MY WIFE Ann loves a dish of cockles in a drop of strong malt vinegar, preferably in some Essex seaside resort like Southend or Leigh-on-Sea.
She has been eating them all her life, often from a stall either at the seaside or once upon a time from a barrow outside a London pub.
I too love all kinds of shellfish, including cockles, and I’m happy to ignore Pliny the Elder (the Frosty of his time Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher who died in 74 AD).
He said: “…shellfish are the prime cause of the decline of morals and the adaptation of an extravagant lifestyle.”