I’VE always been wary of vegetarianism for two reasons. Firstly, I’ve got big sharp canine teeth and it seems a pity to waste them. Secondly, Hitler was vegetarian and I don't consider him a particularly great role model.

Indeed, as a kid from the 1970s, I never actually met a vegetarian until I went to university. They tended not to party much as far as I could see, however, so our bonds didn’t extended beyond a hungover kebab-stained smile on my behalf in a Chaucer lecture, as they sat there relentlessly perky.

I properly got to know my first vegetarian as a cub reporter. It was my sorry job to cover Northern Ireland’s courts, and one of my fellow scribblers was an intense vegetable evangelist.

She could have won me over if she hadn’t broken wind with appalling regularity in the press box even during the most harrowing testimony. I put this foul breach of decorum and justice down to her diet, so shunned any notion of joining the ranks of vegetarianism forever. I was 22 and impressionable.

Soon, though, I’d met lots of these strange, exotic creatures called vegetarians, discovered they were not - as I falsely believed - all Olympic-level flatulators, and even made friends with some. As part of Northern Ireland’s peace generation, I clearly espouse a hands-across-the-barricades philosophy.

However, my prejudice returned with a vengeance when, as a documentary producer, I embarked on a film about illegal blood sports (see, I do actually care about animals, even if I also like to eat them).

As part of my research, I spent a week in Brighton with animal rights activists so austere their stare could curdle water. The head of a well-known anti-cruelty charity was helping me out, so I took her to lunch at a vegan restaurant.

My memory of the meal is this: I ate a bunch of weeds and nuts covered in slime, and then paid £250 for the pleasure. The wine alone was £75 a bottle. This was the early 2000s - how could weeds, nuts and a glass and a half of awful wine cost the same as a Stag weekend in Prague with easyJet?

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The charity lady could have handed me the Watergate files, and I’d still have felt ripped off. So my biases around those who shunned the gory delights of the carnivore were compounded.

It’s not that I’m one of these anti-vegetable, I-only-eat-steak macho lunatics. I’m a big believer in a healthy diet, with plenty of fruit and veg and all that palaver. But I also eat meat every single day. Religiously. If meat really is murder, then I’ve been a willing Seven Day accomplice to terrible crimes for more than 50 years.

Until now. My veggie volte-face came about as I’d been on holiday, and in that time I felt as if I’d consumed every beast upon the Earth and every creature in the sea. Crab claws, octopus tentacles, wee baby lambs, beef, oysters, hake, cute bunny rabbits, an elegant goose. I gourmandised my way through a Noah’s Ark of innocent creatures.

It wasn’t solely their victimhood, though, which prompted a lifestyle change. It was age, weight and health. A few years back I’d a rather perilous brush with death - the literal kind, not the hyperbolic kind - which left me hardly able to walk for months. A once svelte young Casanova became a rather stately man of mid-years with a bit of an auld belly. This triggered my rampant narcissism.

On top of that, my daughter fell in love with a vegan lad. I liked him a lot. I do most of the cooking at home, so when they come round for Sunday dinner or barbecues, I go out of my way to make him vegan food. I tried it, I liked it. I felt the world shift beneath my feet - like a Tory who’s voted Labour.

Now, there was no way I was going to attempt veganism after my holiday meat-orgy. I like the lad and all that, but it still makes me sad to watch him munch his tofu while the rest of us bacchanal on roast beef with all the trimmings until we’re sweating and delirious.

The lure of steak was irresistibleThe lure of steak was irresistible (Image: PA)

So I gave vegetarianism a whirl. It lasted a week. The first two days were pretty cool. I was impressed by how little I missed meat. It was fun experimenting with cooking vegetarian meals. I’ve even added a few tasty wee dishes to my repertoire.

However, come day three things were getting tricky. By day four, when I looked at a bowl of breakfast granola, I wanted to throw it at the wall. Salad seemed evil and sadistic.

By day five - and this is the genuine truth - I was fantasising about blood. I’d have sold family members into slavery for a medium-rare steak. I tried to find post-truth ways around vegetarianism like arguing with my wife that tuna sandwiches for lunch don’t count. She shamed me back to tomatoes on toast.

Day six, and I was ready for cannibalism. I would have eaten another human being if they’d stayed still long enough. A mushroom risotto - which I usually love - left me on the verge of tears.

Come day seven, I knew it was all over - that I was a charlatan and wouldn’t last until tomorrow. But I wanted to be able to say I stuck in out for a week. So I basically just ate Super Noodles and margarita pizzas for the last 24 hours. If I’d seen another goats cheese sitting on a bed of curly green nonsense, I’d have thrown myself into the sea.

The next day I feasted upon all that bleeds. It was one of the happiest times of my life. Bacon for breakfast, chicken at lunch, and that still palpitating steak come dinner.

My journey into the underworld wasn’t for naught, however. I’m now cutting meat out one day a week. Big wow mate, I hear you cry. I agree it’s hardly a lifestyle revolution, but it’s a start. And I’ve mournfully accepted that the slim young god who once wore my body is now so long gone that even a stuffed courgette will not hasten his return.