Years ago celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain was doing a talk in London as promo for his new TV series, A Cooks Tour. My Mum had just started reading his books and was a big fan, so I got us some tickets for her birthday. There were camera crews there recording the whole thing.

So after they screened the trailer and chatted for a bit, the host asked if anyone had any questions. My Mum put her hand up and he picked her. The camera crew turned the cameras on my Mum. She started of well by saying that she really liked his first book which she thought was well written and she’s a big fan. Bourdain and the host smiled at this before she went on to say that she didn’t think that his second book wasn’t very good.

Silence and my jaw dropped open.

Camera crew turned to Anthony Bourdain to get his reaction. He has a good poker face and thanked my Mum for her honesty.

Unfortunately Mum took this as a go ahead signal to elaborate on her earlier statements and spent about 5 mins ripping his book to shreds and explaining about how it was a colossal disappointment after she’d been looking forwards to reading it because it was so badly written.

The whole time the camera crew were frantically swivelling between filming my Mum and getting Anthony Bourdain’s reaction. Thankfully the host cut her off and asked her if there was anything at all that she liked about it. To which she replied ‘Meh’ and shrugged.

I was absolutely mortified and tried to act as though I wasn’t with her. She completely killed the mood of the event and no one else asked any questions. To this day Mum is unrepentant and believes that she did the right thing because ‘he needed to know’. I have never ever gone to any events like that again with my Mum.