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Hello and welcome to Table Talk, the Spectators' Food and Drink podcast.

I'm Olivia Potts and today we are delighted to be joined by John Nicol, a former RAF Tornado Navigator who was famously shot down during the first Gulf War and held prisoner by Saddam Hussein

for seven long weeks. John has written movingly about his experiences in his first book,

Tornado Down, and has gone on to write 17 more books since then, six of which are Sunday Times

bestsellers and the most recent is out now called eject eject. Luckily for us, he's also very

fond of cooking and often paste pictures on social media of his culinary creations. So John,

welcome to table talk. Thanks very much, Olivia. Pleasure to be here and to chat about my favourite subject, food.

Well, it's lovely to have you.

So we'll start at the beginning where we always do and ask you,

what are your earliest memories of food?

Mince.

Mints and potatoes.

I grew up in a council estate.

There was six of us in a three-bedroom house.

Not much money, but we didn't want for anything as far as I can remember. Mince at home was on a

Tuesday, mince mashed potatoes, carrots and peas, non of your garden peas, processed peas

out of a tin. And then on Thursday at school, it was exactly the same

...