Chef, recipe writer and This Morning presenter Phil Vickery has been a staple on our screens and our cookbook shelves for decades now, but when he looks back at his life in food, what stands out?

We caught up with him about his latest cookbook, Diabetes Meal Planner, written with food scientist Bea Harling BSc, and mined his memory for his culinary highs and lows too…

His earliest food memory…

“We used to go to Blackpool, because my mum’s family were there, and we’d go down to the seaside in Folkestone, and we’d always have whelks with salt, pepper and vinegar. I remember eating those. And even now, I love whelks. We’d have oysters as well, but certainly that, definitely whelks.”

The first time you cooked for other people and felt pride was…

“When I was a young lad, before I went to college, I had day release from school to become a chef on a catering course, and we did a dessert. I can’t remember what it was now, and my mum said, ‘I’ve got some friends coming at the weekend, will you make the dessert?’ I say, ‘Go on then.’ So made the dessert for that weekend. They were like, ‘Oh my goodness, you’re quite good at this.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah!’ And bearing in mind this was probably 1975!”

His worst food disaster…

“I had 110 people booked for in a hotel, so very specific: fix the canapes at 7.30pm, dinner at 8pm, you’ve timed the dessert to come out before midnight – a spectacular dessert, we did big banana soufflés, fantastic.

“So, five courses are going, beef Wellington… so it’s about 11.25pm. ‘Dessert ready?’ [I ask] ‘Yep.’ Great. I’m having a drink in the office, the chef comes around the corner, looks at me, ‘Chef, can you come and look at this?’ I went, ‘What do you mean?’ He just walked off. Opened the oven, the soufflés had all split and gone over the edge. Oh my goodness. I had to go out to people and say, ‘I’m really sorry, it’s delayed.’ Had to take it all out the oven, make them all again. I made them that time, and we served them just after midnight. The one day of the year I didn’t check something, it went wrong!”

Vickery’s career high…

“There was like a year or so in my life when it peaked for me. I won Dessert Chef of the Year, British Meat Chef of the Year, The Times Restaurant of the Year, along with Marco [Pierre White], four rosettes in the AA Guide, and a Michelin star. And I think also, I had County Restaurant of the Year in the Good Food Guide. It was a period of time when I was like, ‘Wow, I’ve made it.'”

Diabetes Meal Planner by Phil Vickery with Bea Harling BSc, photography by Kate Whitaker, is published by Kyle Books and supported by Diabetes UK, priced £22. Available now.