When I was five, Dad did a job-swap and taught biology at Eton, so for a term I attended a nearby primary school and, each lunchtime, had to march to a building where a very strict woman would blow a very loud whistle if anyone spoke a word while eating. All my memories of that term are of awful, very frightening meals.
Dad took a post at the University of East Anglia and would invite round his PhD students and my job was to walk around with peanuts before being sent to bed. Mum would serve them her lasagnes, which were the first of a trail of lasagnes in my life.
I was the oldest child and Mum would leave instructions for me and I’d peel and get things cooking – especially lasagnes. There’d be times when Nottingham High School term breaks didn’t correspond with my brother’s and sister’s, and I’d spend days on my own, trying recipes from a big Mrs Beeton book.
After Strictly I went on the Strictly Tour and I received a text from my daughter expressing strongly that I come home and get back to doing the family’s cooking. The most difficult birthday cake she’s asked me to make was one shaped like a cola can with straw. When I did Comic Relief Bake Off, Mary and Paul looked at my ski-jump cake and said, “An inventive use of outside purchased confection”, which I felt was a put-down.
The ‘Lasagne-gate Plot’ was me cooking lasagnes one Wednesday evening for both my ministerial team [when shadow chancellor] and my wife Yvette [Cooper]’s Home Office staff. It was seen as us galvanising a group to destabilise someone. I suppose it was Ed Miliband, I can’t remember. I think the most made for one of my lasagnes at a fundraising auction is £8,000. Actually, that was for two lasagnes and involved taking them round and serving them.
My first time on a plane was aged 21, sipping a G&T, going to specialise in economics at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Then, 27 years later, after losing my parliamentary seat in 2015, Kennedy School offered me a fellowship and I flew there again. Nothing had changed there, so all I felt after arriving was my own age and difference. It was a massive, punch-in-the-face midlife crisis. I realised almost all my important American experiences had centred around affordable eating out. I hired a bike and revisited my favourite Chinese off Harvard Square, for double-cooked Sichuan pork.
Once Labour was in government, lunches between then chancellor Gordon Brown and the governor of the Bank of England were held at the bank. Eddie George would start with a martini, never eat vegetables and incredibly good clarets would appear from the vaults. Nick MacPherson [a senior civil servant], Tom Scholar [Gordon Brown’s private secretary] and I liked to show Eddie we appreciated his hospitality. Gordon, rather more puritan about life and lunchtimes, would gaze at us as we quaffed the claret with a face that said, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I always thought it important that people, especially Gordon’s team, had a moment to let their hair down, so I’d arrange Christmas dinners in a soundproofed karaoke room at the Imperial China restaurant [in Lisle Street, London]. My speciality has always been Endless Love, singing as either Lionel Richie or Diana Ross. Once, at a Manchester hotel, I did the duet twice, swapping roles the second time, with Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union.
Yvette’s first job was public health minister and she’d often be on breakfast television talking about issues like diet, obesity and food standards. I’d be making the children breakfast and they’d ask, “Where’s Mum?” and I’d just switch on the TV and go, “There”, and they’d go, “Right, got it.”
Yvette and I were en route to the airport to fly to Italy for our Christmas break in 1998 and just as I was realising we’d left our big joint of beef in the fridge at Yvette’s parents’ house, Gordon phoned, exclaiming, “Have you seen the news? Peter Mandelson’s resigned!” Gordon then heard me ask, “Where’s the beef? Where’s the beef?” and blared, “What do you mean? Mandelson’s resigned! That’s the beef!” I’d thought the resignation was rather inevitable, but leaving our Christmas joint in Hampshire wasn’t, so I said to Yvette, “Is it too late to turn back?” and Gordon shouted, “There’s no turning back now!” But we got the beef and we got the plane.
There’s a tea room in the Commons which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner from morning until 11pm and a big dining room with table service. In both, MPs turn up and segregate themselves on party lines – it’s not a rule but everyone does it and any mixing is considered wrong. Although the idea that you’re safe with friends if you eat only with people of your own party is ludicrous. Yvette and I never ate together at work because being seen as my wife was potentially stereotyping for her.
Travelling on the Queen’s flight from Northolt at 5am, days at the European Council in Brussels were very long. Going for a steak in the Justus Lipsius café in the evening was when we felt the day’s work was done. Days in Washington were different. We’d travel the night before, arriving hungry and going out for steaks at Morton’s at what – back in the UK – was 1, 2, 3am. Then, after a day at the White House, Fed or our Washington embassy, and before attempting to catch the 7pm flight home, we’d stop off at J. Paul’s Bar in Georgetown at 5pm for drinks. I liked such routines – it brings structure.
At a finance ministers’ lunch in Washington in 2004, Nicolas Sarkozy was sitting beside me and suddenly he turned and exclaimed, “This is totally ridiculous. What are these Americans doing?” I assumed he was talking about international democracy, but he gestured to his plate and said angrily, “Do they really expect us to eat this?”
I was only present for the starter at the Granita dinner [in Islington in 1994] where Gordon is said to have stepped aside in favour of Blair as leader. I think it’d be fair to say Gordon wasn’t totally committed to going to the meal. I’ve never known a man with a bigger appetite than Gordon but as for eating polenta, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t engage with the Mediterranean dish and came back for steak and chips.
Ed Balls appears at the Bath Literary Festival on 28 May; bathfestivals.org.uk
