When I was eight my parents divorced. Dad moved on, and Mum moved to America, so I was looked after and fed by my gran, Stella. She’d been born in 1899 to Jewish parents who’d escaped the Russian pogroms. So there were gefilte fish balls and salmon rissoles. My mother hadn’t been a good cook, but Stella was.

I remember being taken down Tooting market by a babysitting auntie who tried to get me to eat pie and mash with this thing called liquor which was green and disgusting. I was horrified, but I love those old places. There was a fish and chippy in East Acton which had pipes which kept the chairs nice and warm. For a Sunday treat it would be a milkshake at Lyons Corner House in Trafalgar Square.

When I was about 12, a group of us from Strand grammar school used to go down to Chelsea and hang around outside Mick Jagger’s house, 48 Cheyne Walk. One day he was sat eating dinner in his basement and because we were gazing down through the railings like Dickensian urchins, he gestured theatrically with his fork for a blind to be closed. We moved sideways to the next window and then he gestured with his fork again. Later, when the Stones were playing in town, we’d go down to Tramps afterwards and wait for them to arrive, then jump on the back of the entourage and say “We’re with Billy Preston”. We were mad for bands and drinks.

When I was 13, Gran and I moved to live with her sister Celia and sister-in-law Sissy in Park West, an apartment block on the Marble Arch end of Edgware Road, which was predominantly Jewish then – and what’s now the [Lebanese] Shishawi restaurant was the Gala Royal cinema. I remember seeing Soylent Green there, an amazing vision of a dystopian future of overpopulation, poverty, greenhouse effect and scarce resources. The great payoff in the film was that people discovered they were being fed rations made from human remains. It’s kind of like today in many ways, including how we devour other people.

I don’t know if pampered is quite the right word, but I was the only male so that’s why they treated me well. I was like Spoilt Bastard in Viz comic. I’d tell Gran ‘Get me a fucking cup of tea’. I didn’t have parental control and I’d heard other kids talk like that, so I wasn’t kind. I’m very regretful now. You should honour your family, but I learned it too late.

I went vegetarian in 1976, encouraged by Chrissie Hynde, and it lasted 30 years. I fell off the vegetarian wagon for two years before getting back on. Although I ate fish, vegetarianism was very difficult in the 70s and I remember milk, potato croquettes and little else. I avoided cheese because I associated it with mould and bacteria and still avoid it.

In Wimpole Street, where we were making the first Clash album, Spaghetti House was the place to go for spaghetti, risotto and mushrooms. We were writing in Joe Strummer’s squat, a disused ice-cream factory. Sometimes Paul Simonon would leave the studio to go to KFC for chicken legs – getting just the potato wedges for me – and by the time he’d get back Joe and I would’ve recorded a new track without him. In the early days, when we spent evenings flyposting for our gigs, Paul would mix flour and hot water to make the poster paste and afterwards he’d eat the remainder.

I eat very little and I don’t cook. Well I do cook, but just by putting something in the oven – I still particularly like fish fingers. I never actually lived in a squat, eating baked beans, with Viv Albertine [of the Slits], as is written. I just visited, while still living with my gran. During art college I’d decided moving out would impede what I wanted to do. Once the Clash were a success I got my own home. But I don’t remember the kitchen ever being used – I certainly never went in there. I only remember the living room with sofa, the £700 VCR – meaning TV all night, until I was burgled – and Chinese takeaways.

When I first got to America in 1978 I remember thinking how sandwiches, fruit and meals generally were twice the size they were back home. The band travelled on coaches, overnight, and I didn’t sleep well but enjoyed stopping at truck stops for food in the early hours, getting to know the drivers. Later I wanted the best hotels. On days off my idea of a really nice time was having room service – including the best fish dish – spread across the whole evening.

I’m curating Krug Island, an event including live music, Krug champagne and food by Michael O’Hare, on Osea Island in the estuary of the Blackwater in Essex. It’s a lovely place. At the turn of the last century it became a sanctuary for sufferers of alcoholism and it’s said that fishermen made more money smuggling in booze than they did from fishing.

My mother’s lived in America now for 50 years. She’s up in Ironwood, Michigan and I visit her. On the 4th of July we went to the next town along, Bessemer, to listen to the high school band, watch fireworks and eat; me with the vegetarian option.

Mick Jones appears at the Krug Island Festival, Essex, 1 September; krugisland.com