The 12 Books of Christmas | Comfort Eating with Grace Dent

Summary

Intelligence Squared: The 12 Books of Christmas | Comfort Eating with Grace Dent

Guest: Grace Dent (Journalist, Restaurant Critic, Author of Comfort Eating: What We Eat When Nobody’s Looking)
Host: Deborah Frances-White (Comedian, Host of The Guilty Feminist)
Date: December 20, 2024

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Overview

This episode of Intelligence Squared's "The 12 Books of Christmas" series features Grace Dent discussing her latest book, Comfort Eating: What We Eat When Nobody's Looking. Joined by Deborah Frances-White, Dent dives into the themes of food, memory, nostalgia, and grief, exploring why comfort food resonates so deeply and how it’s often inextricably linked to family, identity, and emotional survival. The conversation is deeply warm, relatable, and candidly funny, blending poignant moments with hilarious asides.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Food and Emotional Truths (02:51–10:24)

• Confessions of Comfort Eating:
  Dent and Frances-White set the tone by acknowledging the split between the foods people claim to eat for appearances (dinner parties, social eating) versus what they actually eat when alone—"like a wild animal in private." (05:13)

• Food as Memory Lane:
  “The podcast is wonderful because you are exploring people's lives and their childhoods through those early iconic foods… But it reminds you of a time.” — Deborah Frances-White (06:14)

• Comfort Food vs. Fancy Food:
  Dent explains why her podcast and book focus on the humble, "unfancy" foods that provide real comfort—beans, toast, supermarket bagels, and tinned chocolate—preferring honest culinary confession to gourmet showmanship (04:34, 05:51).

Grief, Loss, and Food Rituals (06:41–10:09)

• Food During Grieving:
  Cake and hampers replace the traditional sympathy flowers; food is practical and brings joy during sorrow. “Let’s send a hamper… My family was so excited!” — Deborah Frances-White (06:42)

• Shared Food as Silent Support:
  Dent shares a story about Richard E. Grant: a friend sent him home-cooked meals weekly during his wife’s illness, a gesture requiring no uncomfortable asks for help (07:33).

• Writing About Grief and Laughs:
  Dent acknowledges her books always end up addressing the loss of her parents and the role comfort food played in family coping. "All of my books, I always say, are kind of coughing up a big fur ball... We talk about tinned pasta, chocolate by the supermarket counter..." (08:56)

The Sacredness and Science of Butter (10:09–15:16)

• Butter as Emotional Bedrock:
  The butter chapter is repeatedly referenced as both comic and deeply resonant. Butter recurs across chapters; it’s what makes restaurant food taste irresistible.
  “We are hardwired to love butter.” — Grace Dent (13:05)

• Generational Shifts—Butter to Margarine:
  Discussing her childhood and postwar British food culture, Dent recalls how her mother's generation was indoctrinated to prefer long-life margarine (Flora, etc.) over real butter, leading to a cycle of joyless, diet-driven eating (15:16–17:41).

Diet Culture, Body Positivity, and Generational Shame (17:41–21:43)

• No Body Positivity:
  Both speakers recount Gen X's exposure to "slimming magazines," brutal one-food diets (pineapple, egg, or grape weeks), and the utter lack of body diversity in public life (18:01).
  “There was one thing you could be and that was very, very, very thin, and that was it.” — Deborah Frances-White (18:18)

• Modern Fads, Old Patterns:
  They compare historic fad diets to the current obsession with weight loss injections like Ozempic, cynically noting the continuity between generational cycles of deprivation (20:29).

Comfort Food, Class, and Culinary Snobbery (22:34–27:14)

• Restaurant Critics, Real Food, and Relatability:
  Dent reveals she finds talk of posh restaurants "dull" and is more interested in the private, embarrassing foods that people secretly love—powdered gravy, oven chips with mint sauce, and Cadbury's chocolate (22:34–26:53).

• Food as Proustian Trigger:
  Childhood candy like Cadbury’s Buttons or chocolate eggs elicit immediate emotional time travel, sometimes more so than any gourmet meal (26:53).

• Hyper-Processed Food Debates:
  Dent notes she doesn’t idealize ultra-processed foods, is aware of their health issues, but also resists their moral demonization: "I'm not saying that we should all just live on these things. And I am thoroughly aware that we've all got a very complex... relationship with these things." (27:14–30:36)

The Psychology of “Balanced Indulgence” (30:33–33:11)

• Joy vs. Longevity:
  Frances-White makes a convincing case that happiness "is part of being healthy," and the occasional treat is psychologically essential.
  “I want to live wide as well as long.” — Deborah Frances-White (30:36)

• Care Homes and Full-Circle Comfort:
  Dent describes her father's Alzheimer's care home, where the daily menu was sponges and pink custard, gypsy creams, and other classic treats—the opposite of nutritional sterility (32:02).

Show-and-Tell: Guilty Comfort Foods (36:06–44:58)

• Celebrity Snack Ritual
  On Comfort Eating, guests must bring the food they truly eat in private, leading to touching and hilarious revelations. The moment underscores vulnerability:
  “We always have to cut 15 minutes of self-explanation before they open it…” — Grace Dent (37:17)

• Deborah's "Embarrassing" Chocolate Cake:
  Deborah brings a homemade "log" cake of sherry-dipped chocolate biscuits, jam, and cream, topped with Flake (41:03–42:59). Her nervous introduction epitomizes the episode's theme of honesty and nostalgia.

• Flake and Sweet Nostalgia:
  Flake chocolate triggers communal laughter about sneaking coins to buy sweets as children, and scratching the layers of family revisionism (44:04–45:39).

Aging, Truth-Telling, and Letting Go of “Sexy” (45:58–47:48)

• Both speak frankly about the relief of aging out of the expectation to be attractive and instead feeling liberated to tell more personal truths and be less concerned with external perceptions.

Reading from Comfort Eating: Tinned Pasta and Family Memory (48:24–60:42)

• Dent Reads from Her Book:
  The excerpt chronicles holidays in a rainy Cumbrian caravan, with family routines built around humble tinned ravioli and spaghetti hoops (52:11–58:00). Food becomes the thread connecting generations against a backdrop of loss.
  “I love tinned pasta because I like to cling to the small things that are constant.” — Grace Dent (59:47)

• Emotional Response:
  Frances-White tears up, summarizing the book’s core lesson: food as connection, not just sustenance or a path to a longer life (60:42).

Audience Q&A (61:33–69:30)

• On Food Critics as Dinner Companions:
  Dent humorously details her "critic posse," praising Tom Parker Bowles, Jay Rayner (“Jay is a messy bitch who loves the drama”), and the delightful gossip in the MasterChef green room (62:16–64:45).

• “Worst Thing You’ve Ever Eaten?”
  Dent vividly recalls a £600 tasting menu whose final course was a dessert shaped like a used condom ("Sex on the Beach")—a dish that, despite its charitable angle, left her angry and existentially drained (65:33–69:01).
  “It was a condom that was left on a beach and it was sugar sand and a sugar condom… I just felt angry.” — Grace Dent (67:45)

• Awkwardness of Edible Art:
  The story prompts a discussion about the absurdity and alienation of avant-garde dining compared to the soul-enriching simplicity of comfort food.

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Butter:
  "Butter is the—I think that when we all say, oh, we know during lockdown, we all missed restaurants... What makes restaurants good is butter." (13:27)

• On Food and Grieving:
  "We all go, 'Give us a shout if I can do anything.' No one’s going to give you a shout...Every Sunday [a friend] opened the door and there was home-cooked food. That would completely distract me from my caring duties." (07:33–08:01)

• On Diets and Body Image:
  "There was no body positivity. There was one thing you could be and that was very, very, very thin, and that was it." — Deborah Frances-White (18:18)

• On Embarrassing Foods:
  "I really like oven chips with gravy, but that powdered gravy that you get that you make in a cup. And I have them with mint sauce because it’s like a kind of instant Sunday lunch." (24:08)

• On What Tinned Pasta Means:
  "Tinned spaghetti has this particular special place in my life. It’s basically adult baby food… Tinned spaghetti is day nine in a static caravan and the rain has poured to such an extent that the parking area is flooded. But we are adventurers." (54:02–57:39)

• On Processing Loss Through Food:
  "I love tinned pasta because I like to cling to the small things that are constant." (59:47)

• On Culinary Extremes:
  "I once went to a very, very expensive tasting menu in London... The last course... replicated a used condom that had been left on a beach—it was sugar sand and a sugar condom... And I just felt angry." (67:45)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:51] Opening Remarks and Setting Theme
• [06:41] Food in Times of Grief
• [10:23] Structure of the Book's Chapters
• [13:05] The Cultural Power of Butter
• [18:01] Diets and Body Image through the Generations
• [22:34] Restaurant Critic Life & Embarrassing Comfort Foods
• [27:14] Ultra-Processed Foods: Health vs. Nostalgia
• [32:02] Food in End-of-Life Care
• [37:17] Snack Show-and-Tell—Deborah’s Embarrassing Treat
• [41:03] The “Yule Log” of Biscuits, Sherry, and Cream
• [45:58] Aging, Truth-Telling, & Relinquishing Sex Appeal
• [52:07] Book Reading: Caravan Holidays & Tinned Pasta
• [60:42] Emotional Reflection: Food and Connection
• [62:16] Q&A: Favorite Critics to Dine With
• [65:33] Q&A: “Worst Thing You’ve Ever Eaten?” (Edible Condom Story)

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Conclusion

This episode, blending wit and wisdom, lays bare the underappreciated power of comfort food: not guilt, but identity, memory, and gathering. Grace Dent’s vulnerability, humor, and unapologetic embrace of ordinary tastes are the heart of both her book and her conversation with Deborah Frances-White, reminding listeners that culinary honesty—however messy—is always the most nourishing.

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For more intimate stories of food, family, and memory, read Grace Dent’s Comfort Eating: What We Eat When Nobody's Looking, or listen to the Comfort Eating podcast.

Transcript

[Connor Boyle]

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[Grace Dent]

I'm NFL linebacker TJ Watt and this is my personal best. YPB by Abercrombie is the activewear I'm wearing. That's why I reached out to co design their latest drop. I worked with designers to create high performance activewear that holds up to my toughest workouts. Shop YPB by Abercrombie in store, online and in the app. Because your personal best is greater than anything.

[Connor Boyle]

Welcome to Intelligence Squared where great minds meet. I'm Head of Programming Connor Boyle. We're looking back at some of our favorite books of the year. Our 12 books of Christmas. Today's episode is with journalist and restaurant critic Grace Dent. Dent joined us alongside comedian and host of the Guilty Feminist podcast Deborah Francis White to discuss food, memory and nostalgia themes from her latest book Comfort Eating. What We Eat When Nobody's Looking. Let's go to the episode now.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for coming tonight. Grace Dent is Intelligence and I am meant to be squaring that. So it's a great deal of pressure because I have been listening on audiobook to Comfort Eating all week and alternating that with episodes of the podcast. And can I tell you this grace. Firstly, I feel like I know you really well. It's the first time we've met and I feel like I live with you.

[Grace Dent]

Good.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Secondly, I've been trying this new thing, you know, when you go through phases of, you know, with your eating. And I've been really trying to be mindful about what I eat, you know, to just like absolutely zen it and go, am I hungry or is this what they now call food noise? And if it is, can I let that go?

[Grace Dent]

Da, da, da.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Like all of those things. Okay, so this is my first week of doing this and two days in I started eat reading, started eating. Comfort eating. I started reading. Yeah, comfort eating. And I decided to walk home as part of the Zen. I'm not kidding. You talked to me for a full half an hour about butter.

[Grace Dent]

Oh, yeah. And I got everything better.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Oh my God. I got home and I just went, oh, fuck this. And I got a bagel and that. Yeah, it was a bagel from a fancy place, which I know is not the spirit of comfort eating. It's meant to be, you know, non fancy things. But it was a bagel from. And then I was just like, I got this butter and I was just like. And then I continued to listen to you talk about butter sounding a bit pornographic.

[Grace Dent]

Who is butter, though? Was it butter that when you ate it, it left like a tooth imprint? That's when it's going to be so thick. Was it that butter?

[Deborah Frances-White]

It wasn't far off, I admit.

[Grace Dent]

If you were uncomfort eating, I wouldn't let you have a fancy Gail's bagel. Bagel. No, you have to have one. That's, you know when you get kind of six for a pound in Asda. Yes. And they're not anything fancy and they would survive some kind of nuclear winter.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah, that's it. Although I've got to say, people have started trying to be more fancy. I don't know. If you listen to the podcast, you don't have to. It's not compulsory, there won't be a quiz. But the entire point of the podcast is people are meant to bring the things to my house that they actually eat. I'm not interested in celebrities. I think that we have two modes of eating, don't we? We have the things that we pretend we eat. When people say that we might roll out for a dinner party, I go, oh, yes, yes. I just did this in an hour. No, it took you about three days. Three days of sourcing ingredients. And then we have the things that we eat like a wild animal in private. You know, when you. We were talking about dancing, like no one's watching. Eating like no one's watching.

[Deborah Frances-White]

It's the only way.

[Grace Dent]

Eating when something's so delicious. When a tin of beans, you open it up and you have a spoon of the cold on the way to the microwave, and then you walk back from the microwave, you've already had a piece of toast while waiting for the.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Microwave, and you're eating it, popping the toast up to see if it's done and having just a bit of it and pushing it back down.

[Grace Dent]

Yes. So that's it. That's the whole point. It's a confession about food. But I won't talk anymore about the podcast if you don't want me to. I always feel like I'm kind of like ramming that down people's throats. And there's so many other podcasts to listen to, but they're just not as good.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Present company accepted. Obviously, the podcast is wonderful because you are exploring people's lives and their childhoods through those early iconic foods that might mean something to them, but might to other people be, you know, like, oh, yuck, I wouldn't want to eat that. But it reminds you of a time.

[Grace Dent]

Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And the book is really more of your exploration, and it's about grief.

[Grace Dent]

Oh, God, yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And I just thought that was wonderful, because what if I have a friend and, you know, they have a death in the family or somebody close. I always send cake because you can't eat flowers. And people come. People are there. And so recently we had a friend, and there was a group of us wanted to send something, and they were like, shall we send flowers? I was like, but they're just loads of flowers. You've got to find water and a vase. And so I said, let's send a hamper. And we sent a Fortnum's hamper because. And he was like, oh, my God. My family was so excited because, you know, it's. There's people over and there's something to. And it's just a bit of something.

[Grace Dent]

I love the fact that the probably had the person even died by that point, or they just ignored. They were just ignoring the person dying. Oh, it's. Oh, it's. That would be my family. Be like, Grace.

[Deborah Frances-White]

He had his beginnings. Look at this.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah. Yeah, I. Okay, I'm going to drop a name. I'm not a name dropper, but I was just talking to Richard E. Grant about an hour ago, and. I know, but we were talking about this and because we were talking about grief and food and how important it is. And he said that so often when people are going through times of grief or someone's dying, someone's on their way out, we all go, give us a shout. If I can do anything. No one's going to give you a shout.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No.

[Grace Dent]

Who's going to give you a shout? And then he said, actually he said this on the podcast. Somebody famous, every single Sunday sent an Uber to their house with a load of home cooked food. No one, no, didn't ask for anything. So every, exactly every day, every Sunday, he opened the door and again I would be. That would completely distract me from my caring duties. I'd be like morphine. Hang on a minute. But you know, yeah, wonderful thing to.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Do, the gift of food, especially if you know what they like. You know, if someone, I know someone doesn't want cake, I'm not saying the cheese or something like that, but it's just. And sometimes if someone's having. If one of my friends is having a hard time, I'll send them like a deliveroo voucher just for like 20 quid because then they can just have a curry to the door or something like that. And that's very comforting.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah. I think that the book is definitely about grief, but I think that, I think that over the last few years I've lost both my parents. And I just think that every time I sit down to try and write, because my books are always funny, but the reality of things do always seep in, you know, all of my books, I always say, are like kind of coughing up a big fur ball, you know, sit there and kind of go, right, we won't talk about your mother's death this time. And then before you know it, it's there. And I think that with comfort eating, we talk about pasta, tinned pasta, and you know the chocolate that when you see it by the supermarket counter, it just gives you that little kind of frisson of, oh, a Lion bar. The wrapper of a Lion bar. And all these things drag you back. It's that whiplash that you see when you walk in, down a supermarket aisle and suddenly you see serene. You know what I mean? Sorry, sorry, how do you say that? Posh seroon. And you think, so all those things are going to be important. So, yeah, there is grief all the way through it. There's laughs as well. But it's what?

[Deborah Frances-White]

Oh, it's very funny. It's very funny. First of all, the chapters, these are the. As soon as I got this. They were like, do you want to do this? And these were the chapter titles. Cheese, Butter, Pasta, Bread, Potatoes, Sweet Treats. Yes, I'll do it.

[Grace Dent]

Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I was like, I've never seen greater chapter headings. And each one has a brilliant opening sentence.

[Grace Dent]

But those, they're the proper. They are the things that give comfort. Like, you know, you could go. They are the. They are the cornerstones of the things that are going to change your day. They're the things that nobody, nobody is coming in at the end of a hard day after a fight with their boss and thinking, mm, superfood salad. Oh, lovely, lovely. Well, let's get that kale, you know, let's get that kale simmering and these things. Yeah. So, yeah, sorry, I know you've got questions.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, no, no, no. I'm loving it. Take it away.

[Grace Dent]

I was gonna say thank you so much for all coming out. I honestly, I don't know if my friend Hugh's here. Hugh? Hugh. Oh, you. Hello. This is one of my best friends, Hugh. And I told you yet again that nobody was going to come. There you go. And I was going to walk on and off to the sound of my own feet yet again. And, I mean, I know that the weather's been terrible and I would have completely understood if you cancelled. So, like, thank you so much.

[Deborah Frances-White]

It's the perfect time of year to do a show about comfort eating.

[Grace Dent]

Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Because in the summer we are happier to have the superfood salad because you look, you know, you go outside, it's sunny, it's like, you know, and as soon as this weather changes, immediately you go down the street and there's like, you know, do you want a cinnamon latte or do you want a little treat? Yes, and yes, you do.

[Grace Dent]

I think that this is one of the most wonderful times of the year for women because this is when you can put on 60 denier tights again. And I think this should be a national holiday. Absolutely. I think that we, as women, we should all send ourselves cards. Send each of the cards where I would say to you, happy 60 denier tight day. And I would send you a video of me, like, doing that kind of weird kick that you have to do to get into them. But isn't there, is there anything more wonderful than suddenly being able to eat more pasta, more potatoes, more bread, and just be able to kind of pull the waistband over your wand's dimpled midriff? Not that I have that, but it's that kind of. I think that this is the perfect Time of year. This is. This is the greatest time in the eating calendar.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Absolutely.

[Grace Dent]

From now until Christmas.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And we. Instead of meeting outside, you meet inside. And what do you do inside?

[Grace Dent]

Eat. Eat.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And so if you're meeting friends, it would be. What kind of friend would you meet in this weather? And they wouldn't want to share chips. Not a friend of mine.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

It's so. I loved all of that. I loved that the opening sentence of the butter chapter was, we are hardwired to love butter.

[Grace Dent]

Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

It'S true.

[Grace Dent]

There's something about. There's something about butter.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Of course, you need the bread chapter to put it together, but actually, you came back to butter in every chapter. I think it's why. It's the foundation. I would think I'm past butter now. We're all right. We're back with the mindful eating. And then every chapter, by the way, you need butter with this.

[Grace Dent]

But butter is the. I mean, I think that when we all say, oh, we know during lockdown, we all missed restaurants. We missed restaurant food. But, I mean, I live my entire life in restaurants, and what makes restaurants good is butter. And people don't realize that. Why they say, gosh, this pasta is so much more delicious than what I make at home. It's got 200 grams of butter in it. That's why, you know, and you would never do that to yourself. You would never come in on a night. Because we're so hardwired for. I guess with guilt and with especially Gen X, I talk about this. We've been hardwired to feel trained, to feel that butter is wrong. It wraps itself around your heart, and you shouldn't have it. And what you should have is delicious Flora. You know, but then we go to a restaurant, and especially one of those fancy restaurants where they suddenly bring you just before everything else comes, they bring you 150 grams of Marmite whipped yeast. Butter on a rock. Always on a rock. I don't know why. And it's on a rock. And then they just bring you a load of homemade treacle bread, and then they just go. You just have that. You don't have to eat all of it. And then, you know. So I think this is why restaurants are so amazing.

[Deborah Frances-White]

This is, like the hardest thing. I have to just say no to.

[Grace Dent]

The bread or do you.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Or it'll be all.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah, but how long does that go on for? I think that we all go through stages.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Oh, alternate, Alternate. One time I say all, and one time I say none, because I am capable of Saying reasonable amount every time.

[Grace Dent]

Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

So I've just got to alternate. That's, that's all I can do.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I love the way that you talked really about the history of margarine coming in and being promoted as a sort of healthy alternative to butter. But also when you talked about your grandparents.

[Grace Dent]

Oh yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And the, their butter was off because they.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And their milk was off but they ate it anyway.

[Grace Dent]

Well, I mean, I think that I start off the buta chapter and I kind of talk, oh, you know, this fantasy world of how butter is and it's so nourishing and it's in us and it's hardwired. And then my mother, God rest her soul, who just lives on my shoulder sometimes going, well, that's not right. Even though she's no longer here. And I could hear my mother going all the time saying, well, it was always off. You know, when she was a kid, you know, she grew up on the side of a hill in Cumbria with like, you know, we're kind of farming people, they didn't have fringes. So all the butter was always off, the milk was always off. You know, you go to Great Aunt Beets house and she would give you a cup of tea with, you know, the milk just floating in lumps at the top and then the butter that was kind of rancid. And you know, I always think that for my mother, her generation just born on the cusp of second World War and then by the time they had spending power it was like, flora, this stuff lasts forever. Yeah, it does for a reason of course. That's why it lasts forever. And I think, you know, all the way through my childhood we were fed this idea by the huge companies that butter wasn't good for you. Whereas, you know, something like not, not just Florida, you know, Corona, all this. I don't believe it's not butter. All these different things that, these were the things that were going to make us happy. You know that one where whenever you got used to one type in my house, because my family were, my mother and me were always on a diet and whenever you got used to one really bad margarine, my mother would take it to an even, an even weaker one. You know, like, she'd go like, oh, this is the Weight Watchers one. Oh, it's the light one. And it's, that's just slippery sadness. And you're kind of like putting it on a Rivita going, I write about that in the book a lot about the whole idea of growing up in the growing up in the shadow of beauty contests. And my earliest memories are, you know, us all watching the old beauty. Did you grow up and Britain, Australia, did you have the beauty. Did you have Eric Morley and the beauty contests and women coming on and 36, 24, 36.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I mean, I, I wasn't a big hallmark of my childhood. My parents became Jehovah's Witnesses when I was 14, so we weren't allowed to watch things like that.

[Grace Dent]

There was none of that going. But in your house then was.

[Deborah Frances-White]

But there was also. Because I'm Generation X as well.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah, yeah, there was.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And young people, I, you're going to think, yeah, but there was no, there wasn't. There was no body positivity.

[Grace Dent]

None.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And you, you constantly aiming to look like a billboard of a really undernourished woman.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And if you could not be that and even that. Now I realize that I have my photo taken and it's, you know, you realize not even that woman looks like that woman.

[Grace Dent]

No, no.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Like she's looking at that billboard going, thinking, I don't really look like that. Or I've, you know, my body's changed a tiny bit. I've got to get it back to that or whatever. There was no body positivity. There was one thing you could be and that was very, very, very thin, and that was it.

[Grace Dent]

But I always remember around when you had to get down to that, trying to get to that weight, it was always these pull out, cut out and keep brochures that came in the come in the sun. And there was those piles of slimming magazines in my house. And it would be like 900 calories until summer. And it would always give you suggestions of food. And it would go, instead of having chips, why don't you have two small potatoes and an artist joke? And you. That's not the same thing.

[Deborah Frances-White]

We used to do a fruit diet where one day you'd only eat pineapple, the next day you'd only eat paw paw, the next day you'd only eat blueberries, which you couldn't get in Australia. And so that was a day off food altogether.

[Grace Dent]

But then you do that, and then we would do that. I would be dieting with my mother to kind of keep her company. And because I obviously, I wanted. Wanted to be that. I wanted to be Linda Lisadi. I wanted to be Sam Fox. I wanted to be. She wanted to be Crystal Carrington of Dynasty.

[Deborah Frances-White]

What? Crystal Carrington of Dynasty? Yeah.

[Grace Dent]

And then we would, we'd starve all week. And then on Friday, as I Mean, I say this in the book. My dad would go, chippy tea. And that would be like, yes. You know, and we, you know. And then before you know, everybody would have a picture. Pickled egg and scraps. You don't have scraps, do you? In like, that's when they sell you just the batter. No, it's a funny place, the north. I have been there. Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I don't remember anyone giving me scraps, but it sounds delicious.

[Grace Dent]

I mean, this is. I wish they weren't.

[Deborah Frances-White]

That constant pull of these weird diets. But we did really weird diets. Like you would only eat egg and grapefruit or you'd only eat one thing. There was a lot of one thing diets there. Like, it was before they'd figured out, like protein. Or it was just sort of eat grapes for a week and then you're allowed a pineapple day, something like that. And you'd be like, now we look back on that and we just go, what were you doing? But we're just checking your metabolism.

[Grace Dent]

Sorry to Quickly. No, you were going to say, I just. Was speaking to someone just before I met you. And they said they were talking about a famous person and they went, they must be on a Zenpic. And I went, I don't know, I don't know. They've never mentioned it. And they went, everybody's on a Zen pick. And I went, well, I'm not on a Zen pick. And they said, oh, everyone is, it's fine. And I said, well, we don't know the. We don't. It's a very new drug. We don't know the side effects. And they went, no, the side effects. All the side effects are constipation, vomiting, diarrhea and bad heads. But they went, but they look amazing. They look amazing. And I was thinking, God, this is just the cabbage soup diet again, where you're sitting in the house with diarrhea and flatulence going, I look amazing. Look at my. Look at me. You know, I'm sorry, I'm completely. I know you have questions.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I mean, this is just as long as the conversation is. But we're not having any trouble speaking. Are you having a nice time?

[Grace Dent]

Are you thinking.

[Deborah Frances-White]

She's not answered the next question. That's actually. You're not, are you? Because it's flowing, so it's fine. So, yeah.

[Grace Dent]

And anyway, the point is, I think that let's not do a Zen pick. That's not. I think.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I think let's not do it. If you.

[Grace Dent]

Let's not do it, let's, let's, let's not do it. And about two years time, you'll be like, you're on a Zen pic. When you see me. Yes, I'm running to the toilet with vomit. No, no, I promise you, I'm not going to do a Zen pig.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, I, I don't know why you would, but I love that because you're this famous restaurant critic, so you get to eat some of the most phenomenal food in the world.

[Grace Dent]

Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

But your podcast and your book is all about this kind of like, downtown, what you really eat when you're not at a fancy restaurant. But you're thinking, oh, I really need a comfort evening at home. Yeah, those things that you really eat. And I don't think many restaurant critics would admit to ever having that because they'd say, no, my palate's too refined. What made you want to talk about this kind of food?

[Grace Dent]

I find people talking about the posh restaurants that they go to. I shouldn't say this, but really quite dull. Like, I mean, I write my column and I do that for a reason, to bring. They're coming for us. They're like, it's such a dad joke. And I love it. Whenever you hear, whenever you hear, it goes on the ria. I write my column for a reason, about the finest places, and I do that because I'm very determined that normal people don't get ripped off. I don't do it for the restaurant PRs. I don't do it for the chefs. I certainly don't do it for the chefs. I do it because I think that I want to, you know, people to. When they go out and they spend £200 on dinner, which is so easy these days, they're not going to get ripped off. But when a celebrity walks in. You interview celebrities. When a celebrity walks in, is there anything more boring than a celebrity talking about the fancy restaurant that their PR booked for them the night before? It's really. It doesn't make me excited. Oh, God, whatever. You went to a great restaurant, you got great service at a restaurant that probably no one's heard of. I always think that especially with celebrities. My years of interviewing celebrities, they can be. So they can turn up with an agenda of the three things they're going to talk about. The bigger the celebrity, the bigger the celebrity, the bigger the entourage around them, usually the more that you've got literally two things that they're going to talk about. And you're usually kind of tied in knots. And then as the sound man is putting their microphone on. Soundman always, always says to the person, can you just tell me what you have for breakfast? Just tell me what you have for breakfast. And that is when the celebrity says, three creme eggs. And you're like, because that's fascinating, isn't it? Why three? Why creme eggs? Who bought the creme eggs? And that's when you get the most fascinating stories. When people go, oh, I just ate, you know, I just ate a chicken tikka out of the, out of the fridge. Oh, well, why do you get that? Well, we always get it from this place. And it reminds me of my dad. So I always said that if I did a podcast about food, we would talk about the actual, real things. And then as. And I started to realize how much disgust and shock people had on their faces when I said, I really like, I really like oven chips with gravy, but that powdered gravy that you get that you make in a cup. And I have them with mint sauce because it's like a kind of instant Sunday lunch. And people were like, it wasn't that I was saying anything radical. I wasn't saying, you know, I worship Satan. I was saying what people do all the time. But it's this again. Eating, talking about food like no one's watching. And both these things can go together. I can turn and suddenly discuss a 16 course tasting menu where, you know, it's fragments of yeast and squirrels, tears on a bed of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, I can talk about that and I can talk about it in the most eloquent and articulate way. But I love to talk. I know that people's eyes light up when I absolutely nail why Cadbury's purple will always be love to me. You know, like. And I don't, I don't think I will agree. I don't think Cadbury's is the same. Say it quietly now. Say it loudly. I don't think Cadbury's chocolate is the same these days. I don't know. But I do know that when I see those little packets of chocolate buttons and they've got little Bo Peep on the back, you know, or Little Jack, Little Jack Horn Horner sits in his corner. Right away, I'm like. And I'm holding my dad's hand and we're walking through the army base that I was born on and we're going to the naffy shop and swinging me around.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, you're not allowed Big girl chocolate, which is like a Turkish delight.

[Grace Dent]

And little girl Chocolate, Yeah. I love that. It's the idea. Well, you completely believe that, don't you? If you ask for a Turkish delight when you're a little girl and your father says that the police will arrest you for being too. You're like, okay, I'll wait till I'm 18.

[Deborah Frances-White]

In fact, that siren, I think was the.

[Grace Dent]

That was them.

[Deborah Frances-White]

They've just got evidence.

[Grace Dent]

But isn't it weird with. Sorry, I'm going off on one about Cadbury's chocolate. But Cadbury's to me will always be, you know, two Cadbury's, Cadbury's Caramel, or just Cadbury's chocolate Easter eggs. One for me and one for my little brother. Bought on about the Thursday of Easter and then put on the cabinet and we're not allowed to touch them until Sunday. And just the deferred gratification of waiting, you know, or buying chocolate, that. That's the one thing that I always knew I could get around my dad with a bar of fruit and nuts. But those things. Yeah, I just think those things are so important. And we were talking before we came on about. I said, I'm so determined this book isn't kind of a smack in your face for the people that write about hyper processed food and ultra processed food. I'm not by any means saying, everyone, throw your scales out. Let's live on finders crispy pancakes. Although I would say that if I was standing for Parliament, just to see how far it would get. Another thing I would do is I'd put the architecture back into the Viennetta, which has gone, frankly, downhill. Thank you, madam. Thank you. I have one vote there. The architecture would go back into the Viennetta. I'm not saying that we should all just live on these things. And I am thoroughly aware that we've all got a very complex. We've got a complex relationship with these things. Like, I know that. I know Cornettos aren't good for me. I know they're not good for me. I know they're not part of a balanced diet. But a Carnetto for me is the ice cream van coming when I was 7 or 8, and everybody else having money for a funny feat and me going, if I keep my money for two nights, I can have a Carnetto. And when you get to the bottom, the bottom of the cone is thick chocolate. And how exciting is that? And sitting on the couch with my dad under my dad's arm and him watching Monty Python and watching Kenny Everett and only when I laugh and all of these amazing shows and me watching anything, just watching anything. I grew up in the north, in the 70s. I mean, I grew up in sepia, right? And there was. I. And there was three channels and just watching TV and, you know, going to the freezer cabinet and a chalk, ice, and these little things. How do you say to people like me, never again, you know, never again. These things are bad for you. And so I do. I read all these books by these amazing doctors and I meet them at book festivals. And I agree, I agree. I think that these things. I think that these things can be very bad for you. And I think that these things, Some of the stuff that's in these things, I don't even think we know what they are, you know, And I know that when I take them all out of my diet and live on an able and cold box, which I do sometimes, and that is a very long week. Oh, my God. Artichoke. But I know I feel better, I feel lighter, I feel blah, blah, blah. But, God, I love. I love a potato waffle. I love a potato waffle.

[Deborah Frances-White]

You're not exclusively living on potato waffles.

[Grace Dent]

Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Having an occasional or even a weekly potato waffle. I'm going to say psychologically, like, we are not just bodies, we are whole human beings. So, you know, and sometimes I think, yeah, I could just eat kale and superfood salad. I might not live longer, but it would feel twice as long, and that would feel the same. But I want to live wide as well as long. I mean, wide, perhaps in more than one sense of the word. But I feel like if we can't, our psyche is part of it. And being happy is part of being healthy. And I feel if I committed to a life with never having chocolate, even at Christmas, well, that wouldn't be a happy life. So maybe I would live a little less long or I would be a little bit ill at the end or something. I just feel like we just. None of us are real. No one who's come here tonight is going to do that because they've come to a show called Comfort Eating. What We Eat when no one is Looking. So I know that everybody who's turned out tonight does this kind of eating, but that's not saying that we or if someone want to declare themselves as. No, I just wanted to have a look at, you know, to look at everyone else and sit and just. Was anyone come here tonight to feel superior?

[Grace Dent]

No, I've given it all up.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And I feel a lot better in myself. But most of us Go through phases. Now, this brings me to what I've made you.

[Grace Dent]

Sorry, Darren. Well, I was just going to say that when my. So my father had Alzheimer's and eventually went into care, and when he went into care, was there for the last three years of his life and we're talking about this, about the. When people. I was, you know, he was in a. He was in care with lots of other people who were. End of life. And every time I went in there, they'd have the menu for the week on the wall of what everybody was getting every day. And it was printed out in big letters. So if people still had the ability to read, they could see. And it was like a primary school, you know, and that menu was bloody amazing because it was all the stuff that we, you know, it was. It was sponge. It was sponge pudding made with sewer with pink custard, you know, and like, every time, every time, every 20 minutes, people were just doling out gypsy creams and like, you know, and I just thought, this is living, this is dying. Right, but this is living. Exactly. No one was. Nobody was coming around at the end and saying, I tell you what. Yeah, who wants.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I would like some smoothie from Nobu.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah, And a boy. Yeah, who wants three? Nothing sadder on those thousand calorie diet charts than two boiled potatoes. No fat. No.

[Deborah Frances-White]

If you had a week to live, you would live in a way that might mean you only had four days.

[Grace Dent]

Darling, let's do the thing. Because we were going to do it at the beginning.

[Deborah Frances-White]

You also have to read from the book before we go to audience questions. So if anyone is there thinking, I've got a question, soon you will be able to ask it. So get one ready.

[Connor Boyle]

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[Deborah Frances-White]

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[Connor Boyle]

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[Deborah Frances-White]

The one that makes buying so incredibly easy? That's Shopify.

[Connor Boyle]

And there's a reason so many businesses sell with it. Because Shopify makes it incredibly easy to.

[Deborah Frances-White]

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[Deborah Frances-White]

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[Grace Dent]

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn [e-mail] I would explain that on comfort eating, if you haven't listened to it, that every week the celeb comes in and they bring their snack and I don't know what it is at all. I have absolutely and we have to go to great lengths for me to not know because I'm very nosy. And it happens in the podcast happens in my house that causes an enormous amount of stress as it is because I'm a northern working class woman. So everything has to be absolutely clean before the celeb comes around. Which means that Richard E. Grant is arriving and I'm basically putting dirty dishes into the back of my car, you know, and like taking, taking pants off radiators and like hiding things. But the other thing is they bring their snack.

[Deborah Frances-White]

So okay, so just to explain, just to explain. In the book, Grace says the best ones are when the guest brings something that's kind of embarrassing. Like some, some celebrity guests will go, oh, what I really love is spaghetti puchenesca yes. And Grace goes. That's not really in the spirit. We try and veto that kind of stuff. So that's the spirit, to be honest. Oh, really?

[Grace Dent]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Well, I can sort of see that with study chichi. That's his whole brand, isn't it?

[Grace Dent]

Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Now I. So I've. I've lived up to that. So I would say don't judge me, but the point is. Judge me.

[Grace Dent]

Can I just say here. Sorry to put in that one of my favorite things. Absolutely. My favorite things about the podcast is. And we have to. Usually because we have. I have editors. We have to always cut from the most confident people. You're one of the most confident people I know. I've come across. We always have to cut 15 minutes of self explanation before they open it. They go to pieces. If I'd have asked you to come on and do a one woman show about the whole. But when you ask somebody to just to do the. Show me what's in the box. Well, look, just show me.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Okay, give me the box.

[Grace Dent]

No qualifying statement. Getting hungry.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I'm taking it back. I didn't bring anything. This is still going.

[Grace Dent]

Still going.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Okay, all right, all right, fine. I want to open it because you normally take the tea towel off, but I've put it in a box. Okay, so you can open it. You can. Don't. Don't open it. It's fine. Fine. It's fine.

[Grace Dent]

Open it, Open it.

[Deborah Frances-White]

It's fine. Yep, go on. Okay. No. Okay, so, right.

[Grace Dent]

What I want you to do is I want you to explain. Oh, thank you very much.

[Deborah Frances-White]

That's on the side.

[Grace Dent]

I want you to.

[Deborah Frances-White]

That's on the side. That's on the side.

[Grace Dent]

This is on the side.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Can I just. I'd like you to show them. But I'll take this tray out. I've put it on a silver tray.

[Grace Dent]

She's gone very territorial of that.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, no, I just.

[Grace Dent]

Darling, whatever we can do to make this better. You have that box.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Nothing will make it better. Okay. All right, so it's got under the table. The point.

[Grace Dent]

I just like it smells amazing.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Okay, so what I've done, I'm just taking the sides down a bit. Okay, so what I've done is. And please bear in mind.

[Grace Dent]

I used.

[Deborah Frances-White]

To cook a tiny bit before I met my husband. And. And he's such a good cook and I don't enjoy cooking, so I haven't cooked since I met him. And that was. It was definitely.

[Grace Dent]

Open the box. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Okay, open. Okay, so it is this. Okay.

[Grace Dent]

Okay.

[Deborah Frances-White]

To me, that looks like a reaction to have, and I understand why. Okay. But can I explain what it is now that I've shown it?

[Grace Dent]

Yes. Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I met my husband. It was definitely after the Blitz, and it was a long time, because I haven't cooked for a long time. To the extent where I said to him, I think I should put some tinfoil over it. He said, it's in the cupboard next to the oven. Thinking I would not know where the tin foil was, which gives you an indication of how little I cook. He basically explained where the kitchen was. It's down the hall to the right.

[Grace Dent]

I see. It seems to have created a false field. It's like a healing.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Okay. So this is something we used to make when we were teenagers, because it's. You don't have to cook it. Okay. And the point is, it's embarrassing. Okay? So just stay with that.

[Grace Dent]

Tell me what the ingredients are. It's like a Yule log. That's what it is. It looks so good.

[Deborah Frances-White]

So what you do is you take a chocolate biscuit, and I don't mean a chocolate biscuit with chocolate on top, I mean a chocolate biscuit.

[Grace Dent]

Oh, bloody hell.

[Deborah Frances-White]

It's good, is it? Yeah. Grace then said it was good.

[Grace Dent]

Thank you.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I will accept my Michelin star.

[Grace Dent]

Now.

[Deborah Frances-White]

What you do is you take a chocolate biscuit. And I don't mean a chocolate, I mean a biscuit. Like, what I had to do was get half. I get Oreos and take the middles out because it's very hard to get chocolate biscuits. Now, you then dip it in sherry. You dip the chocolate biscuit in sherry, then you put jam on it, then you put cream on it. And then you do another one like that. And you put them together and you line them up in a log.

[Grace Dent]

It's kind of like a. It's like a Yule log that you'd make if you went to Coldew School up north. And that was what you would kind of make, Right. At school in home economics.

[Deborah Frances-White]

But you would make. You just put the biscuits with all this stuff on it in the fridge with cream over the top, and then overnight the sherry and the jam seeps in and the cream seeps into the chocolate biscuits, creating a cake.

[Grace Dent]

What? That's quite boozy.

[Deborah Frances-White]

It's. It is a bit boozy. I did think. God, I suddenly, at the last minute, I did think, I probably should ask you, is it okay to give you such a boozy cake? But I know you drink.

[Grace Dent]

No, no, no. I don't I mean, this is it.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I, I, I don't drink, so I haven't tried it yet, so I don't. Fine.

[Grace Dent]

This is actually. No, this is free getting drunk. I think this is like. I think that's what they call it. It's. Darling, tell me. I'm so sorry, this is. I've got a microphone. I'm so sorry. If you've got. I'm so sorry. If you've got that thing. What is it called, Miss, Miss. What's it called when you hate people eating in a microphone? This is.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, no, no.

[Grace Dent]

This is your idea of a nightmare. When would you cook this? Make it?

[Deborah Frances-White]

I was going to say cook is an exaggeration of the situation. I would. Well, as teenagers, we used to make it because it was something you could make and not cook.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And then in my 20s, when I was, like, first having dinner parties, sometimes if I didn't, if I thought, oh, I don't have any time. Yeah, but I can do it the night before and it's really, really easy.

[Grace Dent]

So.

[Deborah Frances-White]

But then as you get older, you think, you can't serve that at a dinner party. In fact, the last time I served it at a dinner party, I didn't leave it in long enough. And someone who's in the audience tonight went, is this just biscuits? And it was. One of my friends is in the audience. It's not a stalker who's followed me here. I went, is this biscuits? And I went, what? Yes, it is. And explained how I made it. And I think that was the last time I made it, because I thought, you're too old for this now.

[Grace Dent]

And does the flake go on the side? No.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Well, then you put grated chocolate on the top. Or if you're, if you're me, you just flake. Because it's just easier than grating chocolate, isn't it?

[Grace Dent]

She knows.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I feel like MasterChef. Deborah.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Has put a. Has put flake crumbles over her.

[Grace Dent]

Oh, God, I wish the people would cook things like this on MasterChef. I have grinned. I have grinned too much at scallops. I have done my life to grinning at scallops. I would, I would kill for someone to go in and go, grace, I've just got a load of flake jam and sherry and I. Every time they ask me to set a brief to go in the kitchen, I always do. They always say just something that they can really get stuck into. And I always go, how about potatoes? Every time. And I always think they're the nicest tasks because, you know, it's. That it often comes from the heart. I'm so sorry. I'm so used to eating when people are looking at me because that's my job, that I'm just. I'm so unattractively shoving this. There's flake into my mouth.

[Deborah Frances-White]

What do you go for?

[Grace Dent]

The flake is a very specific taste though, isn't it? Like a flake tastes again, it tastes different to a dairy milk. It tastes different to the chocolate on a cream egg. I know these are all similar, but there's something about that that to me is putting my hand down the back of the sofa, hoping that the money had fallen out my dad's pocket and going down to the. There was an off license near my house when I was a little. Cause it's different times Gen X. You literally. You stole money from the back of the sofa and then went to an off license that was sold or, you know, just. It was a boozy off license and then bought chocolate and crisps and peanuts from a. From a piece of cardboard that the more that you took the card, the thing, like, the more that a woman's boobs became visible. Sorry, I should put this down.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, no, don't put it down.

[Grace Dent]

Don't put it down. And yeah, you would get sent off over two lanes of moving traffic often to go and get 10 regal king size and chocolate for everybody. Now, my mother, again, she used to deny this absolutely because my mother had this kind of. She had this like revisionist, like idea of looking at history that would have like made Chairman Mao blush. Like anything that happened like this, she would basically go, no, it didn't, it didn't. I never. You never had a key to let yourself in.

[Deborah Frances-White]

You're like, really?

[Grace Dent]

Really, Mum? So, like, I do, I find it. I find it fascinating looking back and looking at what we got away with. Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Yes, it was. It was a. It was a very different time like that. But also my parents also have revisionist history on. On what went on. And I think it is just the way of the world that one's parents cannot fully admit everything that went on because it would just. If we all admitted it, it would just explode. The family unit does.

[Grace Dent]

He does. Is there a point in a woman's progress through life where she stops being truthful? Like, because I think I'm in my. I'm in peak. I mean, I'm just past 50. I'm peak truth now. Anybody, like, roll up, pull up a chair, I will tell you the truth. And Then I'm just. Very little estrogen going around, trying to just. But is there a point where you get. Where you just, again, just start to randomly lie? Because I think that my mother hit that point where you. Is that.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I do know what you just.

[Grace Dent]

That didn't happen.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I think what it is, is when you're young. This is what I'm feeling now. When you're young, you always feel it's your responsibility to bring sex appeal into the room. Because it kind of is. That's what youth is. Youth is, everyone's got to fancy you and does anyone fancy you? And does everyone fancy you? And nobody fancies you and. And I've hit a point recently where I like, where I just. I just love being out or going out doing a show, because I just think, look, it's just not my responsibility to bring the sex appeal. I mean, it's not saying I don't have any. I. Absolutely. It's the sort of relaxation of it, because it's like, if I have any, that's an extra bonus to what I'm meant to be bringing, which is, you know, a certain amount of skill or talent or, you know, whatever behind you. And I sort of think in some ways the relaxation of not having to bring any means, you know, whenever you get a sign that you've got to be, you go, and I've brought a bit of that. But it's your job. Young people. You're young people.

[Grace Dent]

Bring the sexiness.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Bring it.

[Grace Dent]

Bring it.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Yeah. If I have any extra in the bag, that's fine. But no one's expecting it. And so there's something lovely about that. And that's why you can tell the truth. Because the great relief of always having to be somehow attractive is. Is gone. Not that I don't think I'm attractive. I'm not saying that. It's just more. It's not my main job. And when you're young, you don't have a lot else usually, so it feels like your main job.

[Grace Dent]

I think we should quit while we're ahead here. Before this. Before younger people in the audience start, like, pelting us with things.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, I think.

[Grace Dent]

Should we talk about pasta and things? We were going to talk about that because I was going to.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Absolutely right.

[Grace Dent]

I was going to read.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Yes, please read.

[Grace Dent]

I was going to read. I do have issues around seeing at the moment. Since my. Since I got old.

[Deborah Frances-White]

If you want to borrow my glasses, I need.

[Grace Dent]

They're lovely glasses. I tell you what. What were you going to ask me about Pastor No, I was just going to say framework again.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Another Brit. While you were getting your book ready, I was just going to say another brilliant line was the opening of Pastor, which is, pastor is the most unreliable narrator of one's true appetite. And never. I mean, it's like, sorry, I'm just laughing. Find a better line than that.

[Grace Dent]

I think that. I think, well, you know, Pastor is one of my most favorite, like my. In the whole world. I always feel we've talked a lot about guilt tonight and trying not to have guilt, but I think that again, from a young age, we're all. We're kind of. We start to think that we shouldn't have more than 100 grams and 100 grams is really not a lot. Somebody I heard a nutrition, Nutritionist, nutritionist, nutritionalist, nutritionist. Say recently on one of Those, on a YouTube channel, I was foolishly looking at that there's so little of anything good or useful in pasta that it shouldn't be classed as food, it should be classed as a recreational item.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I'm good with that.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

You know what I mean?

[Grace Dent]

So basically having a load. They said, she's like, you know, it's fine if you want to have a lot of people around and like have a big poll of pasta each. That's a very joining and a nourishing thing. But you really shouldn't do that very often because there's nothing in it at all, really.

[Deborah Frances-White]

It makes sense.

[Grace Dent]

And I thought, well, it's. Yeah, but I just think that, you know, I mean, like last night I made a very quick, like a tomato sauce with a ton of butter in it, like a tin tomato. Have you ever done that recipe where you just get a tin of tomatoes and whiz it up and then loads of butter and loads of herbs and it's just a very rough pasta sauce. And I had a bag of like tiny little pasta shapes that someone had gave me at some point and I just put some put in it and I just thought this is just joy, you know, it's sweet and it's stomach lining and that tomato. I just thought there's something about that. But I do think that whenever I'm talking to people about Italian food and pasta, especially in my industry, there's this idea that the best pasta has always got to be hand rolled. Obviously it's got to be handmade and then the sauce is always going to be very, you know, it's got to be stewed over for hours and it has to have carrots and celery and, you know, Whatever. All the, you know, fresh herbs in it. And there's always a little thing in the back of my mind that goes, yeah. But tinned ravioli is quite nice. Quite nice. There's something to do.

[Deborah Frances-White]

MasterChef. I think I'm gonna win if you're a judge, because I'm gonna be like. I have for. Bebera has prepared ravioli out of a bus. And bring a big cake for Greg.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah, bring a cake for Greg and basically, yeah, something, something. Yeah, pastry. So I've tried to. I've tried to think, you know, why I'm going to talk about pasta. I'm going to talk about tinned pasta. I need to find the thing on tin and tin pasta for me. Tinned pasta for me is always synonymous with caravans and it's synonymous with caravan holidays. Oh, my God, my eyes are so bad. When I go to restaurants these days, I have to choose between being pretty or seeing Right. And like, I try to put my. I've got contact lenses in at the moment and I have to go in and I've got the menu so far away from me these days that now I've just started handing it. It's a really hot waiters and going. You choose.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I mean, is the waiters Might not be that hot. You can't really see.

[Grace Dent]

Could be anybody. It's just a large yucca plant or something. Yeah. Holidays were not gastronomical adventures when I was small. If we were lucky, we might as get. If we were lucky, we might get as far as a chalet at Pompton's holiday camp in South Pole Airport, where the canteen served lumpy mash and battered fish slice. Fish slice, yeah. Maybe that was just a northern thing. Kind of an indiscriminate part of fish, basically. Fish slice 14 times per week. After which at Pontins there would be a dance with your dad competition. Sometimes we'd go to a small hotel in Rhyl, North Wales. I'd eat a sugar dummy on a rope during a day trip to Llandudno Pier. Or I'd have a Walls Cornetto at Liverpool International Garden Festival and then it'd be back to Kirby to see my Scouse nan and she'd get out the Rovers biscuit assortment. The pinnacle of all of this was Siloth on Solway. Now, Silith on Solway is a seaside port. It's only 20 miles from the front door of Carlisle. My front door in Carlisle. I don't know. I think anyone that's listening to this is probably somewhere near Your house, that was about 15 mil, that whenever the sun shone, you got took there. Silly will always hold a special place in the heart of millions of northerners and folk from the southwest of Scotland. For me, it's very much the Las Vegas of Cumbria. Experiencing a bit of pushback against that, we leave the urban landscape of Kuruk Kalaa with its graffiti and its pebbled out, and very quickly we'd end up somewhere with places that sold buckets and spades and ice pops. And there were penny arcades with one of those push machines where you might even win a 10 pack of regal Blue King size with a fiver Sellotape to it if you fed it enough two pence pieces. Now, whenever I've read that piece in somewhere like Bath, right, they always go, oh, bless her. Like, I'm kind of like a Ken Loach walking Ken Loach movie. And I always. I was thinking, oh, that was the best bit, a 10 pack of cigarettes with a fiver on it, okay. It always felt like holiday time at Siloth because the postcards, the shops had naughty postcards of women, large boobs having their bums felt. And that's without mentioning the chunky little. A chunky little van that would go around the street selling homemade ice cream. Sometimes we'd go to the tea rooms and Mum would buy us a jam tart and a glass of banana Nesquik and we'd eat fish and chips in the paper sat on the bonnet of my mam's British Leyland Princess overlooking the Irish Sea. In the summer, when the sun shone, we'd be down to the beach on the firth, building sandcastles on the dunes close to Sellafield until our shoulders peeled. Then when the holidays finished, we'd return to school, only to be taken back to Siloth on a school trip. Yes, back to the only place we'd ever been, but this time carrying tracing paper to do rubbings of stones and packed lunches with egg sandwiches that stunk the bus out. None of this compares to the excitement of Easter 79, when we spent 14 full days in Siloth. Mam took me and my little brother for an extended sojourn in a static caravan, and I thought it terribly brave of her to take us on her own, although I look back now and understand she was simply sick to the back teeth of my father, sick of his asthma, sick of his moaning, sick of the washing pile. I think she'd found one snotty hanky down the side of the settee too, and weren't too many. It was an ambitious April trip and the forecast said that it would be raining the entire time and terrific winds would be blasting across the Irish Sea, liable to knock over our caravan. Mam, however, was determined we would venture to the shop. We weren't bothered by the rain at all because the thing is about a static caravan is that the more it rains outside the snugger you are inside. And rain just made it even more exciting when Mum would fold down that caravan table and serve us lunch and it would always be something out of a tin and it was almost always pasta on white toast. A lot of the time it would be ravioli, small plumps plus small plump envelopes of salty mole colored sludge or noodle doodles that came in the shape of butterflies or spaghetti hoops. You can't beat spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce. Tastes nothing like the original fruit. That delicious blend of modified corn flour, citric acid, sugar and garlic salt. Tinned pasta is on my grocery delivery every time. It's available in every supermarket. When I'm far from home, it's my savior. When I'm sad and tired and when hotel room service has stopped serving, that's when I buy my small tins of pepper pig spaghetti and I can eat it with a teaspoon. Tinned spaghetti has this particular special place in my life. It's basically adult baby food. Tinned spaghetti is day nine in a static caravan and the rain has poured to such an extent that the parking area is flooded. But we are adventurers. Tinned ravioli is my mum making tea and she's reading us James and the Giant Peach. She's reading us Pam Air's poems to make us laugh. Oh, I wish I'd looked after my teeth, she would say. And it's Kid Jensen on the radio and it's us dancing to Physical by Olivia Newton John. And it's watching Starsky and Hutch on a portable telly. And it's dad arriving, trying to make amends and her saying, get off me, you scousgette. And I sit. I sit on my dad's knee and he reads me. He reads me. Today's Andy Capp Cilas is a constant. As the years pass, I'm taken as a tween less impressed by the penny arcade and the little van with raspberry ripple. And then I'm taken as a sullen teenager, a teenage goth in the 80s. I'm only there because I can't be trusted to have a house party if left alone. And I walk along the beach 20 meters behind my mum and dad, fuming that I'm not in Berlin with the Sisters of Mercy. In the late 80s, my parents splash out and they buy their very own static caravan. They spend every weekend on a beach. They walk their dogs, they listen to Foster and Alan on cd. They eat microwaved spaghetti hoops on Warburtons with Utterly Butterly. And then I'm there, back from uni, finding Sillers depressing, trapped in time and heroically quaint. And in the noughties. They have to get rid of the caravan and dad can't go anymore. He's got dementia. It's too much. And with my mom and her health, it's a bit too cold, but still. Sometimes we drive out there, we have chips and a walk, and we go very slowly along that seafront, holding Dad's hand so he can't get lost, suggesting to my mother that she uses her wheelchair, she won't be seen dead in one. She says someone might see her in it and thinks she can't walk anymore. And then with microwaved pots of spaghetti hoops eaten on toast one Saturday morning for breakfast, I load into the car with my two brothers, all of us older and greyer, and we head to Silleth and we park the car where the static caravan once was. And we walk over sand dunes and we walk over wet sand and we stare out far into the Irish Sea. And it's a blustery February day and we. We throw Mum and Dad's ashes into the wind and we just watch them and they just disappear in seconds. And life, it's impermanent. Everything changes. And I love tinned pasta because I like to cling to the small things that are constant. And that's it. Oh, thank you. Oh, thank you, thank you. Sorry, it's a bit sad. I'm so sorry that.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, it was beautiful. It's really moving and it really does. It's. You write so beautifully about the sentimentality of food and why it is more important than clear arteries. You know, it is. It is like. It just is. It's because we're here to live. We're not. And we're here to connect. And what you're talking about there is the connection you felt as a little girl. Sorry, I'm getting a bit emotional. The connection you felt as a little girl is a connection you can find now your parents are no longer with you through something as simple as tinned spaghetti. And that is. That's what it's about. We're here to Connect. We're not here to live to 105. You know, we might do, but we're here to connect. And so. And food is connection because it's the one thing sustaining all of us.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah.

[Deborah Frances-White]

And so we must use it to connect. And in that spirit. Would you like to connect with Grace right now? Is there anything you would like to ask her? A microphone will come to you. So could any. Does anyone want to ask anything? Would you like to wave your hand? There's somebody here. That's the first hand I've seen. And there's somebody lovely coming with a microphone.

[Grace Dent]

Hello. Hello.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Hello, Grace.

[Grace Dent]

Hello.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I was just wondering, amongst your fellow critic posse, is there anyone that you're willing to name that you really enjoy having dinner with when you're off duty? You know, you're just having dinner.

[Grace Dent]

Do you know the thing I say?

[Deborah Frances-White]

Is there anyone you hate? No.

[Grace Dent]

Right. The food critic bunch. They are. They can be a difficult and awkward and ego driven and irascible old bunch of sods. That's an old fashioned word, isn't it? But the most. But the aggravating thing about all of them is they're all really good company. And I would love to tell you that, you know, when you see William Sitwell on MasterChef, I think it's very easy to think that you'd like to slap him and maybe Jay as well. And I mean, I've thought about it often, but. But when I love. I. My favorite person to eat with is probably, out of all of them is probably Tom Parker Bowles because he's never boring. But Jay, Jay's great. Jay's good fun as long as he doesn't play jazz piano. And which as long as you don't, I mean, but that is ever present. That is an ever present threat. I have no. I. Hugh, you know that at the Ivy Club, they have a piano at all times, don't they? And I have seen Jay just drift halfway through dinner and start going like Old man river. And you're like, oh, but I say this in the spirit of love. And he knows that I think that. But yeah, I would love to tell.

[Deborah Frances-White]

If he doesn't, because this is going to go out as a podcast.

[Grace Dent]

Oh, God. He'll be at home, like, with his tinfoil hat on listening right now, like, kind of like checking how many people have listened to this tonight. I think that, you know, they're all quite good fun. That's the thing. They're all massive personalities. So as much as I'd love to tell you that Giles Coren isn't fun to eat with. He's really, really good fun to eat with. And one of the best things about MasterChef is when I do the back room, when I go in and I sit, you know, you walk in and we don't. It's like you very rarely see us in the same room together. You know, we. I would never. I don't want to be in the same restaurant reviewing that. Giles is. Because that means there's been a bit of a kind of an error in. We don't want to run a column at the same time. So when we do sit down on that bench, the gossip is just, oh, oh, my God. And as I will say this, I say this to Jay's face. Jay is a messy bitch who loves the drama.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Well, you have delivered on that question.

[Grace Dent]

I have to say. Jay is like kind of. You'll never guess. And I'm like, no, you know, it's like, that's the whole. You can see it. So anyway, I'm going to shut up now.

[Deborah Frances-White]

No, don't talk on any other questions. Given that was delivered on so phenomenally. There's loads of hands now that weren't there before. Right, so, like, what else can we get? Shay calls Grace Dent, spills the beans onto toast and butter. What was your question?

[Grace Dent]

Oh, hold on.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Microphone's coming.

[Grace Dent]

That lady does. I love that. She said, I don't need the microphone. She said, I love that confidence. What's the worst thing you've ever had in your mouth? But only food related.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Excuse me. Don't say JB J on jazz piano. Go on. Don't do that.

[Grace Dent]

The worst. Right, okay, I'm going to tell you and you're not going to like this, so if you've got a delicate constitution, I'm going to say it. And you can blame that lady there. I once went to a very, very expensive tasting menu in. In London. The bill for two people was about £600. And it seems that sometimes it makes me depressed. It makes me depressed. Like, sorry, I don't want to sound like worthy, but it does make me depressed when it's bad. And he was called the Demon Chef. See who. Do you remember who this is? I can't remember his actual. I shouldn't say his name. It's going out on bloody Intelligence Squared, isn't it? The restaurant's not there anymore anyway. And the last course. So it was. The last course was. It was experimental Chinese, Japanese food, everything done with a twist. There was a lot of cloches with smoke and invisible things and tweezers and moving bits that are probably ants and all that. I could do that, you know, you don't. This doesn't faze me. And then the last thing they went, would you like to do a supplement at the end for £15 extra? And it's going to be donated. I can't believe I'm telling this in a church. It's going to be donated to an AIDS charity. For absolutely amazing, amazing charity. One thing that I really support, and they said, it's called Sex on the Beach. And it came and he had replicated a condom that had been left on a beach that was. So this is it. It was a condom that was left on a beach and it was sugar sand and a sugar condom. And it was ringed. One person is laughing. Everyone else is just gone. Everyone's gone. So it's come back now. It was replicated to be a used condom.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Oh, up until now, this has been a very charming evening.

[Grace Dent]

I'm so sorry.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I definitely do blame you.

[Grace Dent]

I'm so sorry. And if you go onto my Instagram and scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, not only will I get younger and younger and younger, but there's a one of me and I do look very young in it. And I'm just holding up the condom beside my face. That is the worst thing. Because I felt as if I had to eat it and I just. I just felt angry. The next day I felt. I don't know why that moved me so much, but I do remember you do have sometimes real existential worry and existential. Like it hits you that you're. Because you can see the pot. You can see how much. Like when I got, you know, I went and took some stuff to a. This is not me trying to be a saying. Took some stuff to a food bank the other day because I got given so much food and I took it and I just got this, such a lovely email. Literally, people are going, thank you for the kidney beans, you know, because it's going to be so really appreciated by people. And then the next minute I'm going, here, have three, 350 pounds and you. And for an edible condom with some sugar spun syrup inside it. I've really just killed the night, haven't I? Should we just walk off again to the sound of my feet? I'm so sorry we did that. Answer your question, madam?

[Deborah Frances-White]

Talking about.

[Grace Dent]

Thank you.

[Deborah Frances-White]

I know exactly what you're talking about. And it's.

[Grace Dent]

Yeah, I think that sometimes these things are the worst things that you know, I don't mind eating weird and wonderful things and, and Pete, you know, I don't eat a lot of meat, but when I'm at work, if somebody brings me any kind of, you know, valve or tube, I'm a bit like, go on, you know, so let's do it, let's eat this, you know, whatever it is.

[Deborah Frances-White]

But I think, I think somebody saying, would you like to add this on for charity?

[Grace Dent]

Yes.

[Deborah Frances-White]

Bringing out, effectively, a used condom is a betrayal. And it is, it was made of violation. I don't care. I, I, I absolutely think. Another great answer.

[Connor Boyle]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by myself, Connor Boyle, with production and editing by Mark Roberts and Bea Duncan.

[Commercial Announcer]

And Doug.

[Grace Dent]

Here we have the Limu emu in.

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[Grace Dent]

Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.

[Connor Boyle]

Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.

[Grace Dent]

Cut the camera.

[Deborah Frances-White]

They see us.

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[Grace Dent]

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