My family’s Nigerian, but I was born and raised in England and I was very much a British kid. So at school I had bangers and mash, toad in the hole and all the British sweets. Then I’d come home and we’d eat mainly traditional Nigerian food: jollof rice, pounded yam and okra stew. One of my favourites was cow foot, which is the cow leg cut into pieces and simmered and boiled in a stew with tomatoes and spices. I still think it’s delicious to this day, even though I don’t eat it nearly as often.
As a teenager I slept with a can of Coke by the bed. I’d wake up and slurp every time I got up for a pee. I have fillings in absolutely every tooth. Including the front ones.
On a TV set, there is all manner of evil: chocolate, snacks, biscuits, everything terrible. We could ask for healthy stuff, and I often do, and then when they put the seaweed right next to a KitKat Chunky, you know you’re going to go for the KitKat Chunky. It’s just a fact.
Black people know how to cook meat better than anybody and I’ll tell you why. During slavery, when they were giving us the shittiest part of the meats, the offcuts after they’d eaten all the best parts of the animal, we turned that into deliciousness. The oxtail, the pig feet: we turned that into a culinary delight.
I was diagnosed with [the immune-system condition] lupus in 2005 and I was put on a pile of medicine. I was on steroids and painkillers, and steroids make your appetite even bigger and you blow up. I put on maybe four stone. And I didn’t feel like I was getting any healthier. It got to a point where I was so ill, I had to have a raised toilet seat because my knees were so painful. I had all kinds of tools to open bottles with, because the joints in my hands were so swollen.
Basically, I cut out sugar, meat, gluten, went hardcore raw vegan. I just came off: boom! And within a month, my joints started to heal and I could feel that I could move again. I stopped the medication and the doctors were like: “You’re crazy!” I wouldn’t recommend that for anybody, but that was back in 2009 and I’ve not been on medication for lupus since. I’ve sent it into remission.
That’s a massive lesson that I learned: your body’s an engine, and if you keep putting rubbish in the engine, the engine is going to fail. I eat fish again now, I eat a bit of meat here and there, but I know when I go back to eating terribly for long periods of time, my joints start to hurt, I start to feel the old pains coming back. I immediately stop eating that way and switch back to a plant-based diet and get back on my smoothies and it goes away.
Sugar is my drug. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke. I don’t do any drugs. Sugar is my big vice.
I’ve only been drunk twice, just to experiment. And I was like: I don’t know why people do this to themselves. It’s a “no” from me. The last time, I was working on a lesbian cruise, I was one of the performers on the ship. And one of the girls, it was her birthday and I made the mistake of saying: “Oh, I don’t get drunk.” So they saw it as a challenge. And I tell you, after 15 tequila slammers, I was like, “Whoa!” Luckily, I was a happy drunk. I spent the whole night going around just complimenting people.
My favourite things
Food
Chocolate! Always chocolate! I live in America now and I import Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut from England. You can’t beat it. I don’t eat American chocolate at all, it’s disgusting, it’s all chemicals and colouring.
Drink
Virgin piña colada. Or if I’m going to drink alcohol, which I do once a year on New Year’s Eve, I love a Baileys, because Baileys is an alcoholic ice-cream to me.
Restaurant
For Nigerian food, 805 on the Old Kent Road in south London. After a night of dancing in Brixton, I’ll go to Refill Eaterie and get some ackee and saltfish and some fried plantain. There’s always a line outside the block and good banter.
Dish to make
If I’m going to be hardcore Nigerian, I love oxtails. It will not be beaten!
Cack-Handed: a Memoir is out now (HarperCollins, £16.99); Gina Yashere is performing at Leicester Square Theatre, London WC2H 7BX from 21-23 December