Creme egg addict who can’t abide fancy foreign food . . .

ALTHOUGH well known as a generous dinner party host, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s personal eating habits are quirky to the point of bizarre, say friends.

According to former flatmate Simon Hoare, he has ‘sugar on everything, including Frosties’ and has a penchant for cheap chocolate. ‘He doesn’t cook,’ says Hoare. ‘He doesn’t like spicy food. You’d go to a curry house and he would have omelette and chips. He lived on Bath Oliver biscuits and cheese.

‘Around the picture rail in his room there would be [many] packets of three Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. He still is devoted to them.’

Indeed, it was a bribe of 12 Creme Eggs sent by producers that finally persuaded ReesMogg to appear as a panellist on TV’s Have I Got News For You in 2013 after months of rebuffs.

Oxford friend Huw van Steenis also recalls that Rees-Mogg would sometimes have as many as 60 on his desk. ‘He was a chocoholic,’ Van Steenis says.

According to Hoare, even by their third year at university Rees-Mogg lacked any of the basic awareness about food that most students have gone some way to mastering by their early 20s.

‘I always remember him saying to me something had “gone wrong” with his bread. He only ever ate white bread. He still does. It was Sunblest. It had gone green. He’d bought it four weeks before and stored it on top of his radiator.’

Van Steenis remembers staying with Rees-Mogg during his time in Hong Kong and noting that British classics such as bread and butter pudding were served by his maid Eleanor.

‘I remember having treacle pudding or something... the sort of thing you just wouldn’t expect in Hong Kong,’ he recalls.

Another friend says: ‘He always eats the same thing if you go out with him: smoked salmon and then steak and chips. He loves French wine – claret and champagne. But he isn’t culturally European at all. He has a low opinion of Europeans. He would never holiday in Europe. His wife will take the children away, but he will stay at home in Somerset.’

When it is necessary for ReesMogg to fly, however, he has his own solution to the matter of in-flight catering, according to his close friend and business partner Dominic Johnson. ‘When we flew, Jacob would always open up a delicious set of roast beef sandwiches made by Nanny,’ he says. ‘I never got any, though.’