Hello and welcome to Table Talk. I'm Olivia Potts.

I'm Laura Prenderg. Today we are delighted to be joined by Chris Atkins. Chris is a British journalist and documentary filmmaker,

films including Taking Liberties and Star Suckers, the last of which saw him give evidence to the Leveson inquiry.

In 2016, he was sentenced to five years in prison for tax offences. His book, A Bit of a Stretch, recounts his time

in HMP-Wonsworth. Chris, thank you for coming to table talk. Thanks so much for having me.

Chris, we'll start where we always start, which is at the beginning. What was food like when you

were growing up? Noisy, it's, as my earliest memory. Both my parents were teachers. In fact, my dad still is.

But my dad taught at the local private school and my mum taught at the local comprehensive.

So table was where sort of these colliding political ideals kind of came out. So I always remember mealtimes being very, very lively affairs.

And it's where I sort of learned my sort of argumentative side maybe.

So, yeah, meal times were always quite, quite noisy.

And what was your mother like as a cook?

Oh, my mum was an excellent cook.

And she grew up in a very very poor

household both the parents were minors so she could make her own bread she just made everything from

scratch so she cooked for us the entire time and could rustle amazing meals out of next nothing in the larder

so yeah I would never be as good as cook as her but throughout my sort of university years in my early

20s I sort of slightly fell out with my mum. But the way we got back together again

was me trying to make lasagna, screwing it up and calling up, go, oh, back on my sauce, how do you do it,

put the flour in first, you've got the butter in first. Oh, no, how long of, when we had our falling out, food was always kind of brings us back together again.

And as a child, were you, were you a fussy eater or would you eat anything?

I think I was as a young child, and it's weird now I have a son of my own.

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