Grace Dent

“Whenever I talk about loving vegan food, it starts a backlash. The vegans aren't happy with me because I'm not fully vegan and the meat eaters say I'm trying to destroy the farming industry. Any nuance seems to get lost.”

“Once, bit-fetching was the job mainly of children. In the 1970s, if I sat too long looking bored, I'd be dispatched to the shop carrying the gas bill with a scribbled note on the back. Yes, I was hoping to lie about watching 'Hong Kong Phooey,' yet here I was again buying a can of Nestle Tip Top and a Heinz steamed pudding.”

“We must carry on dancing, singing and loving. The other option is to make our worlds tiny, dark and untrusting. I think we all know deep down that this simply won't do.”

“When I was young enough to work at the Guardian Guide, we once covered our go-to TV dinners; my love of cheap tinned soup with marge-slathered Ryvita and mini pickled onions was shameful to admit.”

“I love very simple, light cocktails like a Twinkle - champagne, vodka and elderflower. I'm also a fan of the New Fashioned - it's a whisky cocktail with rosemary, peach bitters and ginger ale.”

“Eighties vegetarians were a lonely, much maligned breed, exposed to frozen pub-lunch veggie lasagnes, prototype soy milk that floated on tea like a tanker spillage, and the pain of buying almost all edible items via postal order from Holland & Barrett.”

“Christmas dinner, when you're the one cooking it, is an oddly spiritual gesture.”

“It's often struck me that social media is full of lonely, sad people doing a brilliant job of sounding OK and perfectly fine people hoovering up everyone's attention via faking being sad.”

“People say that the modern Christmas focuses too much on food instead of, like in olden times, the little Baby Jesus. Piffle.”

“Back in the 1970s, male prime-time comedians mainly resembled Mr Potato Head. The terrifically popular 'Wheeltappers and Shunters Club' was a comedy show populated mainly by men with 44-inch waists, jowls and NHS glasses.”

“I am not anti-Gwyneth. However, I am against the wholly cynical, harmful machine-pushing of a famous woman - who has endless Hollywood-style food allergies and phobias, and who arguably needs to fit into size 0 costumes to earn her living - into the role of food expert.”

“Sheeran is pop Marmite, insomuch as many adore him and others make terrific retching noises at his name and behave like you're trying to poison them.”

“If God wanted me to be a size eight, would he have made Birds Eye Potato Waffles so waffly versatile? Or toastable in the toaster?”

“I eat food from all over the world for my job as a restaurant critic, so I often find myself craving a plain Barnsley lamb chop or fish and chips, as I'm so sick of sashimi.”

“I'm a massive animal lover so the glorification of meat doesn't sit right with me. I don't get upset if people eat it around me.”

“Wednesdays are especially hectic for me, as I have to clean the house for two hours before my cleaner arrives.”

“Memes, it turns out, cannot stop the march of time.”

“No one should suffer my pastry.”

“Taylor Swift's has made it clear she's pig sick of everyone talking about her, by ensuring everyone in pop land can talk of nothing else. You have to admire this. She is not the Queen of Pop, but she's a brilliantly accomplished jester.”

“Pret was a thing I did almost subliminally, often mainly for a few minutes of downtime, sat quietly alone in the middle of dozens of strangers, sharing tiny tables, breathing each others' recycled air and scrolling mindlessly through our phones.”