This is Spectator Radio, the Spectator's curated podcast collection.

Hello and welcome to the Spectators' table talk podcast,

and we speak to guests about their life through food and drink.

And we're delighted to be joined by Jeremy Lee,

the chief proprietor of the landmark Soho restaurant,

Quo Vardas, and one of the leading and most joyful lights of British cooking. Jeremy, thank you

for joining us. Oh God, hello. Thank you very much for having me. Blotches deeply. Let's start at the

beginning. You were born in Dundee. Yes, I was indeed. To a mother who was a domestic science teacher.

Yes.

So tell us what food was like in your home growing up.

Ah, well, I lucked out.

I'm obviously being early 60s, there wasn't much good food around.

I remember the courgette causing a great stern and, you know, as a commotion of glamour.

You know, look what we've got, you know, went, oh, God, it's a coochette.

But my mother just thinking, really.

But that was what it was like.

And we ate very simple, good plain Scotsphere, like mince and tatties and sausage juice and scurly,

which is this sort of delicious fried oat milaki, mealy puddings.

And I also had lunch at my grandmothers every day when I was at school.

So much as I love my food, my father and my brothers remained painfully, annoyingly thin,

and I ballooned like a veritable buntar.

So there was obviously something from an early age between me and food.

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