This is Spectator Radio and you're listening to Table Talk with Olivia Potts and Lara Prendergast.

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

And I'm Olivia Potts.

And we're delighted to be joined by Ian Dell, the broadcaster, political commentator, blogger, publisher and former conservative candidate.

You've probably heard him as the host on LBC and he joins us today to talk about what he likes to eat and drink.

Let's dive in at the beginning.

Tell us about what food meant to you as a child.

You grew up on a farm, that's right, isn't that?

I did.

I grew up on a farm near Suffraim Walden in Essex in a little village called Ashton.

And I always say I think I had the most idyllic childhood

because I can't think of anything better than growing up on a farm.

And we didn't have all the health and safety things that you have now i was driving a combine harvester unsupervised at the age of eight

my father would have like the corn trailer with kids on the top from the village you think he

would be put in prison for that now but it just gave us it was great nobody had an accident

i'm sure somewhere in the country someone was probably killed, but hey.

So yeah, it was a wonderful upbringing. I had two fantastic parents and my mother was the best cook in the world.

And did she, I mean, did she cook using produce from the farm?

It wasn't really that kind of farm. It was mainly arable. We had animals, so I suppose, yes to an extent.

And my father loved shooting and all that sort of thing.

I did shoot, but I was a terrible shot.

And I've become so metropolitanised now that the thought of actually going to shoot a pheasant

...