I’m fussy about food. My first food memory, growing up in Hampshire, is picking the mashed potato off the top of my shepherd’s pie and throwing it on the floor for the dogs to eat, hoping my mother wouldn’t notice. I still don’t really like mashed potato.
My mother was a really good cook. I remember her making the most amazing pudding, îles flottantes. Dad, on the other hand, was hopeless. His idea of cooking was baked beans on toast. He once put milk in the kettle, because he thought that was the way to warm it up.
Clare Balding, 54, sports presenter and Celebrity Traitors star
I went to Downe House [a boarding school in Berkshire] when I was 13, and the food was actually very good. We’d always have fish on Fridays and big, chunky plates filled with lasagne, and sometimes stodgy pudding – apple crumble with custard, that sort of thing. Their ice cream with chocolate sauce was a real favourite.
The night before we went back to school, we’d always get our choice of last supper. And I’d always go for lamb chops with mint jelly (not sauce), roast potatoes, cauliflower cheese and lots of vegetables, too.
We didn’t really have that many crisps and sweets around. But I’m a big fan of a cup of tea and a biscuit. I liked those ones that were rolled like a cigar, sort of dark brown and burnt at the end. They were the best.
When I was riding as an amateur jockey, I was on a very strict diet. You had to be incredibly disciplined, which was not all that healthy, as you had to limit your intake of fluids, and then sweat it all out to bring one’s weight down further. I don’t think I had a great relationship with food, because I looked at everything I ate and thought, ‘God, is this worth what it’s going to cost me?’ Consequently, I’m pretty careful with my diet now.
I do love the social side of eating, sitting around the table and chatting. I adore the kind of chaotic nature of a really good dinner party, where you literally have to stop yourself talking so that you can take a bite of food. For me, a lot of the pleasure of dinners is about the company.
During the Paris Olympics, Clare self-catered; chicken salads are a staple
Alice [Arnold, her wife] doesn’t like me doing the cooking. She says I don’t follow the instructions, and keep adding extra ingredients. So she tends to cook and I do the clearing up. But if we’re going freestyle and doing a big salad with chicken breast and avocado and crispy bacon, I’ll do that.
We do have an air fryer, which I’m quite excited about. It makes life a lot easier – it’s very good for crispy bacon, although I’ve never done chips as I don’t eat potatoes.
When I’m doing long, intense jobs like the Olympics, I’m very regimented with my diet. In Paris, for last year’s Games, I had a small apartment with a kitchen, so I could go to the supermarket and get my Greek yogurt and prunes for breakfast, and make huge salads for lunch, as well as hard-boiled eggs and good cheese. It was part of my routine each day.
I don’t really like raw tomatoes. I can eat tomato sauce, and tomato soup, at a push. But if you gave me a gazpacho, I’d spit it out. I’m not mad on pineapple either.
My comfort foods would be a good thick soup in the winter, and salads in the summer. I also love fish, although Alice does not, so we never have it at home. I do like a curry. Oh, and a chicken stir-fry – actually, that would be it.
I always have cheese, ham and eggs in the fridge. As well as gin and lots of tonic water.
I would want lots of people around me for my last supper. And it would be either lamb chops or a smorgasbord of meats, fish, salads and cheese – a proper Mediterranean mixture. As you can probably tell, I’m not really a foodie!