Food Glorious Food.

There I am stuffing my face – I like that photo taken by the famous Nobby Clark.
This is an edit: after I wrote this I opened the newspaper and coincidence has it that it is Nobby Clark's birthday today.

I haven't eaten meat for quite some time; this will be my second Christmas without it. I don't call myself a vegetarian I just don't eat meat and only a little fish once in a while – the difference between vegetarians and vegans is that vegans don't eat animal products (anything with a face) at all; I wonder if they like eels?

Last Christmas I sat with the family and just ate the lovely vegetables but didn't have that ugly thing on my plate, which everybody fusses over, called meat. I don't have anything against meat but there's always a load of fuss over it and the last turkey we bought cost more than £70.

The reason I am talking about this is that the other day someone on the radio mentioned the BBC canteen and what the bill of fare was, and it all came back to when I worked at the BBC on a fairly regular basis. We would rehearse in a high rise building which was nick-named The Acton Hilton. It was maybe eleven floors or even nine – who knows? – and on the top floor was the canteen. As soon as the lift landed there you could smell the enticing appetite inducing fodder.

All self service – piles of newly cooked bacon, sausages galore with eggs, eggs and eggs. Of course there would be other stuff which I think is called fruit and they also served porridge, corn flakes and the like – even bubble and squeak - and we would pile the food on our readily warmed plates, with fresh coffee and maybe some toast.

All this for the price of a newspaper – unbelievable! I would often think that most of the people in that canteen – whoever was playing Dr Who, the cast of Z Cars, Softly Softly and the beautiful female dancers Pan People – were earning a lot of money and it seemed funny, to me, that they needed subsidizing.

I thought to myself, when listening to the article on the radio, that I wonder if I would be tempted now if I was faced with all that food.

I did a job a year or two ago in Harlesdon – or near there – where there was a canteen at the studios with the same kind of food and it was all free; so it still goes on.

But I have never been tempted ever since as egg, bacon and sausage have been cooked in our kitchen lately and it doesn't tempt me at all in fact I had stopped eating bacon since the last time I was in Dublin when my cousin cooked a full Irish breakfast – black and white pudding, bacon, sausages and eggs etc. The bacon in Dublin would melt in your mouth and the reason I haven't eaten any ever since is that when I bought some in London it was ropey, full of water, preservative and urghh!!

And then I thought of the time we came back from America on the Queen Mary 2 with the most wonderful food in the world: Beef Wellington, Sea Bass, Caviar for dinner and equal luxury during the day.

Have a Good Christmas.