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Hello and welcome to Table Talk, Spectator Life's Food and Drink podcast. I'm Olivia Potts.

And I'm Laura Prendergast. Today we are delighted to be joined by Max Pemberton, a doctor, journalist and writer who specialises in mental health.

He's the author of three books based on his own experience working as a doctor, a CBT book about giving up smoking, and most

recently the marvellous adventures of being human, your amazing body and how to live in it,

an illustrated children's book that looks at how best to live in your own body. Max, welcome to

Table Talk. Thanks for having me. Max, you grew up in West London in the 1980s. What was food

like when you were younger?

Quite basic, but quite nice. I still eat quite a lot of the same types of food.

Every Saturday, every Sunday I still have waffles. You know, like McCain Waffles, like

potato waffles. I really love them. They're so nice. My family were very busy. My dad was in

Milkman and my mum got a job actually in Marks and Spencer's,

like when I was probably about four or five, just on a Saturday doing like shelf stacking.

So she would always kind of get the cheap stuff right at the very end, you know, the kind of

reducing down and down and down and then sort of at the very, very end as they sort of closed.

Anything that was left, the staff could sort of take massively discounted.

So we would, you know, it was relatively kind of humble sort of environment, but actually suddenly

we'd have all this really exciting, you know, kind of prawn rings and kind of really exciting

foods.

On a Saturday evening was always kind of like this feast because there'd be all sorts of different

...