I don’t know why I have always had a more intense fascination with food than most of my peers. Even from an early age one of my favourite programmes was the Galloping Gourmet, Grahame Kerr, cooking with a passion and exuberance that I immediately identified with. My mother fed us a great variety of home cooked meals including stuffed ox hearts and sheep’s’ tongue stew so I was lucky to be exposed to a great variety of tastes and flavours as were available then
I grew up in Leatherhead in Surrey and first got interested in catering during a summer job at Chessington Zoo. Yup, entertaining visitors from behind bars. We also waited on weddings and Jacobean banquets in the Burnt Stub function halls.
I then moved down to Bournemouth and spent 6 months at the Moat House Hotel before starting a three year catering course. My work experience was spent at the Little Grove Hotel on Jersey, a member of Relais Chateau. My food epiphany came in my final year when our Gastronomy lecturer, took us to visit his good friend Michel Roux at the legendary Waterside Inn. Food for me was never going to be the same again.
My daughter was born just after my course ended so instead of a poorly paid apprenticeship I sold my soul to the Big Mac and enrolled in Hamburger University.
After a few years I needed something more stimulating and switched to pubs, or to be more precise, the Gander on the Green in Bournemouth. A lively little place, well known as a music venue and home to two chapters of Hells Angels. Jan, the landlady (& ex-psychiatric nurse) taught me all she could & eventually I reluctantly headed off around London and the South on the relief circuit, providing holiday and sickness cover at numerous hostelries.
I eventually took on the Abbey, a pub/night club on the North Circular near Wembley, but this proved a step too far. A glazier used to call in on the off chance every Monday morning and there was usually enough work to make it worth his while. I left to pursue a career with a longer life expectancy.
My move took me to a company called Beeton Rumford, responsible for catering at all the events at Earls Court & Olympia Exhibition Centres. This was extreme catering with numbers totally off the scale to what I had previously encountered. For several years we set new records for the largest silver service banquets with up to 11,500 guests at one sitting. We also looked after most of the Royal family and other assorted dignitaries and every celebrity going. Hosting the Brit Awards each year was always good for name dropping. It also means that I have spent 6 months of my life at the Ideal Home Exhibition, enough for several lifetimes.
P&O, our parent company, sold off the Exhibition Centres but I had the opportunity to move to Sainsburys and join their New Product Development Team. This really was eating for a living. Working with the Fish team I drew up a rota that ensured that we sampled each product at least once every two weeks. High volume lines came in every couple of days. At 9.30am we looked at the raw products, sampling the ready to eat varieties such as smoked salmon and prawns. At 11am we returned to sample those that required cooking. We met up again for lunch and afterwards I would meet with suppliers to sample products in development or sample our competitor’s offerings. In the evenings we were encouraged to go out with the restaurant club to experience hot new trends as they hit the streets.
From Sainsburys I moved to Safeway and worked with the Brand Manager on a re-launch of their premium 'the Best’ range. This involved talking to suppliers about what made their product ‘the best and yes, more eating. Then Morrisons took over Safeway and it was time for another move.
I enjoyed my time with the Supermarkets and learned a lot about the dynamics involved in driving the business. However, I was never really comfortable with the power that we wielded over the suppliers. So, when I saw that London Rowing Club in Putney was after an events manager I leapt at the chance to return to catering. A beautiful Victorian boathouse, right on the river Thames, the Club hosts weddings, parties and conferences and then goes mad in March with the men’s and women’s Head of the River Races and the Varsity Boatrace. To start with my role involved cooking twice a week for about 25 people, the Rotary Club on a Monday and the Rowing Club ‘old boys’ on a Wednesday. This was ideal as I could practise a dish on the Monday to be sure of perfecting it for the Wednesday. I was proud of the fact that I did not repeat a weekly menu for the first 18 months.
A couple of years ago my wife and I decided to move to Wales to be close to her family. They mainly live around Abergavenny, a notoriously foodie area with Michelin stars, fantastic local produce and a huge annual food fair. So I did not need much persuading.
We decided to set up in business and chose a Lighterlife franchise as my wife was already a trained counsellor and we both believed in the product. So now I am poacher turned gamekeeper. I am learning all about obesity issues and encouraging people to lose weight by eating food packs and attending counselling sessions to re-establish a healthy relationship with food.
The Lighterlife work is very rewarding and we have seen some life changing transformations as some of our clients have lost more than half their original body weight. But this brings me on to a caveat for my campaign to avoid food waste. A frequent contributing factor to weight issues in people of a certain age has been their parent’s war time mentality that not to clear you plate was a sin. At times of rationing this was not an issue and the country was a lot healthier for it but we also hear stories of relatives who survived times of starvation who would break down in tears if they saw food being wasted.
These days with an overabundance of convenient, super-sized, instant gratification a lot of caution is required, but simple portion control can be one of our greatest weapons on all fronts.
Meanwhile I still cook from scratch and love entertaining at home but always with an eye on what food waste makes it through to the recycling bin.
