Before I moved from BBC Breakfast, I had bananas and lip balm hidden under the table. I don’t eat bananas on-air now and there’s a lovely make-up artist at ITV who does mid-show checks. So I don’t have to concentrate on bananas and my lips any more, I can concentrate on journalism. Another difference back at the BBC was commuting, for seven hours, from and to Salford each day. I’d catch the 7pm, or 7.15pm, from Euston, get to bed in Salford at 10.30pm, get up at 5am, do the show, then be on the train back to London at 10.15am, with a Pret and crisps, so I could see and feed the kids. As Nicky Campbell once said, “It’s Salford, not Helmand.”
I need to be fully functioning as I have to deal with Piers Morgan most mornings. I’m quite rigid with my optimum pattern and religious about sleep. Sleep’s the altar I worship at. Like my meals, it’s precious and scheduled. I’m in bed by 9pm and the alarm goes off at 3.45am.
I drink a glass of hot water during our programme meeting from 4.15 to 5am, then in the hour before Good Morning Britain goes on air I’ll have my chopped apple with a miniature jar of peanut butter, a shower, my hair and make-up done and a black coffee. Then another coffee during the news at 7.30am. I’ll come off-air at 8.30 then get home to Balham by about 10am. I’ll have my lunch of rye toast with avocado and poached egg and then get into bed for a nap before the gym at 1pm.
The kids come home at 3.30pm, so it’s all about them, their homework and their tea at 6pm. I’ll do meat and veg, lasagne or spag bol for them and – because I’m pescatarian – probably salmon and veg for me. At 7pm, after dinner, I’m back in work mode, prepping for the morning.
The other day I phoned my mother and she was having dinner with my dad. They split up when I was nine and it was a huge fracture, I can’t overestimate the impact, but when I went through my separation from my husband (in 2014), my parents’ friendship was an inspiration. One thing their divorce meant is that I got individual time with my dad which I might not have got if they’d stayed married. The food memory I most associate with weekends with Dad is us eating Findus Crispy Pancakes while watching Three Of A Kind. The thing about Findus Crispy Pancakes is that there’s a nanosecond between them being underdone and completely burnt. You have to find that golden moment.
At Croydon High School the choice at lunch was limited and I remember day after day of sausage, chips and beans until I threw a spanner in the works by going vegetarian at 13. Then it was just chips and beans. Sometimes my mother would make a veggie casserole for me to take in, but I’d stick to the beans and chips.
I studied politics, philosophy and law in Bristol and I became editor of the student newspaper Epigram. We published a lovely recipe each week for students, yet I was still making poached egg on Jacob’s cream crackers and taking no notice. Food wasn’t my priority. But there was a great tapas bar on Whiteladies Road called Rocinantes, sadly no longer there. When studying, I used to get sandwiches every day in the Triangle sandwich bar opposite the casino in the centre of Bristol. Same filling every day: avocado, banana, alfafa and mayonnaise on granary. (I’ve never made it for myself and not eaten it since leaving university.)
When I moved on to Cardiff, to study journalism, I had my own kitchen for the first time, but I never cooked for myself or properly. I only really started when I moved in with my first boyfriend and was responsible for cooking for someone else. He was a vegetarian too and we got through a lot of lentils. I can remember when he’d said, “Can we stop having white sauce with pasta?” because white sauce had informed most of my cooking since Mum had paid for me to go on a little weekly cookery course. I still tend to get stuck in rut when it comes to cooking.
Yesterday I asked my children, “Do you think I’m a good cook?” and they answered “We love you Mummy”, which was a nice sidestep.
My weekend has a completely different schedule than my week. Come Friday night I’m in pyjamas on the sofa with my three sons eating a korma curry takeaway while watching a film. My local Chinese has just closed down, which I’m really gutted about.
The most evocative scent memories for me are the smells of the roast, the suet pudding and the chocolate cake and spiced rock buns when entering my grandma’s flat every Sunday as a child and just feeling that it was grandma’s, it was Sunday, there was food and family and everyone was together.
My eating patterns changed when I did Strictly for 18 weeks. There’s something about the dancing, adrenalin, fitness, focus and absorption – and doing BBC Breakfast at the same time – which meant that I didn’t feel hungry.
Last year we were in NY covering Trump’s election and we had a big meet-up debrief at the restaurant at the London Hotel. There was a lot of wine drunk. Piers’s friend had just become president. Some people were celebrating.
I remember the joy, as a kid in Warlingham, of spending pocket money on sweets on Saturdays. There’s something almost from a fairy story about white sugar mice. And visions of sugar plums. The idea of crystallised sugar is a really happy, magical one for me. But I hated liquorice and still do. I have a real issue with liquorice. So my idea of meal hell would be a really bad red wine risotto, with liquorice for pudding.
Save Money: Good Food, presented by Susanna Reid, is on ITV1 on Tuesdays at 7.30pm
