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Hello and welcome to Table Talk, the Spectator's Food and Drink Podcast. I'm Laura Prendergast,

and for this special Christmas episode, I'm delighted to be joined by a guest who needs no

introduction, the spectator's editor, Michael Gove.

Hi, Laura.

It's a pleasure to join you.

We always start at the beginning, Michael's.

Our listeners will know and ask, what are your earliest memories of food?

My earliest memories of food, I think, are inevitably tied up with my dad's work and also with a, this sort of

the family setting that we had. My dad was a fish merchant. So there was a ready supply from

where he worked. So whether or not it was fish soup, breaded fish, battered fish,

fish cakes, there was a ready supply of brain food, as it were, from my dad.

My mum would also cook lunch every day for me and my grandfather.

So I would, both at primary school and in my first year at secondary school, would come back at lunchtime in order to be fed by my

mum alongside my grandfather. And the particular staple was mince and tatties and mealy pudding.

So for those who require translation, that's mince beef, cooked with onion, mashed potatoes, and then mealy pudding

or white pudding, oatmeal pudding, is a sort of savoury suet. I know that that sounds artery

clogging, and it was, but growing up in Aberdeen, those are the inescapable memories I have,

...