'I enjoy being in perpetual culture shock, even when it comes to food. I am game to try anything that is put in front of me. I once had a dish called 'minute mouse' in Peking. The restaurant walls were covered with cages of breeding mice. Minute mouse was literally a mouse that was a minute old, brought along in a saucer, still alive and bloody. You swallow it with the brandy. Part of the thrill is the feeling on the throat as it struggles. It made me feel alive - I find eating generally debilitating.
Half of my time is spent living in shite hotels while I'm doing my one-man show. I'm usually suffering from withdrawal symptoms of some kind so I have to remedy my deficiencies by having a little bit of absolutely everything at the buffet breakfasts. If they have eight different types of juice I will have all eight. When I'm not touring I'm living between Majorca and York and, if no one is catering for me, I'll have Weetabix. I don't cook, I leave that to one of my sons, Patrick who is 16. (I have four kids, maybe five - one I discovered last year, a love child.)
After breakfast I won't have anything until dinner. Any major food intake other than breakfast is accompanied by vast quantities of alcohol and makes me sleepy.
I have a heavy dinner, ideally shortly before going to sleep. Often I'll be in a restaurant and have foie gras to start, then fish or roast pork. I have a pudding more often than not - always crème brulée if it's on the menu. I'll have a bottle and a half of red wine with that. I drink spirits if I'm trying to get drunk because it's quicker. I like to cane it for a minimum of two nights, more often three. I'll mainly have hash, then I'll have a gram of coke. About once a month I add three Es to the coke and the hash. During the night I need a few snacks. I wake up after a couple of hours and go to the kitchen and just eat cheese straws, Sugar Puffs, Kit-Kats, cheese and Bounties. I've got a bit of a fat gut but I've never been overweight. I don't try to be healthy, only when I'm in prison because there is very little else to do.'
Interview by Chloe Diski
Roast pork I have no nutritional axe to grind here. My main reservation is the appalling conditions that most commercially reared pigs are kept in. I'd go for free-range or organic.
Weetabix Other than fibre, these slabs of desiccated wheat contain precious little else in terms of nutritional value, and have added sugar and salt; Howard should add a piece or two of fruit.
Red wine This level of intake is very likely to be doing Howard's health more harm than good. Matching each glass of wine with a glass of water would help a lot.
Foie gras Despite its stratospheric saturated fat content, there is evidence that this is a relatively benign food component, so, oddly, this is one of Howard's healthier items.
Cheese straws Cheese straws are a conglomeration of refined wheat flour, unhealthy fats and salt. Great munchie fodder, perhaps, but utter crap in all other respects.
Crème brûlée This is packed with cream and eggs, however, there is emerging evidence that it is a glut of carbohydrate (sugar and starch), not fat, in the diet that is fuelling the spirally rates of obesity and diabetes, so this is a pretty decent option.
Bounty Coconut is rich in saturated fat, however, coconut oil has been shown to have a number of boons for the body including metabolism-boosting and cholesterol reducing effects. But this is stuffed full of sugar and eating it is unlikely to be a path to paradise from a health perspective.
Hash Its lowly price and relative ease of availability makes cannabis a popular choice among recreational drug users. However, 'caning it' in the long term can knock off mental function. Drawing back on his hash habit might just help to preserve Howard's.
