Little Me. Matt Lucas

more subtle flavour-wise but gorgeously waxy – the Moam or Maom or Maoaoaoam or however it’s spelt. Not the hard balls – no, thank you – but the sticks and the flat strips. Wonderful. If I had done nothing else on this earth but come up with the raspberry one, I would regard myself as someone who has greatly enriched the planet. So synthetic it makes plastic look like kale. But who cares?

      At number 9, down three places, it’s ice cream. Baskin Robbins do a sort of frozen white and milk chocolate mousse which is creamy heaven and of course you have to eat it all at once because it’ll melt before you get home and then if you re-freeze it you’ll get botulism. Probably. The Cornetto is also a trusty friend. Häagen-Dazs is fine, but – and I know this may shock you – I would probably opt for a slice of Viennetta first.

      Some of my most favouritest ice creams have come and gone, sadly. In the late eighties I used to enjoy Wall’s short-lived Magnifico. It was part of the Cornetto family, but a lot bigger, which of course is always better. There was briefly a spectacular ice-cream bar around the same time called Sky. Inside the shiny blue wrapper you found a rippled choc ice with vanilla ice cream (but not yellow vanilla, the white vanilla, as in a Mr Whippy, only it wasn’t whippy) and then, in the middle of the ice cream, an Aero-like piece of chocolate. It’s greatly missed, as is the epic Wall’s Romantica, a cake-shaped dessert that the family could enjoy together. It had vanilla and butterscotch, with a biscuit base – and if it was a person I would have married it.^*

      A little note on all ice cream: do be careful to store it in its own section of the freezer. Even a delicious Mini Milk can be rendered unpalatable if it has been sitting for days next to something savoury. It still sort of tastes okay, but it’s no fun if – when you lick it – you get the unapologetic aroma of those Waitrose Frozen Beer Battered Onion Rings.

      Also, sometimes people try and make their own ice cream. My mum makes coffee ice cream. Don’t get involved. I love my mum and I know she’ll be reading this and I apologise for the public humiliation and ingratitude, but even a Nobbly Bobbly tastes better than almost any kind of home-made ice cream. I realise a generation of budding Mary Berrys will be closing this book in disgust and hurling it in the fireplace – but remember, that fireplace doesn’t work. It just came with the house. You use radiators. Look, all I ask is that you know your place. Big companies and shops make ice cream; we eat ice cream. You know I’m right.

      At number 8, it’s satsumas. Or clementines. Or tangerines. Or mandarins. God knows I love them all, even if I still don’t know which ones are which. They used to be a winter treat. The clocks would go back and I’d experience my usual bout of seasonal affective disorder, only to be momentarily jerked out of it by the sweet tang of this orange citrus delight. Nowadays they seem to be in the supermarket all year round, but then again it’s freezing cold all year round these days too.

      When I moved to LA, I was able to live out my dream of growing lemons, oranges, limes and key limes, but it was the satsuma that excited me most of all. My Californian pals thought little of it – it’s like living in Surbiton and boasting about the cooking-apple tree in your garden – but I would walk past the satsuma tree every few days, wondering when it would be time to pick off one of the fruits. A couple of years earlier, while house-hunting, I had stopped with a couple of friends in the lush neighbourhood of Los Feliz and naughtily picked a tangerine from a tree in the street. It looked and smelled amazing, but it tasted so bitter I screamed out in shock.

      In my own garden I waited until the man who occasionally works there (I don’t want to say ‘my gardener’ because it makes me sound a bit grand but clearly he is my gardener) finally gave me the all-clear to tuck in. I studied the tree. The fruits were all a bit odd-looking, mutant-like, different shapes and sizes.

      I picked a large satsuma, peeled it and looked inside to discover something much smaller than expected. Still, it looked nice. But it tasted of nothing at all. I mentioned it to not-my-gardener and he told me he could get a special powder that would go into the soil and give it flavour. Ask no questions, I thought. All I can say now is that the satsumas that grow in my garden are the loveliest I’ve ever tasted. This might be partly because of their freshness – I will walk past the tree, pick one and eat it straight away – but also, let’s face it, the gardener has done something with his magic beans. It did make me wonder, though, if pretty much every tasty, correctly proportioned piece of fruit I’ve ever bought in a supermarket has been genetically modified to within an inch of its life and perhaps I should be concerned about what this is doing to me health-wise. But then, let’s face it, given that I’ve just written 391 words on the pleasures of store-bought ice cream, it’s not likely to be an apple that kills me.

      Actually, that’s not true. It’s quite possible that an apple could indeed kill me – because I am allergic to them and have to carry an adrenaline-filled EpiPen at all times.

      It’s the strangest thing. I ate apples continually growing up. There’s even a photo of me on my bike when I was about six, with a Sooty puppet in one hand and an apple in the other, because I refused to put it down. I loved apples. Everyone loves apples. Then one day I suddenly realised that I hadn’t eaten an apple for about three years. I bit into one and my lips swelled up and my throat started to get really tight. Eventually it subsided, but my doctor told me I should avoid raw apples, pears, peaches, plums and nectarines from then on.

      The happy end to the story is that I seem not to be allergic to apples that have been cooked. Basically, McDonald’s Apple Pies are fine. In fact, one could argue, they are vital – otherwise how else will my body get the nourishing appley goodness it needs? Think about it.

      Bovril is at number 7, though not in drink form. No beef tea for me, thank you. No, I like to spread it on buttered bread. I’m sure I’m not the only person who does that. It’s weird, because I have – as you may have gathered by now – a depressingly bland palette, so I shouldn’t entertain this foul-smelling, pooey-tasting black tar at all, but about once a year I crave it and I must have it. Almost like a pregnant woman who wakes up and decides she wants to eat a book or some hair.

      It goes back to my childhood, I think. On Sunday nights I used to make Bovril sandwiches and eat them in bed while watching That’s Life! If you haven’t had Bovril on your bread, it basically tastes like Marmite. Though I’ve no time for Marmite at all. Ugh.

      I should caution you, though, if you haven’t yet tried Bovril sandwiches for yourself and, on reading this, are now tempted, Bovril is, if you use even slightly too much of it, disgusting. So do please take care. I will not be sympathetic to anyone who has ignored me and gone and over-Bovrilised.

      At number 6, a surprise entry – it’s vegetables. Yup, who would have thought it? ‘But they’re healthy?’, I hear you cry. Yes, shock-horror. I really like veg. Not all veg, obviously. That would be too normal, too fully-functioning-adult of me. Aubergines are a no. I think it might be because of the name. They sound a bit up themselves, don’t they? I’ve never had an avocado and I’m not about to start now. They look too slimy and apparently they’re quite fattening, so I’m simply looking after myself. I’m not wild about cucumbers, and tomatoes (strictly a fruit but clearly a vegetable) are something I will only entertain within a Bolognese. But peas – petit pois especially– and broccoli and onions and mushrooms and haricots verts are a staple part of my diet. I even don’t mind a legume, if truth be known. Oh, and sweetcorn, which is almost too nice to be classified as a vegetable really.

      BTW, I include chips as a vegetable and I hereby announce my campaign to have them recognised as one of your five a day. Oh, sorry? Is a potato not a vegetable? Do you know something I don’t?

      Incidentally, you may be surprised to find that chips – most people’s go-to naughty food – do not have their own placing in the top ten. Controversial perhaps, but there is a very well-thought-out reason for this . . .

      If chips were as uniformly delicious as we know they can be, they would be right up there at the top of the chart, but I’ve probably eaten seven billion different varieties of chip already in my short fat life and the quality is simply too variable for inclusion. To clarify, you never quite know what you’re going to get with a chip.

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