'I was going to lend them . . . then realised I couldn’t let them go'

Food journalist and BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme presenter, Sheila Dillon, shares her day well spent

Nov 02, 2023

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Hello! This is Leyla from A Day Well Spent, a newsletter seeking pathways to more purposeful living.

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I’m quite thrilled to present to you the next interview on A Day Well Spent. Every few weeks I ask someone who inspires me, interests me and embodies the ethos of this newsletter (in their own way), 15 quickfire questions.

The immediate words that come to mind when I think of Sheila Dillon — broadcaster and food journalist for over three decades, fellow presenter on BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, as well as a whole bunch of other things — is, she’s a force.

And what a force. She isn’t afraid of asking tough questions in any setting, the types of questions everyone else wishes they had the guts to ask. I love that she is a champion of others (but not enough of herself), doesn’t mince her words and is as real and genuine as they come.

Sheila doesn’t really do interviews; she almost ummd and ahhd her way out of this one. Despite millions of listeners of the show being very familiar with her voice, I’m not sure many of us know much about the Sheila beyond the radio and beyond food. I was determined to find out — so I pestered her.

My efforts paid off, she eventually succumbed. And I’m so delighted she did.

‘Of course you were right. It was fun to do. Thanks for asking.’

Just a handful of Sheila’s many accolades include: producing groundbreaking editions of The Food Programme about BSE (aka “mad cow disease”) and its connections to our cheap food policies; the rise of genetically modified foods; the dodgy science behind ‘healthy’ margarine; as well as helping set up the prestigious BBC Food & Farming Awards.

Mighty things come in small packages and Sheila Dillon is both of these things. I love to be in her company and it is my great honour to call Sheila both my colleague and my friend.

As always, thank you for being here and I hope you enjoy this piece.

Interviews here will always be free to read. If you would like me to continue curating them for you to enjoy - along with all the other content on A Day Well Spent - do consider becoming a paid subscriber for less than the price of two coffees a month. It would be my pleasure to welcome you!

1. What makes up a day well spent for you?

On a perfect day I’d be beamed across the ocean to my friend Robin’s garden in Lincoln, Massachusetts. I’d catch up on what she’s been planting and what's moving around in her all-native plant garden.

Then I’d collect some eggs from the 12 girls pecking around in their pen and do some picking in the big fruit and veg patch — basil so we can have pesto for lunch, and tomatoes — I’ll make the salad. While she makes the pesto (always walnuts never pine) I’ll lie on the sofa on her screen porch – the most perfect screen porch in the Western world – and look at the 1 and 1/2 acre glory she’s created over 25 years.

After lunch my grandchildren, 5 year old Viv and 2 year old Otis would beam in too from New Jersey and we’d walk through the woods to see the wall sculptor and photographer Andy Goldsworthy built, a wall as beautiful for children to climb around as it is to look at. Back to the porch for stories and bubbly at dusk.

2. What compliment have you received in recent times that's stuck in your memory?

I’m not good with compliments, I only remember criticism (like most women?).

But I was touched when I recently came across an interview with Martin Gott who makes the great St James cheese, where he was asked what ‘foodie’ (oh god, that horrible word) he admired. He said I was ‘inspirational’. The thought that I might have inspired someone as talented as he is lifted my spirits.

3. What quotes or mantras do you try to live by?

‘They’re struggling too.’

‘There’s a fine line between being iconoclastic and being nuts.’
- American journalist and author Eric Schlosser, on researching Fast Food Nation

‘You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.’
- American novelist and poet, Wendell Berry

4. What practical skill do you have that you value the most?

Apart from cooking my practical skills are a bit pedestrian — I can change a plug, sow seeds, do some basic gardening. I look at my mother who had a full time job all through my childhood but also sewed our clothes, knitted, embroidered, crocheted and did most of the house decoration.

But my son bought me an art course a while ago and I rediscovered the joy of paint, pen and clay.

5. What do you know today that you wish you'd known five years ago?

Maybe in the last 5 years I’ve learned to trust myself more.

6. What character or personality trait about yourself do you value the most?

Determination. Curiosity. A capacity for noticing links between things that might seem unrelated.

7. What does 'eating well' mean to you and how do you manage it?

Eating well means eating with pleasure. I can grab and go, wolfing down a Twix with the best of them, but that’s stress and tiredness. Good food was ordinary in my rural working class family.

The greengrocer with his Aladdin’s cave of a walk-in van came around our village once a week. Chestnuts, pineapples, the first new potatoes or peas, pomegranates! My mum was like a kid in a sweet shop, buying whatever was in season and special.

So, I learned the skills and pleasures of food shopping early e.g. look for russetting on Cox’s apples and give them a shake to hear the seeds rattle, then they’re ripe. Does the cabbage squeak when you handle it? And so on. If you know how to shop and enjoy cooking, you're quids in.

8. What is your ultimate dream?

There are no ultimate dreams, Leyla! I’ve lived mine.

I became the reporter on BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme after I heard the late Derek Cooper presenting it one Sunday lunchtime. I’d not heard of it or him, but I’d been living in NYC working as a writer and editor at what was then a wildly radical magazine called Food Monitor i.e. it took food seriously!

Back in London I was looking for work where I could learn more and that would extend my journalistic skills. It took determination to get a job there — I had no radio experience.

9. What's your most loved skincare / beauty product or secret?

My friend Dr. Natalia Silina has just returned from a home visit to Kiev bringing me what she says is the best face cream made in Ukraine, therefore the world . There’s a war devastating their lives and they’re still making face cream.

It’s Preventage Complex Cream from Cream Dream Beauty Kitchen. I’m sure you’re going to be remarking on my marvellous skin quite soon.

10. How do you counter the fast-paced and immediate nature of today's world?

I don’t do enough. Too much time on my phone. I need lessons from you, Leyla. I walk our lovely dog Gertie. She and Max the cat are an hourly reminder about living in the moment — and being loving.

Sheila and I at a BBC Food & Farming Awards ceremony

11. What are your hobbies and interests? What do you like to do in your free time?

I read a lot. I’ve just finished the three (short) volumes of Deborah Levy’s memoir. There’s insight and noticing brought to bear on her own life with a skill that’s beyond rational explanation. I was going to lend them to a friend then realised I couldn’t let them go.

On food I recently read the remarkable Rooted: Stories of Life, Land and a Farming Revolution by Sarah Langford and Going to Seed: A Counterculture Memoir by Simon Fairlie. As well as Bee Wilson’s first cookbook The Secret of Cooking — wow, that is good.

12. What's the latest thing that you have learnt

I’m a slow learner… So, mistakes REALLY are life lessons that help you grow. I can stop beating myself up.

13. Tell us about something you tried or did for the very first time recently

I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower in August and put to rest a long-held belief that tourist traps are always to be avoided. My granddaughter Viv wanted to do it because a mouse in a book she’s reading makes the journey. Viv and the mouse were right.

14. What book should everyone read and why?

War and Peace. For a start it’s a page turner (except when Tolstoy starts philosophising – you can skip most of that) but the cliché is true, it really is one of the greatest novels ever written. Tolstoy brings alive what it is to be alive in another body, another time, with other values — other everything.

Yet he’s writing about me, about us, now. It’s timeless. It sums up in one book why fiction matters: because it engages our sympathies for everything that’s other, that’s outside our egos. Those lives being lived on the No. 19 bus, on the street — right now. And back then, at a remarkable time.

15. What are you working on that we should know about?

I’m working on an account of the food scandals and other revolutionary changes in the way we produce and consume our food through my nearly 30+ years (how did that happen?) as a food journalist. I need pushing.

What can I say that Michael Pollan, Bee Wilson, Joanna Blythman, Carolyn Steel, Dan Saladino and the writers I mentioned earlier haven’t said already???

You can follow Sheila on Twitter / X @sheiladillon and on Instagram @thesheiladillon.

I (we!) would love to hear your thoughts! What do you think about Sheila and her insightful responses? As always, I so look forward to what you have to say.