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Hello and welcome to Table Talk, Spectator Life's Food and Drink podcast.

I'm Olivia Potts.

And I'm Lyra Prendergast.

And today we are delighted to be joined by Ian Rankin.

Ian Rankin is the UK's number one best-selling crime writer and the author of the much-loved Inspector Rebus novels.

He's written over 40 novels, stage plays and short

stories and has been showered with awards, was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

and has also been awarded an ABE. His latest Rebus thriller, a song for the Dark Times, is

available now. Ian, thank you so much for joining us. Hello. Ian, we always start at the beginning.

Can you start by telling us what your earliest memories of food were when you were a child?

Earliest memories of food would be my mum's home cooking. If you go back far enough into my youth,

my mum mostly was a housewife and there were always

home-cooked meals. I'd go home from primary school at lunchtime to a home-cooked meal and there

were always dinners around the table quite early in Scotland, working class folk in Scotland,

10 tea, as we called it. We didn't call it dinner. We called it tea. Dinner was what you

had at lunchtime and tea was what you had at tea time. So five o'clock, five 30. And yeah, four of us,

me, my sister, mum and dad all sitting around a fairly cramped drop leaf table in the kitchen.

Was your mum a good cook? Oh yeah. Of course everybody's mum is the best cook in the world.

My mum was born and brought up in Yorkshire and so lots of heavy, meaty dishes,

...