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Hello and welcome to Table Talk, the Spectators Food and Drink podcast.

I'm Olivia Potts.

And I'm Laura Prendergast.

And today we are delighted to be joined by Tom Athron.

Tom is the CEO of Fortneman Mason, which he joined in the middle of the pandemic. Before that, he held senior roles at John Lewis and at Waitrose. Tom, welcome to

Table Talk. Morning, everyone. Thank you for having me. Tom, as our listeners know, we always start at the

same place with this podcast by asking, what are your earliest memories of food? Well, I was

bought up at a place called Mersey Island, which is on the Essex Marshes, a very special place and

actually famous for its oysters. I would say that that wasn't my first memory of food.

But what I do remember is it being seafood, being a really strong part of my upbringing, certainly when it came to what we were eating.

And I guess my sort of earliest memories of food, certainly my fondest early memories of food, would be sitting with my legs dangling over the hard, which was really the water's edge on Mersey Island.

With my hands in a pint of prawns, you could go to the company shed,

which actually still exists to this day. It's family owned. Bring your own alcohol, very simple

food outlet, where you could buy oysters or you could buy dressed crab, but you could also

buy a pint of prawns. And literally it was a one of those old-fashioned dimpled pint glasses with a handle full of prawns

that you would then just sit on the side and peel and eat. So I remember that really fondly as

being a big part of growing up. And what were meal times like for your family? Lots of sitting

around the table, lots of laughter, lots of chatting, lots of family involved. My mother came from

Mersey Island originally, so there were lots of cousins, aunts, uncles, always in and out of the

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