Even as a baby I was a fat food snob but in my 20s, I lost a whopping 7st

Glutton

Ed Gamble Bantam £20

The comedian Ed Gamble eats like someone who is halfway through a day of heavy manual labour.

Best known as the co-host of podcast Off Menu, in which he and comedian James Acaster interview celebrities about their dream meal, his very funny new memoir canters through his life as a food obsessive, starting from his earliest days as a discerning baby who hoovered up poached salmon at the age of eight months.

Raised in South-West London, Gamble, pictured, was (he says) ‘a weird, fat little snob baby’ who arrived a fully formed foodie. If he’d had Instagram aged zero, he ventures, he’d have been posting rave reviews of his latest meal at ‘Mum’s boob’.

He realised he was fat at secondary school but, thankfully, there were plenty of examples in pop culture of the ‘funny fat guy’ to follow, so he took on the role.

At university he evolved into a ‘funny fat fresher’, and got involved in the school’s comedy scene. Then, at 23, he realised his body wasn’t feeling great. With his first TV appearance looming, he decided to eat less and do more. He lost 7st in a year, was briefly skinny enough to fit into medium-sized clothes, and is now a proud and happy ‘Large’.

Gamble does not, he insists, have a sob story to sell about why he has struggled with his weight. It’s simple: as he stresses again and again, he loves food. But the book is perceptive about how people of a ‘normal’ weight tend to respond to fat bodies. If a larger person is seen eating a tub of ice cream, he notes, it’s assumed ‘their parents must’ve been killed in front of them by a man dressed as Mr Whippy’.

People were laughably inept, he writes, at responding to his weight loss. With his jawline suddenly on show, they would blurt: ‘You’re actually really handsome!’ or ask if he was unwell.

Gamble’s breezy unwillingness to present himself as a tortured soul runs through the book, and keeps it buoyant. He is happy to explore his flaws, from the deep (he’s a ‘sheep’, he admits, who will do what others do) to the shallow (he is tense at restaurants until the table’s order has been put in).

At the start, Gamble frets that writing about his love of food will stop the book from ever being finished, as he’ll be constantly inspired by the food he’s describing, stop writing, and start eating.

Thank goodness his selfdiscipline prevailed.