My father worked for MI6 and my mother was a baroness. She was worn down by the privations of war and he looked well fed. But he was a frugal man and when I'd put mounds of butter on a piece of bread he'd say, "What on earth do you think you're doing?" Then mother would say, "She can have all the butter she wants!"

I stopped boarding at convent school at 12 and would walk home each day, a latch-key kid, and prepare supper – very continental delicatessen food – for my working mother. She would write descriptive lists for me, of things like "4 Very Nice Apples", "4 Delicious Bananas" and "2 Really Good Lamb Chops". So I learned to examine food for goodness and freshness.

My father belonged to a commune and the food was ghastly. My idea of food hell is the salad cream they'd pour all over bits of lettuce, cucumber and tomato. It was just disgusting.

I love dinner parties – other peoples' anyway. I find cooking while talking very difficult. For a posh one I'll bring out the heirlooms from my mother's side – knives and forks with "SM" on them, for Sacher-Masoch or Sado-Masochism, you can take your pick. And I drink espressos from lovely turquoise and gold cups which survived two world wars.

I was anorexic in the 60s and 70s, although it wasn't called anorexia then. I thought people would be nicer to me if I looked very small and delicate, so food wasn't high on my agenda. But it is now.

When I was a street junkie I would just eat shredded wheat with milk and sugar. About every two weeks I'd take myself to San Lorenzo and have fish, mashed potato and spinach, which I'm sure is what kept me alive.

I live in Paris and like going to hotels to eat. I love the Hotel Costes, although the Crillon is more grand. I occasionally go to the Caviar House & Prunier to have Caspian caviar in a baked potato.

The food that's never let me down in life is porridge, especially with milk and maple syrup, which is delicious. Paris isn't a porridge place but I can buy it in London when I'm there and bring it back with me.

I've hated being associated with that famous confection [Mars Bar]. I don't eat them and I never have, and what is said to have happened just never did. So I have no good feelings about it whatsoever. It's meant the loss of my feminine self.

I serve black tea, which I call Froggy tea. And I have green teas and all sorts of nice teas. I'm serving tea all the time.

Horses and High Heels is out now on Dramatico Records