Sunrise star reveals their unlikely appetite for garden snails cooked in oil and vinegar

A star from Channel Seven’s Sunrise has revealed their unlikely appetite for none other than garden snails.

Matt Tinney, a Perth-based correspondent for the program, explained to The West Live this week how he used to always eat the slimy creatures when in Melbourne. 

The reporter, 36, would consume garden snails with his extended family, having grown up in the Victorian city.  

‘I come from an Italian family, and my Nonno in Melbourne, as soon as it rains… would walk the streets and collect hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of snails,’ he said. 

Matt went on to reveal how his Nonno would go about eliminating toxins from their digestive systems, in order to make them fit for human consumption.   

‘He’d put them into hessian bags, big hessian bags and feed them breadcrumbs,’ he said. 

‘It kind of cleans them out and then we’d eat them. Boil them in the pot with oil and vinegar. It actually tastes really good.’ 

Matt is married to wife Nikki Wilson-Smith, and the couple share two young children, daughter Florence and son Vance.

In 2008, Matt joined the Nine Network as a reporter, eventually resigning in 2014.

The following year, Matt announced he would be joining Seven’s Sunrise as a Perth correspondent. 

Sunrise began a Perth bulletin in 2015, with Matt as its reporter.  

The Seven program continues to be the most watched breakfast news show, above Nine’s Today.