spectacular ice-cream bar around the same time called Sky. Inside the shiny blue wrapper you found a rippled choc ice with vanilla ice cream (but not yellow vanilla, the white vanilla, as in a Mr Whippy, only it wasn’t whippy) and then, in the middle of the ice cream, an Aero-like piece of chocolate. It’s greatly missed, as is the epic Wall’s Romantica, a cake-shaped dessert that the family could enjoy together. It had vanilla and butterscotch, with a biscuit base – and if it was a person I would have married it.^*

A little note on all ice cream: do be careful to store it in its own section of the freezer. Even a delicious Mini Milk can be rendered unpalatable if it has been sitting for days next to something savoury. It still sort of tastes okay, but it’s no fun if – when you lick it – you get the unapologetic aroma of those Waitrose Frozen Beer Battered Onion Rings.

Also, sometimes people try and make their own ice cream. My mum makes coffee ice cream. Don’t get involved. I love my mum and I know she’ll be reading this and I apologise for the public humiliation and ingratitude, but even a Nobbly Bobbly tastes better than almost any kind of home-made ice cream. I realise a generation of budding Mary Berrys will be closing this book in disgust and hurling it in the fireplace – but remember, that fireplace doesn’t work. It just came with the house. You use radiators. Look, all I ask is that you know your place. Big companies and shops make ice cream; we eat ice cream. You know I’m right.

At number 8, it’s satsumas. Or clementines. Or tangerines. Or mandarins. God knows I love them all, even if I still don’t know which ones are which. They used to be a winter treat. The clocks would go back and I’d experience my usual bout of seasonal affective disorder, only to be momentarily jerked out of it by the sweet tang of this orange citrus delight. Nowadays they seem to be in the supermarket all year round, but then again it’s freezing cold all year round these days too.

When I moved to LA, I was able to live out my dream of growing lemons, oranges, limes and key limes, but it was the satsuma that excited me most of all. My Californian pals thought little of it – it’s like living in Surbiton and boasting about the cooking-apple tree in your garden – but I would walk past the satsuma tree every few days, wondering when it would be time to pick off one of the fruits. A couple of years earlier, while house-hunting, I had stopped with a couple of friends in the lush neighbourhood of Los Feliz and naughtily picked a tangerine from a tree in the street. It looked and smelled amazing, but it tasted so bitter I screamed out in shock.

In my own garden I waited until the man who occasionally works there (I don’t want to say ‘my gardener’ because it makes me sound a bit grand but clearly he is my gardener) finally gave me the all-clear to tuck in. I studied the tree. The fruits were all a bit odd-looking, mutant-like, different shapes and sizes.

I picked a large satsuma, peeled it and looked inside to discover something much smaller than expected. Still, it looked nice. But it tasted of nothing at all. I mentioned it to not-my-gardener and he told me he could get a special powder that would go into the soil and give it flavour. Ask no questions, I thought. All I can say now is that the satsumas that grow in my garden are the loveliest I’ve ever tasted. This might be partly because of their freshness – I will walk past the tree, pick one and eat it straight away – but also, let’s face it, the gardener has done something with his magic beans. It did make me wonder, though, if pretty much every tasty, correctly proportioned piece of fruit I’ve ever bought in a supermarket has been genetically modified to within an inch of its life and perhaps I should be concerned about what this is doing to me health-wise. But then, let’s face it, given that I’ve just written 391 words on the pleasures of store-bought ice cream, it’s not likely to be an apple that kills me.

Actually, that’s not true. It’s quite possible that an apple could indeed kill me – because I am allergic to them and have to carry an adrenaline-filled EpiPen at all times.

It’s the strangest thing. I ate apples continually growing up. There’s even a photo of me on my bike when I was about six, with a Sooty puppet in one hand and an apple in the other, because I refused to put it down. I loved apples. Everyone loves apples. Then one day I suddenly realised that I hadn’t eaten an apple for about three years. I bit into one and my lips swelled up and my throat started to get really tight. Eventually it subsided, but my doctor told me I should avoid raw apples, pears, peaches, plums and nectarines from then on.

The happy end to the story is that I seem not to be allergic to apples that have been cooked. Basically, McDonald’s Apple Pies are fine. In fact, one could argue, they are vital – otherwise how else will my body get the nourishing appley goodness it needs? Think about it.

Bovril is at number 7, though not in drink form. No beef tea for me, thank you. No, I like to spread it on buttered bread. I’m sure I’m not the only person who does that. It’s weird, because I have – as you may have gathered by now – a depressingly bland palette, so I shouldn’t entertain this foul-smelling, pooey-tasting black tar at all, but about once a year I crave it and I must have it. Almost like a pregnant woman who wakes up and decides she wants to eat a book or some hair.

It goes back to my childhood, I think. On Sunday nights I used to make Bovril sandwiches and eat them in bed while watching That’s Life! If you haven’t had Bovril on your bread, it basically tastes like Marmite. Though I’ve no time for Marmite at all. Ugh.

I should caution you, though, if you haven’t yet tried Bovril sandwiches for yourself and, on reading this, are now tempted, Bovril is, if you use even slightly too much of it, disgusting. So do please take care. I will not be sympathetic to anyone who has ignored me and gone and over-Bovrilised.

At number 6, a surprise entry – it’s vegetables. Yup, who would have thought it? ‘But they’re healthy?’, I hear you cry. Yes, shock-horror. I really like veg. Not all veg, obviously. That would be too normal, too fully-functioning-adult of me. Aubergines are a no. I think it might be because of the name. They sound a bit up themselves, don’t they? I’ve never had an avocado and I’m not about to start now. They look too slimy and apparently they’re quite fattening, so I’m simply looking after myself. I’m not wild about cucumbers, and tomatoes (strictly a fruit but clearly a vegetable) are something I will only entertain within a Bolognese. But peas – petit pois especially– and broccoli and onions and mushrooms and haricots verts are a staple part of my diet. I even don’t mind a legume, if truth be known. Oh, and sweetcorn, which is almost too nice to be classified as a vegetable really.

BTW, I include chips as a vegetable and I hereby announce my campaign to have them recognised as one of your five a day. Oh, sorry? Is a potato not a vegetable? Do you know something I don’t?

Incidentally, you may be surprised to find that chips – most people’s go-to naughty food – do not have their own placing in the top ten. Controversial perhaps, but there is a very well-thought-out reason for this . . .

If chips were as uniformly delicious as we know they can be, they would be right up there at the top of the chart, but I’ve probably eaten seven billion different varieties of chip already in my short fat life and the quality is simply too variable for inclusion. To clarify, you never quite know what you’re going to get with a chip.

I don’t cook chips at home. Never have done. So if I have chips, it’s usually in a restaurant. But the chips in most restaurants – or at least most restaurants I’ve eaten in – have clearly come from the freezer. And there is not much to them bar the glory of the carb itself. They have little taste, barely any aroma save for the stale fat they’ve been drenched in, and nothing much really to commend them. Without ketchup (and I always eat mine without ketchup – see above re tomatoes) they are dry. And when I say dry, imagine I said the word slowly, in a Jamaican accent, for added emphasis. Drrrrrrry. Well, hang on, actually maybe don’t imagine I did the accent – because that might get me into all sorts of trouble these days – but imagine a Jamaican person lazily saying the word ‘dry’. That’s how dry a bad chip can be.

Not quite sure that was worth the effort, if I’m being honest.

Anyway, chips can be glorious. There’s a place in Manhattan called La Masseria, in the theatre district, and their chips are long, thin and soggy. There’s not a crunch to be found, but they’re amazing.

My mate Alfie has a restaurant in Bray that does these triple-cooked chips. He’ll tell you a long story about how they take days to prepare. Whatever, it’s worth it.

And sometimes – usually in America – the chips have a light seasoning on them, and then it all comes together.

Chip-shop chips are frequently phenomenal, though I much don’t like it when you leave the chippy and your clothes stink of cooking oil. Not only is it not an especially pleasant fragrance, but you can’t then tell people, ‘Oh, we went to Whole Foods and grabbed a pomegranate salad’, because everyone knows you don’t leave Whole Foods reeking of saveloy.

But overall, as much as I love ’em, you can’t trust a chip. They’re too unpredictable. That is why they’re not in the chart. Sorry.

Oh, you see now I’m conflicted. Tell you what, I’ll cut you a deal. At number 6, then, it’s Vegetables feat. Chips.

At number 5, why wait till Sunday? Yes, it’s the roast dinner.

Now, when it comes to a roast, most people have a tendency to focus on the meat. I understand that. I have to say that personally I tend to find myself preoccupied by the other components of the roast. That said, I like my beef medium to well done, thinly sliced and as fat-free as possible. This will leave some of you aghast, as you gnaw through big, thick chunks of red meat, blood dripping down your chin. You caveman, you! I bet you then nod off afterwards in your chair, farting in front of the hieroglyphics.

Actually, this does point to one of my big food-related issues, which is that I do eat meat but I struggle with it. It’s mainly just unease at the reality of eating a dead animal. It’s clearly both morally wrong and also a bit yucky. I can deal with chicken, but then what are those black elastic bits of string in the breast? Veins? Arteries? Eek.

The happy medium, I have found, is – wherever possible – to eat processed meat that looks like it has had nothing to do with any living creature ever. All hail the dipper! Vive la goujon! M&S Chicken Teddies, anyone?

Look at me. Like everyone else, I’ve become preoccupied by the meat, when everyone knows the glory of the roast dinner is that it is a compendium of many different foods. Bored of the carrot? Here’s a sprout. Not a sprout man? Have some cauliflower. The possibilities are endless.

I’m not sure if I care all that much for the heavily buttered vegetable, which is something I’ve noticed has been creeping into the roast in recent years. Yes, a small knob on a steaming pile of peas is quite nice, but these carrots that slide all over the plate are unwelcome. Ditto these purple carrots. Let’s not get carried away.

Parsnips sometimes make an appearance in a Sunday roast, I’ve noticed. Now I would normally reserve the parsnip exclusively for the Christmas roast, but others are keener and serve them regularly. I’d say they are fine as long as you accept them for what they are – a sweet diversion – but on occasion, early on in a roast, I might in good faith bite into some parsnip under the impression that it’s going to be a roast potato. Then there are problems, because nothing compares to a roast potato, especially a crunchy one smothered in gravy. However, if you approach a parsnip with the knowledge that it is a merely a parsnip, then it can provide a nice sabbatical from some of the more senior elements of the plate.

To elaborate on my earlier point, roast potatoes in gravy are godly. They really are of God. Thinking about it, maybe that’s why we have them on a Sunday. And I don’t say that lightly. I’ve no desire to offend anyone on religious grounds, but I’m going to stick my neck out on this one because, let’s face it, life is essentially pretty arduous, all things considered, so anything that brightens the day should be celebrated. And crispy, fluffy, garlicky, slightly oniony roast potatoes are definitely up there with the very best that life has to offer. Sex is nice too, but you know what I mean.

I’ve no idea quite why roast potatoes are so good. There’s something fun about mashed potato. Fried potatoes we’ve covered, though we haven’t mentioned the glorious sautéed potato, but then you don’t come across them very often, do you? No one ever says, ‘But, Joan, we’ve already had sautéed potatoes twice this week’.

Jacket potatoes are another cause for celebration, if served with lashings of melting butter – so much butter, in fact, that the potato in question is now sky-high in fat and calories and you might as well have ordered the chips.

As for boiled potatoes, what a waste! You must promise me we will never ever speak of boiled potatoes again.

BTW, the Americans do not have a clue how to make roast potatoes. It might be to do with the types of potato that grow there. Or they might just be too busy eating French fries and hash browns and mashed potato. They love mashed potato there. I get that. Like I say, there’s something fun about mashed potato. I think it’s because you can sculpt with it.

And of course we haven’t even got to Yorkshire pudding yet.

The Yorkshire pud is not only the finest thing to have come out of Yorkshire (with apologies to Michael Parkinson), it is also clearly the most delicious (apologies again to Michael Parkinson). Beating stuffing hands down, this edible spongy cushion of blandness – if done right – is the highlight of any roast.

‘If I ruled the world,’ sang Harry Secombe, ‘every day would be the first day of spring.’ Well, if I, Matt Lucas, ruled the world, before I even unpacked I would give Yorkshire pudding a knighthood.

‘Arise, Sir Pudding of Yorkshire.’

You’d see photos in the newspaper of a giant Yorkshire pudding posing happily outside the palace with his wife and kids, and then you’d see the photos again two years later, when – disgraced and stripped of its title – it gets sent to prison for tax evasion.

In short, I could eat Yorkshire pudding every day. In fact, lose the word ‘could’ from that sentence and you have a pretty accurate impression of how I live my life.

At number 4 – we’re hotting up now – it’s spaghetti Bolognese.

No veal ragout or none of that poncey nonsense, though. Minced beef, onions, mushrooms, maybe carrots. Proper English Bolognese.

And tons of spaghetti. Way more, in fact, than you would ever dare to put in any other pasta dish.