My childhood memories of cooking at home are of very overcooked meat, as tough as old boots. And a lot of fry-ups and 70s food like Vesta pancakes and a soup which went on for ever – like an enormous vat of what appeared to be water with one chicken claw in it.

My mother was a terrible cook but I didn’t know that until I was about 13 and my friend – also called Dave – gave me an avocado at his house. I thought, “I had no idea there’s a dimension of taste like this”, and I’ve been obsessed since with trying to find other food that made me so interested in food as avocado.

My dad is 83 and can walk from his chair to his bed or toilet and that’s about it. But there’s a salt beef bar in Harrow and my brother and I take him there in a wheelchair. He doesn’t understand why he has to move afterwards, which can be quite funny. We’ll say, “We’ll go home now”, and he’ll say, for an hour, “No, no – I’m fine here.”

Before I was 15 or 16, the only restaurant I went to was the Beeferie in Willesden Green, which served salt beef. The windows were always steamed up, whatever time of year it was. Then at 15 or 16, Dad took me to the Shahbhag restaurant in Hampstead. I’d never had a curry before and now it’s probably the food I like and think about the most.

My maternal grandfather, a refugee from the Nazis, wrote to my grandma from the Isle of Man when he was interned as an “enemy alien” during the second world war. I had the letters translated at some cost. There were a lot of food references, sausages especially. They seemed mainly to say: “Please bring me more of that lovely cutting sausage you brought last time.”

I’d never been to any kind of posh restaurant until I got famous. Then I discovered something, which is that posh food isn’t really the best food. “Posh food” is just a genre of food, like Indian or Chinese or fast. All posh food, at some level, tastes the same.

Richard Herring and I had to spend £8,000 in Armenia, for Dave TV. One meal was an enormous blowout, at Yerevan’s top eatery. It involved that coffee which comes via a cat’s digestive system. It had 15 courses and Prince Charles had eaten there. I think it came to about 70 quid. At the hotel later we tried to order champagne and caviar. But they didn’t have any, so they just brought us their most expensive room service item: a single portion of tiramisu.

The best meal I’ve ever had, possibly, was while filming in Xi’an, in the market, with lots of young Chinese people excited by the camera. It got a bit hairy and then someone grabbed my hand and started pulling me away. I thought I was being kidnapped but it turned out to be a woman who wanted me to eat at her noodle place. She put a plate of noodles and chilli down for me. I have dreamed about that bowl of noodles and chilli since.
My Family: Not the Sitcom is touring the UK until July

My favourite things

Food
Curry. I like spice and heat.

Drink
I play football every Tuesday night. We go for a curry after – the others have beer, I don’t. I hardly ever drank much, and have now given up. I have salted lassi.

Place to eat
The noodle shop in Xi’an. Followed by El Bulli. I wasn’t that fussed about El Bulli’s food, but the experience was great.