Breakfast
It really depends on the day. Some days I’ll just have coffee – plain black espresso –and not eat until lunchtime – just a lot of coffee. I am small, with a big round face, but all my life I’ve been a fat man struggling to burst out – I have an unstoppable Welsh appetite. I come from a family where, whether you were bored, sad, happy, going out or staying in, you ate. Eating is the reward I crave every day for the indignity of having to work. So about 15 years ago, in a bid to keep my weight down, I gave up carbs: I don’t eat rice, pasta, bread, or potatoes.
Lunch
I work from home, so I’ll often go for a walk to buy salmon sashimi or a big soup and salad. Other days, I might make myself something to eat, but then I’ll keep going and eat everything until the fridge is bare.
Snacks
I’m pretty good until the evening, when I’m watching TV and have a pavlovian reaction. My wife and I binge-watch, and I binge while I’m watching. Yoghurt, two pounds of grapes, loads of nuts, cheese. On tour, the difficulty is not doing so after the show is over. For porky actors, like me, post-show is when they start eating and drinking.
I haven’t had a drink in 35 years, and at 4pm I stop the coffee and stick to fizzy water.
Dinner
On tour I’ll go to Waitrose and I buy smoked salmon, cheese, cherry tomatoes, a punnet of strawberries … I eat out alot and if you don’t make a fuss, it’s easy to eat the way I do.
I never, ever eat sugar ... except when it’s Pudding Club: once a month, my daughter and I go to an expensive restaurant – or we raid the pudding section at M&S – and eat nothing but carbs and desserts.
- Griff Rhys Jones’s Where Was I? is at Plough Arts Centre, Great Torrington, 24 March and the Courtyard Theatre, Hereford, on 29 March
