At first it was all about the food. A few days after Toast was published a middle-aged woman in a blue puffa jacket sidled up to me in the back room of Marylebone's Daunt bookshop in London. 'You forgot to mention Mint Yo-Yos,' she whispered, then scuttled off towards the till. Well, yes, I had entirely forgotten the delights of the now extinct green and silver foil-wrapped biscuit, though I can instantly recall the smell of cheap milk chocolate and synthetic mint. Then, as I walked down Oxford Street a man called out from his bike 'What about Vesta chow mein?' Yep. I forgot that one too.
A week later the emails started: where were Cremola Foam; Gypsy Tart; Nimble bread; Liquorice Catherine Wheels; Fuller's cakes and Sherbet Dabs? Then a good dozen followed, telling me where you could still buy the Arctic Roll I had suggested was no longer made. By the time I had been stopped and gently admonished for failing to mention Trout Hall tinned grapefruit, Symington's Table Creams and Chocolate Instant Whip, I was beginning to realise that it was not only my own memories that were bound up with the food of the 1960s and 1970s. Of course, this being Britain, it was not so much a Proustian madeleine that had opened the door, but Bird's Dream Topping. I knew I had missed dozens of the foods of my childhood. Some I had genuinely forgotten, like the 'slimming' Energen rolls, and Cherry B - the Malibu of its day. Others - coconut madeleines, Rose's lime cordial, malted milk - I edited out as my memoir risked becoming a catalogue of forgotten foods.
As more people started to talk about the book and its Proustian effects, two things became clear. Firstly, that the thought of the (particularly) commercial food we ate as children was opening up more detailed memories than any photograph album ever could. And secondly, butterscotch really was the only truly acceptable flavour of Angel Delight.
Within a week of publication Toast went into its second printing, then the third and now as this goes to press, its eleventh. The reviewers were both kind and generous and the book has spent more time dipping in and out of the bestsellers' list than an author could ever have asked for. Add to that the sale of the film rights and it is fair to say that Toast has touched a chord or two.
Lengthy but fascinating letters began to arrive on my doormat. This time they weren't talking about the food, but about the deeper memories the food had unlocked. Letter after letter endorsed the fact that Toast wasn't just my memoir; it was many other people's as well. At one point I felt so overwhelmed with matching stories of overbearing parents, dying mothers, naughty uncles and early sexual experiences that I was forced to stop replying.
It will be interesting to see what the Americans make of it. Toast is to be published there in October. I say this because so many of the brand names are unknown in the US, so name-checking Nestlé's cream is unlikely to bring back a flood of memories of tinned peaches. Others say the story is universal.
Of course, Toast is hardly the first foodie autobiography. There has been something of a rash of them over the last few years, though to my mind, rather too many of them involve the displaced author wandering around the market at dawn with a wicker basket, picking up white-tipped radishes and charming local cheeses for lunch. Each one seems to come complete with the inevitable village crone who befriends the author then teaches them everything they need to know about making pasta by hand or cooking bean casseroles on their wood-fired stove. A long way from my own spaghetti hoops and Ambrosia creamed rice.
One thing is for sure, no matter how vast our appetite for culinary nostalgia has become, I will not be writing a sequel. I know the end was a little tantalising and there are more than a few people who want to know what happened next but, to be honest, there are probably far more who would rather I didn't tell them.
Toast is winner of the British Book Awards and People's Choice Book Awards for autobiography of the year and the André Simon Memorial Prize. To order a copy in hardback (Fourth Estate, £16.99) or paperback (Harper Perennial, £7.99) at a reduced price call The Observer's book service on 0870 066 7989
