Squidsquatch. A new interview (almost) every day. A single question. The subject one day becomes interviewer the next.

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Deb Biancotti: Mitch, you’re an archetypal renaissance man, with credits in publishing and performance art, a career in layout and design, and a history in the complementary arts of wrestling and competitive dance. Also, you’re very tall. My question is: did you eat all your greens as a child?

Mitch: Now, can I clarify this? Are you asking, ‘As a child, did I eat all of my greens?’ Or ‘Did I eat all my greens as a child?’

Because in relation to the former, the answer would be NO, as I didn’t stop eating vegetables as soon as I reached adulthood. I, in fact, have taken to eating more vegetables the older I get. And when I say more, I mean more in volume and more in variety.

The answer to the latter is again NO for I was quite a fussy eater as a child and did not like anything that wasn’t snack food or dessert. I would blatantly refuse to eat vegetables. It was a battle of wills between my mother and myself. I would be at the table refusing to eat and Mum would be saying that if I didn’t eat the vegies I would have to go without. Let’s just say that Mum’s maternal instinct for not letting her child starve always kicked in well before I ever broke.

Either way, it’s safe to say that only a few ‘greens’ passed my lips in the tender days of my childhood. How that relates to my being ‘very tall’, as you pointed out, is marginal: for out of me and 2 of my cousins (of similar age to myself), I probably ate more greens than they ever did and yet I am the shortest of the 3. In fact, out of my sister and all my cousins, the more vegetables that were eaten, the shorter the person is. Maybe there’s something in that which should be investigated.

So, as to your enquiry about the amount of vegetables eaten in my youth in relation to my height, I think it’s a lot more to do with ‘genes’ instead of ‘greens’

I hope that answers your question sufficiently.

Mitch is perhaps the only person ever to have been forced into the literary establishment by his friends demanding that he edit an anthology. Since that fateful day, the Mitch? books have become the longest-running anthology series in Australian genre history. Mitch does have a surname, but in most situations it is entirely superfluous. Also, he is very tall.