Chicken and rice

Ten years go, I returned from my reality TV show experience (I promise not to mention this again until another significant anniversary) - 5 weeks away from home and down from 11st 10 lbs (74 kg) to 10 st (63 kg).

For three days, the nutritionists would only allow us to eat chicken and rice, as our metabolisms recovered. It was probably the best food I've ever tasted, after the malnutrition we had suffered.

My first morning home in the UK I wandered downstairs into my home office, rebooted my computer and asked Google:

"How many people in the world woke up this morning with nothing to eat and no prospect of eating?"

The answer - 800 million.

I repeated the exercise on the morning of 1st March 2024 - 10 years after my return from The Island.

The answer - 828 million.

It appears that science and technology haven't delivered - neither, it seems, capitalism or any other of our great institutions of "civilisation".

Much of what we read in the media is about how we are damaging our climate - and I get the importance of that in the long term.

In the short term, you would think that we could feed our people by now?

As you eat and drink today - count your blessings.