When I was a student, food was a big issue. Hearing clumps of people in the student union earnestly discussing prices, places and how to get something for nothing, you could be forgiven for thinking it was student grants or housing that was under review. Sadly it was more likely to be cheap sandwiches, where you could get two doner kebabs for the price of one and whether it was worth going to the chaplaincy for the free rich tea biscuits.
So it's no wonder that when Section 35 really kicked in and the film industry took off, students were among the first to seize on the idea of being an extra. It's the ideal student job - not only are you paid what seems a small fortune for doing nothing, but you get fed all day. Free food, the best kind of all. After my first day on set as an extra I bounced home dying to tell the news; not which famous stars I had seen on set but what I had eaten for breakfast, lunch and tea.
Traditionally, food on set is of a very high quality. I seem to remember being offered a selection of poached salmon, steak tartare or roast duckling - but that could just be what I told everybody I was offered. Certainly though, there is always a superb selection - a full cooked breakfast or a cold buffet; three or four courses, including a roast and a vegetarian option for lunch; teas, coffees and snacks all day.
All this is even more impressive given the conditions under which the food is prepared. In order to get the longest day possible, shooting can start at dawn and the break for breakfast can be at 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. The food is all cooked on site in mobile kitchens with fresh ingredients, and both the fresh produce and the mobile kitchens need to be picked up before the working day begins.
"I remember driving the mobile kitchen down Leeson Street when I was working on The Old Curiosity Shop," laughs Mary Lou Hagan, owner of Groovy Movie Foods. "It was 1.50 a.m. and all these people were spilling out of the nightclubs and I was heading off to work. I didn't finish until 11 p.m. that night either. You have to be a bit mad to work in this business because of the long hours and the constant need to produce really high quality food on a low budget. You have to love doing it because it's tough."
The biggest film catering firm is Fitzer's - its vans have become a familiar sight around Dublin, camped along the edge of Stephens Green or Dublin Castle like a carnival come to town. It was started in 1993 by Sharon Fitzpatrick, a scion of the catering family that runs several restaurants around town and supplies fresh produce to many more.
When producer Arthur Lappin was eating in Fitzer's Baggot Street restaurant, he was deploring the fact that he had to bring in British caterers for the new movie he was about to make with director Jim Sheridan: In The Name Of The Father.
Sharon managed to persuade him that she would be capable of doing the job and now, five years later, she has four kitchens on the road.
`THAT film was a real baptism of fire - we had to learn everything in the first three or four weeks. Both Arthur and Jim helped us so much and really showed us the ropes - we still work with them now. Actually everybody that worked with me on that first shoot is still with me, managing kitchens of their own."
The initial investment is large - Sharon estimates that she has more than £250,000 worth of equipment on the road - but the demand is also huge. Fitzer's went through a stage when they were turning down a lot of work, before they decided to expand to meet demand.
All the catering firms - and there are quite a number now - take pride in the standard and variety of food they produce. Sharon divides the typical menu into "lads' food" (roasts) and "girls' food" (chicken and fish) and talks casually of catering for 1,000 extras on the set of Braveheart ("It was brilliant"). Mary Lou prides herself on her traditional desserts such as bread and butter pudding which "go down very well with the men", and on having big bowls of jelly babies out on the snack table. There are theme days when Thai, Mexican, Russian or Indian dishes are on offer and there's music, costumes and an atmosphere to match.
Then there are the tales of the weird and wonderful food which caterers are asked to provide. Actors regularly request special diets, be it soya milk and granose breads or smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. Michael Lynch, who has been catering for films and commercials for 15 years, recently catered for a "very famous French singer" who insisted that all his food be boiled - chicken, rice, the lot.
Caterers are also asked to prepare food that will never be eaten, but that will be immortalised on film - prop food.
"One of our more unusual requests was for In The Name Of The Father," laughs Sharon. "We had to make the prison food look as unappetising as possible, especially with Daniel Day-Lewis being a method actor. It had to look really awful."
She also had to prepare a period banquet for Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, sourcing unusual ingredients that are no longer commonly available. It can cause problems as Mary Lou Hagan points out: "You can be in the middle of Ballygosideways and there can be a demand for lemongrass or something bizarre like that. But we always manage somehow."
One thing that film caterers seem to agree on is that the majority of big stars are perfectly pleasant and there is little "prima donna" type behaviour. Fitzer's catered for the Spice Girls video a couple of weeks ago and Sharon describes them as "very nice". Mary Lou expands further, describing Albert Finney, Jim Belushi and Peter Ustinov as "perfect gentlemen"; James Spader is "nice but reserved" and Uma Thurman was "great fun". She can think of others she can't stand, but she isn't telling who.
"Usually a great rapport builds up between the caterers, the crew and the cast. It's fun."
This, it seems is the addictive quality to film catering - the buzz. "People think it's a glamorous job, but believe me it's not," says Mary Lou flatly. "All the women that work with me . . . we all get on really well, which is absolutely vital in this job. You do it for the love of it."
Sharon Fitzpatrick agrees: "It's all a bit of a buzz although the work is hard - there's constantly tea and coffee to be made and dishes to be washed. But there's great fun and great craic to be had - the crew becomes family really. I decided to step back a bit after three years and go more into the management end, but they were the best three years. The best."