Could irascible interrogator John Humphrys knock up a better curry than one of Britains most successful chefs?
I had left home at the age of 17 to work on the Merthyr Express, which paid me £7 a week. Even in those days that was not enough to rent accommodation and go to the pub every night of the week – except Sundays, of course, this being Wales. So I rented a four-bedroomed house for a few pounds a week (the rats were thrown in free of charge) and took in lodgers. I offered bed and breakfast and an evening meal and that is when I learned to cook. Most meals consisted of mashed potato, which was easy because you added boiling water to granules, and covered the resulting glop in mince. The mince was even easier. It came from a tin which I bought at Woolworth’s on my way home from work. Pudding was invariably banana custard. It took me a while to realise that you had to mix the custard powder with some cold milk before adding the hot milk. Otherwise it had more lumps than the horse hair mattresses the rats so enjoyed burrowing into. When one of the lodgers, Glyn, was staying in, we had chips. G
