Hello and welcome to Table Talk, the spectator's food and drink podcast.

I'm Lara Prendergast.

And I'm Olivia Potts.

And we are delighted today to be joined by Craig Brown.

Craig is an award-winning satirist, critic, author, columnist and former restaurant reviewer. His most

recent book, One, Two, Three, Four, The Beatles and Time, won the Bailey Gifford Prize for

nonfiction. Craig, welcome to Table Talk. Well, it's very nice to be here. Craig, we're going to

start where we always do at the beginning and ask you, what are your earliest memories of food?

I think my earliest memories of food are all to do with unpleasant food.

But that's maybe the nature of memory in that you remember your school days much more than your sort of happy holidays.

And so I think my earliest memory of food is I was at a convent school.

I suppose that was primary school.

And we were made to eat pork.

You know that horrid jelly that comes with pork pies?

I mean, now I don't have to eat it.

That's a great thing about being grown up. You can choose

what you want. But I remember feeling really sick every time. And my mother had to send a postcard

to the reverent mother saying, please let Craig off eating pork pies, because otherwise they just

made you sit, you know, sit there and eat it. And anyway, so I was then allowed off eating the jelly and pork pies.

And then I also have a memory, a vivid memory of the day that I realized that tongue,

which I had up to then enjoyed.

And people used to eat tongue in those days.

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