I was an only child, so I'd sit at the head of the dining table, with a parent to either side. Mum's ambition was always to fatten me up. She did all the cooking – except Saturday lunches, which I associate with the smell of dad's hand hair burning under the grill. Mum had a Saturday job at M&S and I'd wait at the gate to help her carry in bags of food going out of date. At school everyone would look askance at me for always eating smoked salmon sandwiches.

When I was 12 I blew up a dinner, literally. We'd rushed in from Sainsbury's, Mum had answered the phone and, because Dad hadn't seen instructions to put on a fish pie, Mum called for me to "put it on gas mark 4". The gas I put on was under a Pyrex dish. There was an almighty bang. We found thousands of pieces of glass embedded in every wall in the kitchen. We went for fish and chips.

I'm very sensitive to the smell of milk. My first job at 16 was on a conveyor belt at Unigate in Bournemouth. I'd come home with milk all over me. My jumper never lost the smell, however much it was washed. No one ever spoke to me, not even in the canteen, where I'd sit having a wilted sandwich or a dangerous-looking scotch egg.

When I was a student and going to chilly churches to sing in choirs, very often, being soloist, I'd get offered food afterwards. A lovely couple would take me back to their house – but always, always for a small cold quiche.

I was in a number of bands as a teenager and we rehearsed in our house. One band was called Silence Is Purple, but very short-lived. They were all cheese-on-toast bands. I'd either add Worcester sauce or glug it straight from the bottle.

While I was selling ice-cream one summer to queues of women in bikinis on Bournemouth promenade, I was recovering from glandular fever and reading Jean-Paul Sartre's novel Nausea. My days were exhausting, hallucinatory and hypnotic. But if it rained I'd get sent home, paid. So I'd do little rain dances.

My wife – a teacher – says that when we first met my fridge contained just one onion and a bottle of vodka. I remember cooking a romantic meal for her of fish pie with prawns in it. But she said, "I don't really like fish pie" and "I don't eat prawns" and "I don't like creamy sauces either", so it wasn't our finest moment.

It was quite odd last year to sit down for Christmas dinner and watch myself on the Queen's Message. The previous Christmas I was supposed to be relaxing after a full-on year, but the Military Wives record was all over the radio and by Christmas Eve we knew it would be impossible to be beaten by Little Mix. During this maelstrom I kept calm by peeling potatoes.

Voices by Gareth Malone is out now on Decca. Sing While You Work is on BBC2, Mondays, 9pm