Millwall fan tells how his 20 pie a DAY addiction led to him putting on 16 stone in a year

LEE HOWES got so addicted to pies he was eating 20 a day.

He would blow up to £700 a week and as his habit got hold he ballooned from 14st to 30st in a year.

The single Milwall fan, 42, says: “The chant ‘Who ate all the pies’ could have been invented for me. I couldn’t get enough of them. Pies took over my life.

“I just   loved how they tasted — the gravy mixing with the meat and the delicate pastry. There was nothing I could do to resist. I would buy stacks of steak pies at the supermarket and piles of chicken and mushroom ones at petrol stations then slob at home and eat.”

Butcher Lee, from South London, says: “Whenever I ate out, I would go to the Goddard’s Pies shop in Deptford. I couldn’t get enough of their pies. I had them with mash and liquor. I loved them.

“Sometimes I would get there before they opened and stand outside waiting for the shutters to go up. People would stare. Other times I would ring to check how many pies they had in so I knew there were enough.

“On match days I would go there and have five pies. During the game I would eat another two. Then I would go home and have more.”

Lee fell in love with pies as a child. He says: “Mum cooked lovely ones, she made the pastry herself.

“I remember the first she cooked, it had a smiley face on it, I was seven, it was a steak pie.

"I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world. As I got older, we would go to the pie and mash shop as a treat.”

When Lee’s mum died in 2016, then his dad last year, he comfort ate more and more. He says: “I was eating on average 15 a day but often 20. I couldn’t help it.”

In January this year he finally checked into a health bootcamp. He lost six stone and no longer has pies on the brain.

He says: “I’ve started thinking about apples — and hope to get a girlfriend.”

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