Eating fat doesn't make you fat? Let's ask my dead grandfather...

This is how a conversation about his lifestyle might go between us if he were contacted 'beyond the veil'

“How did you cook your breakfast?” “The only way you can cook it. In beef dripping” (Rex)

The notion that eating fat does not in itself make you fat seems to be congealing into hard fact. New research to this effect from Harvard made me think of my grandfather’s lifestyle (to use a word that he never would), and how a conversation might go between us, if he were contacted “beyond the veil”.

Q: Now you are Francis Reuben Martin, of York. You were born in 1892, and died in 1987… So you lived to 95?

A: I can see why you got into that university. What are you up to these days? Still clerking down south?

Q: I’d like to ask you about food. What was your typical breakfast?

A: Egg and bacon and fried bread.

Q: How did you cook it?

A: The only way you can cook it. In beef dripping. The odd time, I might have Weetabix.

Q: With full-fat milk?

A: Eh? I had it with normal milk with the silver top on the bottle.

Q: Do you remember that the birds used to peck open the bottles, and drink the top of the milk – the fattiest part, your favourite – so I made you a milk-bottle holder during a term’s woodwork lessons, and it had a kind of barrier to keep the birds off?

A: Yes, but it broke. Why do you keep going on about fat?

Q: What was your favourite lunch?

A: Didn’t eat lunch.

Q: Was that because you were watching your weight?

A: In the north we call it “dinner”. I’d generally have a few sausages with fried potatoes.

Q: I remember now, and to economise you cooked them in the same beef dripping that you’d used for your breakfast? But your evening meal – “tea” – was lighter wasn’t it?

A: Usually bread, cheese and cocoa.

Q: Sometimes you would get these things called “scraps” free from the butcher. Could you explain?

A: It was mainly pork crackling, and other odds and ends he’d fried up.

Q: I remember because over the years the fat from those parcels – and from the fish and chips that you had about three times a week – had leaked into the cardboard base of your bike’s saddle bag, and bent it out of shape.

A: What are you driving at?

Q: You ate rather a lot of fat, but also cycled and walked a lot. For years you walked to work every day from the village of Bishopthorpe to Leetham’s flour mill in town. About four miles each way. Was that to get exercise?

A: It was to get to work. There was no bus.

Q: How much did you weigh?

A: No idea.

Q: You had no scales in the house, I know, but didn’t you sometimes weigh yourself on the machine at York station, even though it cost a penny?

A: I suppose I was about 10 and a half stone. Have you finished?

Andrew Martin’s novel, 'The Yellow Diamond', is published by Faber on Thursday (£14.99)