‘Each week, I stocked up on a load of the things I associate with comfort eating – Cadbury’s Swiss Rolls, fondant fancies, Jammy Dodgers – and not one of my guests touched any of them’
As Laura Whitmore, the elegant, highly aspirational TV presenter, squirted cold mayo into an upturned, raw mushroom cap, I realised that my Comfort Eating podcast had reached new levels of unfettered honesty. “It’s fancy, like an hors d’oeuvre!” she said, popping the whole slimy, slightly soil-laden, fridge-cold shroom brimming with bottled Hellmann’s into her mouth, then chewing with a real sense of joy.
Then it was my turn. I gingerly lifted the mushroom to my mouth and took a hesitant bite, causing mayo to rise over the sides of the cap: it tasted exactly as I’d imagined – no alchemy had taken place to make the sum bigger than its parts; well, not for me at least. But then, that’s the whole point of Comfort Eating, for which I’d previously tasted the private penchants of the likes of Stephen Fry, Russell Tovey and Rafe Spall.
