Debbie Bourne

FORGET your average Camden foodie festivals. Perhaps you’d prefer a Pestival. Kentish Town eco comedy writer Debbie Bourne is calling on locals to try a nice bit of grub at a local insect event.

It’s all featured in Debbie’s latest deliciously entertaining novel, The High-Heeled Eco-Worrier.

But the delicacies available may not be to everyone’s taste. There’s “cricket burgers” and “critter canopies” which are described as the next “bug” thing.

The novel, the second in the series, follows Debbie’s first book – The High-Heeled Gardener – and begins with a property developer threatening to turn an ornate deconsecrated Gothic church in Kentish Town into posh flats and an upmarket restaurant.

Debbie manages to poke fun at climate change activists and posh restaurants, while celebrating the local green movement.

We meet a group of mildly eccentric campaigners who have taken over care of the church in order to save it from development. They even have support from a local bishop who allows them to lease the church free of charge.

In order to decide whether a posh restaurant would be good they decide to visit one with a tasting menu where the four activists are charged £600.

Enter eco-worrier Sasha, organiser of the bug event, who says: “Insects are a sustainable food source. They have a significantly lower carbon footprint than meat production.”

The church is turned into a Good Life hub to help, hopefully, halt the private development. It’s not just the interior of the church that will be put to use. Outside in the garden the compacted soil is covered in a profusion of bindweed and brambles, and trunks of old apple trees, from what once would have been a wonderful orchard, although “it looked like it hadn’t been pruned since Creation”.

The plan is to transform this wilderness into a vegetable and flower garden.

The novel’s shady character is property man Montjoy. He says Kentish Town will become the new “go-to” destination. And best of all, his multimillion organisation will donate 10 iPads (yes, 10) to a local school affected by the development.

He declares: “This sumptuous block will comprise of eight New York-style penthouse apartments. But this is just the first phase of the development, which will continue along Kentish Town High Road transforming the empty shops into apartments and shops for luxury living.”

Also entering the fray is anti-development campaigner Rich, a former wealthy investment banker, who apparently gave it all up to become an environment activist.

Unfortunately Rich’s move led to the breakdown of his marriage to New Yorker Jo-Jo. But now he says he sleeps well at night, curled up his under his Thomas The Tank Engine duvet.

Then there’s Natalie, who is standing at the local elections as an independent councillor.

“We don’t want more posh flats in the area,” she says.“We need affordable and social housing and more social amenities.”

She says the town has already lost a post office and several banks. There’s even talk of a local library being shut.

Nat would like to see toddlers and the elderly exercising together and has plans for setting up a community bank. She also wants to help youths start their own businesses.

Back to Pestival organiser Sasha, who has a plummy voice and Chanel rouge-painted lips. She believes edible insects are going to play a big part in the future of our food security. Her pal Meatless Marg agrees and plans to “adopt” battery chickens.

She says: “Make a new feathered friend and show a factory-farmed animal just how great life can be. Each year millions of hens are condemned to a short miserable existence in battery cages, all for the sake of cheap eggs.”

However, their friend Deborah, a former fashion designer, is a pest doubter. Her idea of a festival is “love in the bucolic countryside”.

Apart from Rich, the friends have little experience of upmarket restaurants. The highly popular establishment they visit is outside the borough.

Inside the restaurant, vases overspill with florid red roses. The book gives a choice taste of the vibe when a waiter walks up to the friends’ table with a tray of crystal glasses filled with swirls of dark red and purple liquid. “We present a cupid consommé,” says the waiter. “This is a chilled plum and beet consommé with horse radish oil.”

Rich is fed up with food waste. He says: “An unbelievable 24 million slices of bread are thrown away in this country every day. Followed by almost six million whole potatoes and two million slices of ham.’”

Then, he continues, there are one million tomatoes, bananas and eggs being thrown away each day. He argues that the world needs a new mindset to address all the challenges of the 21st century.

Debbie is a professional gardener and co-founder of Camden’s not-for-profit Think & Do company.

• The High-Heeled Eco-Worrier. By Debbie Bourne, Malchik Media, £13.85