Five minutes with... Giles Coren

Jun 15 2009 By Leo Stevens

Giles Coren is a renowned restaurant critic, newspaper columnist and reviewer for The Times.

The 39-year-old was born in Paddington, London, and now lives in Hampstead.

He reunites with co-presenter Sue Perkins in The Supersizers Eat, which begins on June 15 on BBC2.

THE SUPERSIZERS EAT IS ABOUT TO HIT OUR SCREENS, WHAT WAS IT LIKE MAKING THE SHOW?

It was fun, it was like TV always is - it starts off being great fun and then the long hours grind you down and then you swear to God you'll never do it again. I get to dress up in silly clothes with Sue Perkins, who's a great friend, and we eat loads of food - some of which is nice, some is awful. It's all great fun most of the time, and there are other times it's a bit too ridiculous. You dress up like that and it gets you in the mood to give it large to TV as much as you possibly can, but it wears you out quite quickly as well.

YOU AND SUE SAMPLED SOME WEIRD AND WONDERFUL FOODS IN SUPERSIZERS GO. WERE THERE ANY PECULIAR DISHES YOU CAN TELL US ABOUT FROM THIS SERIES?

There were all sorts of horrible things like pig's womb, sow's udder pate and duck's tongue. The only thing I didn't eat was mouse, which was served up in the Ancient Rome episode because the Romans ate mice, but they can keep that. The Romans ate dormice to extinction, and they were fat and juicy. Obviously you can't get it anymore, so what they provided was a box full of scrawny little mice and, frankly, there's no pay-cheque large enough. I ate peacock, which was not nice, but I was curious. It is absolutely dismal, it is like eating a shoe - dry and chewy. Obviously, the peacock puts all its energy into looking beautiful and nothing into tasting nice.

IN ONE EPISODE, YOU EAT A BREAKFAST CONTAINING 5,000 CALORIES. HOW DID THE SHOW AFFECT YOUR HEALTH?

It didn't, really. The thing about a 5,000-calorie breakfast is that you don't really eat again for the rest of the day and you have all day to burn it off. You compensate as well. I don't want to get fat because I wouldn't find work on television, so if I got fat eating all this gluttonous food one week, I wouldn't really eat again for the next week. I've spent so much time writing about obesity and making films saying, "Fat people should sort themselves out", that I would be strung up as a hypocrite if I got fat.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE WORKING WITH SUE PERKINS AGAIN?

It was lovely, I was looking forward to it a lot. If you're going to dress up in a frilly shirt and a wig and silly hat and eat preposterous food, you don't want to do it on your own. Everything is more fun with a friend. I've watched those shows where Stephen Fry crosses America and Paul Merton goes to China and I think, "How boring, you're all on your own!". When you're there with a mate having fun, it's like being on holiday. We got on each other's nerves a bit sometimes, but mates do.

WERE THERE ANY OUTFITS WHERE YOU THOUGHT, 'NO, I'M NOT WEARING THAT!'?

I don't mind wearing most things, but I want to wear things that make me look good because I'm on TV and girls watch and they message me telling me they fancy me. It's good, but they do that the more handsome the clothes are. All girls fancy Mr Darcy, so in the first series I had big sideburns and a high-neck white shirt, and I looked really gorgeous. I would very happily just wear that. In the Medieval period, they wanted me to have my hair cut into a Blackadder-style fringe and I said, "No way". The reason I'm on telly is that I want girls to like me, and I don't want to look like Ann Widdicombe.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO DO ANOTHER SERIES?

We already decided that we didn't really want to, because we've done 13 historical periods and there aren't many left, apart from the Stone Age, which would involve me dragging her around by her hair. I think we've probably said in this last show all that needs to be said about the social history of food, and we've made all the jokes we could make. We will probably do another series, but it won't involve food. Apart from anything else, Sue's a very fussy eater and she's always throwing up and pulling faces. She's a vegetarian and we keep forcing her to eat peacocks and other things.