Nigel Slater

Nigel Slater is a British food writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has written a column for The Observer Magazine for seventeen years and is the principal writer for the Observer Food Monthly supplement. Prior to this, Slater was food writer for Marie Claire for five years. He also serves as art director for his books. Although best known for uncomplicated, comfort food recipes presented in early bestselling books such as The 30-Minute Cook and Real Cooking, as well as his engaging, memoir-like columns for The Observer, Slater became known to a wider audience with the publication of Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger, a moving and award-winning autobiography focused on his love of food, his childhood, his family relationships (his mother died of asthma when he was nine), and his burgeoning sexuality. Slater has called it "the most intimate memoir that any food person has ever written". Toast was published in Britain in October 2004 and became a bestseller after it was featured on the Richard and Judy Book Club. "I think the really interesting bits of my story was growing up with this terribly dominating dad and a mum who I loved to bits but obviously I lost very early on; and then having to fight with the woman who replaced her ... I kind of think that in a way that that was partly what attracted me to working in the food service industry, was that I finally had a family." As he told The Observer, "The last bit of the book is very foody. But that is how it was. Towards the end I finally get rid of these two people in my life I did not like [his father and stepmother, who had been the family's cleaning lady] - and to be honest I was really very jubilant - and thereafter all I wanted to do was cook." In 1998 Slater hosted the Channel 4 series Nigel Slater's Real Food Show. He returned to TV in 2006 hosting the chat/food show A Taste of My Life for BBC One. Slater has two elder brothers, Adrian and John. John was the child of a neighbour, and was adopted by Slater's parents before the writer was born. He lives in the Highbury area of North London, where he maintains a kitchen garden which often features in his column.