Getting families to sit down and enjoy a meal together is very personal to me. A lot of people say to me that I’m so busy I must never get to eat with my family, but that’s bollocks. I might travel at 1,000 miles an hour, but quality time with my family is very important.
For me, Sunday lunch is all about rounding off the week and starting the new one - and I love the time we spend at the table. And when lunch is finished, we put all the plates in the dishwasher and go off for a long walk. What could be better?
One of the families we visited for the new series of the F Word lives in Middlesborough - a mum, dad and three sons who every night sat and put their food on their knees. They’d got rid of their dining table because they never used it. In fact, the only time they sat down together as a family was on Christmas Day. But I think you need that time much more regularly.
Sitting round a table doesn’t have to be a chore. It’s not about cooking a great big leg of lamb; it’s about spending time together, even if it’s only an hour, and finding out what’s going on with each other, what’s happening over the coming week, openly vocalising and putting your opinion across.
I discovered that nearly half of all families never sit down to eat together and the same amount of people watch TV while they eat. It’s shocking. It’s a joke. It’s just bad manners to eat in front of the TV, but it’s become cool, and it worries me that we can’t switch off for just half an hour. Okay, so we’ve got amazing shows we all want to watch, but it’s about discipline. You can’t enjoy the taste of food if you’re not concentrating on it, and sitting there with a ready meal on your lap is just lazy. It wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago and, if we’re this bad now, what are we going to be like in 20 years time?
I enjoy building on the relationship I have with my kids, and seeing them at the table. It helps them grow in confidence and manners. I grew up with it. I was sent off to Sunday school, which I loathed, but when I got home, I could smell the Sunday roast cooking. Nothing glam, just simple home cooking that we all sat down to, and that’s stayed with me.
Nowadays, life’s got very commercial and we’re all very busy. Shops are open on a Sunday, and I’m worried that we’re losing that culture for our children and their children.
Take the French - they sit down for lunch and when they’ve finished they open more wine. When I was 22 I lived in Paris and it was a shock when I sat down to eat at a French table for the first time. We had an amazing lunch - goat’s cheese, meat, gratin dauphinois - and when we’d finished, the chef came out and poured us wine and we all had to have some. That’s their way.
The Spanish and Italians still have a three-hour lunch break; they’ve held onto their culture. For them, it’s normal for 12 people to sit down at a table, but even that is beginning to change now and I think it’s vital to hold onto it.
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