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PHOTOGRAPHS: DAN JONES. FOOD STYLING: JULES MERCER. STYLING: VICTORIA ELDRIDGE
Dear Nigel
PORTRAIT: TRISHA WARD
Ican remember the exact moment I decided I wanted to write about food. It was December 2005 and my dad’s birthday was fast approaching, falling just a few days before Christmas. It was also the final few days of my first term at Bristol university and, as luck would have it, there was a bookshop next to the library.
Somewhere in between doing bugger all and heading to the pub I found a moment to duck in and grab the first book I found.
You had just written The Kitchen Diaries, and there sat the hardback on one of the tables in Blackwell’s: tactile, tempting and, well, conveniently placed. It would do for Dad. I was fairly sure he liked to cook, and it seemed a more considered present than a paperback Robert Harris. I made the purchase, then stepped out of the shop and into the Christmas holiday (via the pub).
You may remember The Simpsons episode in which, for Marge’s birthday, Homer gives her a bowling ball already inscribed ‘Homer’. Your book was my bowling ball. The very same night Dad opened his present (and possibly wondered why I’d given him a cookbook and not the new Robert Harris), I spirited it upstairs and climbed into bed, reading it from cover to cover over the following days and nights. I’d never done this with a cookbook. I’m not sure I’d read any cookery writing, for that matter. And somewhere in the course of those days I knew I wanted to write about food too.
The original book still lives at my parents’ house, but at home we have the paperback version, which I gave to my wife Rosie early in our relationship (another bowling ball, for sure – but at least she likes bowling).