A Long and Messy Business. Rowley Leigh

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      Introduction

      I have been doing this sort of thing for quite a

      while now. When I first started, I tried too hard.

      I wanted to show off and I wanted to be

      authoritative. If I was writing about Jerusalem

      artichokes I would explain that Jerusalem was

      a corruption of girasole, a sunflower, that the

      French hated them because they had to eat them

      instead of potatoes during the war, that they are

      a rhizome and not a tuber, then make discreet

      reference to farting issues and, finally, I would

      give a few recipes. I would have run out of space

      in no time.

      My first editor, Matthew Fort, whom may God

      preserve, gave me a piece of advice from his

      days in advertising: ‘tell ’em what you are going

      to say, say it, and then tell them what you just

      said.’ That sort of helped but it was just a Mad

      Men way of describing a school essay or

      the form of the classical sonata – exposition,

      development, recapitulation. I actually had more

      help from Lord Sugar. In those early days I

      bashed out my copy – one-finger typing, which

      I have not improved upon – on an Amstrad,

      a primitive early computer manufactured by

      Sugar and in very common use at the time.

      Once I discovered the copy and paste buttons,

      I was liberated. I realised that I didn’t necessarily

      need to decide what I was going to say. I could

      just start writing and then move it around later.

      That breakthrough led, when I was on form, to

      a more discursive style. I just picked up the ball

      and ran with it. The actual essay expected was

      usually only a five-hundred-word introduction,

      and I became adept at starting at point A then

      meandering back and appearing as though I

      had meant to all along. There were troughs and

      peaks but I became well programmed to produce

      the weekly ‘piece’, a feat I never achieved at

      school or university, and I suspect that my

      industry has been a sort of penance for my

      former indolence.

      However, I was in a bit of a trough by 2010, when

      I had been writing for the Financial Times for

      five years and writing a weekly column for

      fifteen. I was running out of material and too

      busy running my restaurant to do much new

      or creative cooking. So, when the FT launched a

      colour magazine, my heart filled with dread. I

      didn’t do pictures. Previously, the FT had given

      up trying to produce pictures of food on pink

      newsprint paper and my recipes were elegantly

      illustrated by little pen drawings by Rebecca

      Rose. It suited me: pictures meant a great deal

      more work and I became rather proud of being

      one of the few food writers who had to rely on

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