Wendy Irwin

Good evening.

Give me a second.

I'm with you.

Growing up in the 70s, an interesting time when you are the middle child of 11.

I lived with an excitable Caribbean family and the thing that brought them joy, the thing that brought them to paroxysms of happiness was mangoes.

I had an aunt, my aunt Maudie, and she became our resource investigator.

She was the person that scoured markets up and down London, every inch, every store, every space was upturned and investigated because she brought back the mangoes.

And it was generally on a Saturday during World of Sport, she would announce the mangoes from the front gate and we'd all crowd round

Except Aunt Maud wasn't that good at the kind of mango getting, like she had one job and she messed it up.

It was like the mangoes that she'd got couldn't survive the middle passage between where they actually grew and where they were supposed to be eaten.

They tasted of despair, desperation, not one thing good.

And so when the rest of the family was crowding around our Maudie, I realized I just didn't like mangoes.

And yes, I hear this, just how dare you?

I dare.

I'm a black woman that just did not like mangoes.

Forgive me.

So Aunt Maudie would be in the centre, you know, she'd be blocking out World of Sport when Giant Haystacks was going to do his thing.

And I would just hang back because I just preferred the crunch of an apple.

And I think it irritated her.

It was her moment in the sun.