I was most perturbed last week to see a feature in a Sunday broadsheet's food magazine about the popular musician Badly Drawn Boy, under a headline along the lines of "And we ate a pie in a bap".

I wasn't perturbed through any righteous sense of healthy eating, but rather because Damon Gough had, at a stroke, stolen all my childhood memories of food which I had, at some point in the future when I become as famous as Badly Drawn Boy, hoped to be interviewed upon myself.

Gough grew up in Bolton, a mere steak pudding's throw from my stamping ground of Wigan, and the two towns obviously share a great deal in terms of cuisine.

I still remember the minor diplomatic incident which was caused when I did, in fact, partake of a pie in a bap while working in Preston - less than half an hour's drive from my hometown but a million miles away in gastronomic terms.

There was a veritable horde of rubberneckers at my desk as I sat down to enjoy a nutritious lunch of a meat and potato pie sandwiched between a buttered barm cake (that's a teacake to you Tykes).

Someone (it may have been the woman who was to become my wife) muttered incredulously about "carbohydrate overload", but to be honest I couldn't really see what was causing all the fuss.

As to the aforementioned steak pudding, only available in the best fish and chip shops, we used to, like Gough and his mates, refer to it as a "babby's yed" (translation: baby's head), due to the gentle dip in the top of the suet which bears a striking resemblance to the depressed fontanelle of a new-born child whose skull plates have yet to move into position properly.

Wiganers aren't called pie-eaters for nothing, and dinner (never lunch) was invariably a savoury pastry of some description - eaten straight from the paper bag if outdoors, or on a plate awash with an Oxo if the luxury of a dinner-time indoors was available, generally in front of Pebble Mill at One or the Amazing World of Kreskin - Canada's premier magician and mentalist.

For a change (every other day, for example) it would be off to the chippy, where a wet mixture was usually the order of the day. A wet mixture comprised chips, peas, and the amber nectar of pea wet, which as far as I can gather, is only available in Wigan. Pea wet is, as the name suggests, the juice from the peas (which doesn't work if the peas are too mushy). Sometimes you would have a wet mixture with scratchings (scraps of batter) or, if you were saving money, chips and pea wet was always an option - especially as the pea wet was free.

Another money saver, which I personally hated, was to take a pile of oven-proof dishes to the chippy and get your order in them so you didn't have to buy styrofoam trays. Good for the environment too, kids!

These days, of course, it's all pak choi butties with a side order of rocket and pine nuts for dinner, which I've suddenly started calling "lunch" for reasons I don't really understand.

Perhaps a steak pie swimming in Oxo wasn't really the healthiest meal a child could have, but there are days when I'm staring at a limp, cold sandwich filled with two or three slices of tasteless white meat that I couldn't half go a wet mixture with scratchings. Now if only they'd bring back the Amazing World of Kreskin...