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AE: You mentioned coming to that realization later rather than at the time it was happening, did you find that in writing the book, especially because it is a memoir, that things were just revealing themselves to you, that you hadn’t thought about otherwise?
NS: It’s so funny that you should say that because I had no idea, with that kind of sitting there (writing), that I hadn’t really thought about. The biggest thing was the fact that I never had the chance to say goodbye to my mother. In the 1960s, parents, or my parents, were so keen on protecting their children, that they felt, “we can’t possibly let that child go to a funeral at nine years old,” when in fact what I missed was saying goodbye. The last words I ever said to my mother were so awful – we had this terrible row. That came out, but also this need for comfort. This desperate need that I replaced with food. After my mother died, there was no affection. My father didn’t really show affection at all. Occasionally he’d let me climb on his lap or something, but he wasn’t an affectionate man. Eating, and that feel of food in the mouth, is all part of comfort and affection and warmth, and I think that a lot of the reason that I turned to food was because I was actually quite a lonely child. When I was writing the book, over and over again, there were little things that explained themselves to me, like the fact that one of the reasons that I tend to lack confidence in so many things is that my father always told me I wasn’t very good at something. “You’re hopeless at sport. You’re not good at helping in the garden.”

AE: It was the kind of thing a parent would say, not meaning to be mean, but in hopes of spurring a child on to strive to do better.
NS: Gregg, you are so right. It was his way, which wasn’t the best way, to try to encourage me to be the man that the wanted. He wanted a proper lad who did sport and would go into the family engineering business and get his hands dirty. What he could actually see was happening was a little boy who would rather make cakes and scones, than do woodwork, metalwork and play sport. It was his was of encouraging me, but what he did was knock the confidence out of me.

AE: Would you say that the experience of writing about your parents was a positive one for you?
NS: Yes, very much so. I’ve still a bit of anger towards my dad, which I didn’t realize was there, but it is definitely. And my mom…there are so many things. To this day I wish she was still here. She was somebody that I had a very short time with. The other point, when I started to put things down in black and white, I realized I hadn’t given my stepmother a chance. Right from the word go, I thought she was trying to replace my mother. She was intruding on my life and diverting my father’s affections away from me. All I saw was this woman coming in, taking my dad away from me and trying to Mom. She couldn’t be Mom, because no one could replace Mom. I think, with hindsight, that I should have given her a bit more of a chance. She was up against a little boy who said, “I hate you,” right from the word go.

AE: Was making the leap from writing about food in a weekly food column (in London's The Observer) to writing about yourself an easy or difficult thing to do?
NS: It was easy in as much as my cooking column has always been a bit of a confessional (laughs). It is always very personal, so that bit was all right. I suppose that what was difficult was that I had gone from writing introductions to recipes – a thousand ways to say, “this is delicious, have a go and make it” – to what I call “grown-up writing.” There was the question, is anybody going to want to know these tiny details about my life? There was a patch in the book, towards the end, where I thought, I’m not sure this is what I want to do. I’ve never followed the celebrity route. I’ve always kept slightly in the shadows really, because I’m more comfortable there. I’ve never courted celebrity and suddenly, I was writing the most intimate memoir that any food person has ever written. I was thinking, “This isn’t me.” For the food world, I’ve always been quite private, and there was this warts and all memoir. That was something to deal with, that so many people knew a lot about my life and what have you, that hadn’t before.

AE: Especially considering that you wrote about sexual development and encounters. For instance, beginning on page twelve, you wrote about your childhood encounters with Josh the gardener, who was later dismissed.
NS: Part of it was not necessarily a sexual thing, it was partly the fact that he was someone who connected with me and paid attention to me. I do remember him as being this very strikingly beautiful young guy. Obviously there is that curiosity that young boys have for adults, but it really much more of this feeling of connecting with this guy. He was somebody who would pick me up and put their arms around me and carry me on their shoulders and have fun with. I suppose in a way it was sexual. He certainly had no qualms about taking his clothes off and having a stroke wash when he came in from work. I don’t know whether it was that natural thing where people are very comfortable with that sort of thing or if it was sexual, but I was very comfortable with all that.

AE: Finally, were there any foods that you left out because they simply didn’t inspire you to write about them?
NS: (Laughs) No, I don’t think so. I was very lucky in tracking down most of the foods that I ate as a child. There were only a couple of things that were no longer produced. I tracked them all down and bought them and I actually ate them as I was writing about them. It was so strange, because I didn’t even have to put them in my mouth. Some of the things I just unwrapped and I got the smell and it would take me back to be eight years old again. This was huge fun. It was candy bars that I hadn’t eaten for thirty or forty years; I was loving them. And then, certain instant desserts, that I hadn’t even dreamt of buying – it (the package) said “Serves four.” (Laughs) rubbish, I ate the lot. It was great. It was like being there again.

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