Education: Passed/Failed: Sophie Grigson

Sophie Grigson, 38, is a food writer and broadcaster, and also a major contributor to `Fair World Cookbook', just produced by Cassell for Oxfam (price pounds 7.99). Her TV series and books include `Eat Your Greens' and `Taste of the Times'. She wrote `Travels a la Carte' with her husband, William Black, and they are currently working together on a book about fish.

Sophie's Choice? Broadtown School in deepest Wiltshire was a very good village school. There was some solid class teaching, such as learning tables by rote, and the brighter ones were also given work at their own pace; a boy called Martin Smith and I spent a lot of time deciding what we were going to do next.

My first teacher was beautiful: Miss Thompson, kind, lovely, blonde and young. My mother took me to see Miss Thompson playing Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest; it was an amateur production, but seeing my teacher on stage was like seeing Greta Garbo.

French leave: My parents [the poet Geoffrey Grigson, and food writer Jane Grigson] spent a lot of time in France, so I spent a month or two every year in the primary school of a French village. My teacher, Mme Julien, was very warm towards me, and the only problem was that in France you were taught very much earlier to do joined-up writing with an ink pen, which they didn't like in England.

High old time: I enjoyed taking the 11-plus: those little mind-teasers in which you have to say what comes next in a sequence. I passed, and went to Oxford High, then a direct grant school, as a weekly boarder.

At first I hated being away from the family, and I remember crying on Monday mornings, not wanting to go back. I would never send my children, who are now three-and-a-half and two, to boarding school unless they really wanted it. As I got older I ended up having a marvellous time; Oxford is a lovely place for a teenager interested in boys. I wasn't musical, or sporting at all. We had school drama competitions and I usually had one line, in a good year two or three.

Getting the needle: The exam system rather suited me. The driving test is the only exam I've ever failed I won't say how many times. I am one of those nauseating people who do well at exams but forget it all two days later. I did maths and English language a year early and Russian a year later than the other subjects. The school did needlework; the first thing I made was a winceyette nightie. I thought it was boring until the other evening, when I was making a nightie for my daughter, and now I am thankful for my needlework.

Seating plan: I went to Umist to do maths and French. I dropped the French after a year because I realised I would have to work at it. I got a 2.1 in maths. I did a lot of stuff for Community Action; I lived on the edge of Moss Side, which wasn't as terrifying as it is now, and I helped with a disco for children. I was on the student union council. We did have a sit-in, a rather weak affair. I can't remember what we sat down about, but I do remember marching into the office of the vice-principal's secretary and saying, "This is a sit-in. Please vacate your office," and feeling rather embarrassed.

Booking the cook: Oxford High didn't do cooking; the school was much too academic.

I helped at home, where everything revolved round the kitchen, but I didn't for a second imagine I'd make a career out of it. I did write one or two articles for the student newspaper about cheese souffles, or something.