Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. Artists coming together in
Speaker 1: the restaurant, you know, and the casso drawn on the
Speaker 1: table cloth and all that kind of thing. It's really
Speaker 1: known throughout history, but it is to do with the
Speaker 1: solitary nous of being in the studio and the solitariness
Speaker 1: of being an artist, being very much alone. So this
Speaker 1: idea of coming together to eat is such a nice thing.
Speaker 1: Here we are and unseasonably wet and cold Saturday in London,
Speaker 1: but I feel warmed, as I always am, by being
Speaker 1: with my friend Tracy Emmon. She's a great friend and
Speaker 1: a great artist. Tracy, over to you, okay, so I'm
Speaker 1: My favorite thing to eat here is the grilled squid
Speaker 1: with shred, chili and rocket. Eight medium squid no bigger
Speaker 1: than your hand. Six large fresh red chilies, seeded and
Speaker 1: very finely chopped, a hundred and fifty meal, extra virgin oil,
Speaker 1: two DRAMs of rocket, four tablespoons of oil, and lemon dressing.
Speaker 1: One lemon cut into quarters to make the sauce. Put
Speaker 1: the chopped chilies in a bowl and cover with extra
Speaker 1: virgin olive oil, season heat a grill until very hot.
Speaker 1: Place the squid, including the tentacles, scored side down on
Speaker 1: the grill. Season and grill for two minutes. Turn a
Speaker 1: squid pieces over. They will immediately curl up and by
Speaker 1: which time they will be cooked. Toss the rocket in
Speaker 1: the dressing. Arranged two squid bodies with tentacles on each
Speaker 1: plate with the rocket. Put a little of the chili
Speaker 1: sauce over the squid, and serve with lemon. I'm so
Speaker 1: happy that you chose such a class typically representative of
Speaker 1: the river cafe recipe, and I was wondering why you
Speaker 1: chose squid chilian rocket. When I go to a restaurant,
Speaker 1: I always like to choose food that I wouldn't cook myself,
Speaker 1: but god, it's so easy to cook, so maybe I
Speaker 1: should do it. But then, and also, I'm Mediterranean, so
Speaker 1: um squeet is such a Mediterranean food, and I always
Speaker 1: have this sort of light in a primal thing that
Speaker 1: if I can eat Mediterranean, eat part of my ancestral
Speaker 1: food as much as possible, it makes me feel really
Speaker 1: good when I eat it, So that's why I chose it.
Speaker 1: When you say that you're Mediterranean, tell me about being Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: Because I thought you were a market. Well Margaret is yeah,
Speaker 1: Margaret Mediterranean market. And well I'm Turkish Cypriot. My dad's
Speaker 1: Turkish Cypriot and my great grandfather was from the Sudan
Speaker 1: and he was a slave in the Ottoman Empire and
Speaker 1: around eighteen, I don't know, about nineteen hundred he was
Speaker 1: given his freedom in Cyprus with fifty sheep. So we're
Speaker 1: known as the there's a thing called like the Black Turks,
Speaker 1: and they actually came from the slaves from the Ottoman Empire,
Speaker 1: and my family on Mediterranean side is from that background,
Speaker 1: so um, there's your Mediterranean. My dad was really fantastic cook,
Speaker 1: like amazing cook. Grew all his own vegetables. We actually
Speaker 1: grew all our ound. Me and my dad grew all
Speaker 1: up all my vegetables on my studio roof back in
Speaker 1: the nineties. Everything everything from cucumbers, grigettes, ob jeans, potatoes, tomatoes,
Speaker 1: heritage tomatoes, beans, green beans, everything, and then my dad
Speaker 1: would cook so and my mom was a terrible cook.
Speaker 1: I hate saying it, both it's true. And the kind
Speaker 1: of food I grew up on was a kind of
Speaker 1: strange mixture of like this sort of really amazing food
Speaker 1: that my dad could cook, and this really terrible food
Speaker 1: that my mom could cook that I really loved, and
Speaker 1: what you loved mother's food, egg and chips. My mom
Speaker 1: was completely against me cooking, and when we were cooking
Speaker 1: at school, my mom would actually wrote me letters saying,
Speaker 1: my daughter will not learn to cook. My daughter is
Speaker 1: not going to be a slave to any man. But
Speaker 1: the truth was we didn't actually have the money for
Speaker 1: the cooking ingredients, so my mom. But even so it
Speaker 1: worked out kind of badly and kind of good. I
Speaker 1: didn't learn to cook at school. Cooking at school was
Speaker 1: pretty awful. And um, I only learned to cook when
Speaker 1: I was much older, when I was sort of a
Speaker 1: look around eighteen or nineteen, And even now I'm not
Speaker 1: a very good cook, but I really like nice food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what I cook, I cook well. So, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so interesting that she she did not want you to
Speaker 1: be stuck in the kitchen as a slave or anyone
Speaker 1: to cook for her for a man. That's normal, yeah,
Speaker 1: but in a way for that time, back in the seventies,
Speaker 1: it was pretty radical as well. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: a strange psychotomy because there's my father being a good cook,
Speaker 1: and there's my mom being a bad cook, telling me
Speaker 1: not to be a slave to any man. She was.
Speaker 1: She ambitious for you and everywhere apart from keeping you
Speaker 1: from cookie did she have very strong ambitions for you.
Speaker 1: She put me on the pill when I was fourteen
Speaker 1: to make sure I didn't get pregnant. That's pretty ambitious.
Speaker 1: She's considered the idea of me having children to be
Speaker 1: a complete failure and not a positive thing. So she
Speaker 1: did everything to stop me from being a single mother
Speaker 1: and a young single mother. But that's right or wrong,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. It seemed to have worked in my
Speaker 1: favorite Yeah and yeah, she's when I think about it,
Speaker 1: she was really not. My mom was very cozy herson,
Speaker 1: but she wasn't home based. Really wasn't her strong point.
Speaker 1: Do you think she wanted to do something else for herself? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: My mom was brilliant dancer, and when she was sort
Speaker 1: of around fifteen, she had in an interview audition in
Speaker 1: a theater to for dancing, and her dad wouldn't let
Speaker 1: her go when you left her? And how old were
Speaker 1: you when you actually left your father's cooking? The deliciousness
Speaker 1: of growing vegetables, and how how old were you. Actually,
Speaker 1: my dad never lived at home. My dad only spent
Speaker 1: My dad left us when we were about seven, and
Speaker 1: my mom left us when we were twelve for quite
Speaker 1: long periods of time. So me and my twin brother
Speaker 1: when we grew up, it was very different from other
Speaker 1: people's backgrounds, and it was very impoverished. Were incredibly poor.
Speaker 1: Were It's strange we had were very wealthy when we
Speaker 1: had that growing up in we were seven and then
Speaker 1: my dad lost everything and my dad was married, so
Speaker 1: my dad spent three days with his wife, three days
Speaker 1: with my mom. We would say, one day somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So um, and so when my dad was around, the
Speaker 1: cooking or anything my dad did was like a big tree.
Speaker 1: My dad came here in on a ten pound ticket
Speaker 1: from Cyprus, and then my mom's a gypsy, so it's
Speaker 1: really quite exotic actually, you know. I was brought up
Speaker 1: on pomgranites and watermelon and with with my dad and well,
Speaker 1: my dad was at home, and then when I was older, Um,
Speaker 1: I started traveling to Turkey with him as soon as
Speaker 1: we could go back to Cyprus. When I was I
Speaker 1: think I was twenty when the war finished, my dad
Speaker 1: took me to Cyprus and baby, we're going home. And
Speaker 1: that was the first trip to turken Sight for since
Speaker 1: I was a baby, and and it was like amazing
Speaker 1: m to be with my dad, to be living with
Speaker 1: my dad. They're cooking everything, and and my mom was
Speaker 1: kind of a bit piste off because all that she'd
Speaker 1: done for me. And then suddenly I'm like, but I'm
Speaker 1: you know, on my my father's when you started out
Speaker 1: by saying you're Mediterranean, and so to actually probably go
Speaker 1: and see the Mediterraneans and have the food. But when
Speaker 1: we when we were up until we were about six,
Speaker 1: we would go to Turkey regularly once a year, and
Speaker 1: we spent when we were really tiny, we spent two
Speaker 1: periods of six months there. Once when I was about
Speaker 1: three or four, and then another time when I was six,
Speaker 1: we spent six months there and and all that time
Speaker 1: it would have been Mediterranean food and Mediterranean cooking. And
Speaker 1: we used to drive to Turkey, and this is really cool.
Speaker 1: We used to have in the back of the our car.
Speaker 1: We had a Zodiac. We had these little tiny wooden chairs,
Speaker 1: you know, with the rapportive seats, and my dad just
Speaker 1: with a brand new Zodio and my dad just stuck
Speaker 1: a hole through the roof through the you know the bits,
Speaker 1: and then got bongee plastic things around the chairs and
Speaker 1: then just sat us in the back of the car
Speaker 1: bouncing up and we're twins bouncing up and down on
Speaker 1: these chairs with those little knotty dogs, and we drive
Speaker 1: to Turkey, and we'd stop on the way all the time,
Speaker 1: and my dad would get the calor gas stove out
Speaker 1: and fry eggs and cook and everything, and we'd go
Speaker 1: go to fields and take watermelons and things. So it
Speaker 1: was really exciting and like adventurous these drives. And I'm
Speaker 1: being I'm romanticizing about it now because it is romantic,
Speaker 1: and it was different and it was different from everybody
Speaker 1: else's upbringing that I knew. And so we went from
Speaker 1: that to this, like to squatting in a cottage and
Speaker 1: my mom working in a hotel as a waitress and
Speaker 1: aimper made and so it was like from high to
Speaker 1: like really fast, a reversal of fortune when you were
Speaker 1: having to cook for yourself. Did you what did you read?
Speaker 1: What did you do? There was so my mom was
Speaker 1: out a lot most of the time, working leading, and
Speaker 1: at weekends as well, she'd be out to three in
Speaker 1: the morning, so we were on our own and often
Speaker 1: my mom would leave our sandwiches and whatever. But my
Speaker 1: big thing was just like orange, just orange squash and
Speaker 1: just tons of orange squash and sitting up at night
Speaker 1: crosier in bed and we and also for example, like Christmas,
Speaker 1: Like you said about this, a lot of this podcast
Speaker 1: is about people sitting around the table and remembering it. Oh,
Speaker 1: there was no sitting around the table for me. It
Speaker 1: was sitting and watching the Telly with a tray with
Speaker 1: egg and chips. You know, when my mom came home
Speaker 1: and Christmas was not Christmas. We didn't have Christmas because
Speaker 1: my mom was always working. Our Christmas was like a
Speaker 1: week after and kind of cobbled together, but it was
Speaker 1: never going to feel the same as the real Christmas.
Speaker 1: And one I remember we had Salvation Army one year,
Speaker 1: you know, coming around with food and presents because we
Speaker 1: didn't have anything. My mom, if she didn't work, we
Speaker 1: had nothing. And that is a very different upbringing to
Speaker 1: a lot of people I know, And it's not a
Speaker 1: thing to feel sorry for. I'm just staying the difference.
Speaker 1: And also it's pretty shocking to go from this wealthy
Speaker 1: thing of being quite spoiled as well in lots of
Speaker 1: ways up until I was seven and then nothing. Do
Speaker 1: you remember being hungry? Yeah, and I think my mom
Speaker 1: remembers asked, my mom's dead now? But you know, my
Speaker 1: mom this, this is one of the most shameful things
Speaker 1: that I have to say, But in a way, I'm
Speaker 1: sort of proud of her. When that the hotel was
Speaker 1: derelict behind, my mom went climbing on the roof and
Speaker 1: took lead off the roofs to sell it so as
Speaker 1: we had something to eat. And that is on another level,
Speaker 1: complete different level. And so much of this is down
Speaker 1: to education and so much and it's like the cooking
Speaker 1: thing and education and food. There is really better ways
Speaker 1: to do this. But when you actually have nothing, and
Speaker 1: you're here about these people women shoplifting to get their
Speaker 1: babies food, and it seems unimaginable, but it's not when
Speaker 1: you've been that poor, that's not. And it's happening now
Speaker 1: because we know that it's happening today, and we know that.
Speaker 1: You know, when children couldn't get to school because of
Speaker 1: the lockdown, they were missing the only meal they had
Speaker 1: for the whole day. You know, very many children only
Speaker 1: have lunch and that's it. I'm a big supporter of
Speaker 1: the Salvation Army or mentioned earlier, and the Salvation Army
Speaker 1: will feed sixty thou people a day a day and
Speaker 1: it's more now and and all of these support of
Speaker 1: food banking, margate or whatever. It is a really really
Speaker 1: bad level. So um, yeah, And when you left, when
Speaker 1: you left? When did did you? Did you London at thirteen?
Speaker 1: Left school at thirteen, and I had to go back
Speaker 1: to school by law for lost four months from Christmas
Speaker 1: till May. Otherwise my mom social services would have been
Speaker 1: involved or whatever. And my mom my mom didn't mind
Speaker 1: if we didn't go to school. And I was brought
Speaker 1: up with absolutely no rules and I guess this might
Speaker 1: be slightly the gypsy side and things no rules whatsoever.
Speaker 1: We made our own rules up. If I didn't want
Speaker 1: to go to school, I didn't go to school. I
Speaker 1: don't want to brush my teeth, I didn't want to brush.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have sex, have sex as long as I
Speaker 1: was not going to get pregnant. All of these from
Speaker 1: the age of about thirteen fourteen, and and not going
Speaker 1: to school was because school was so depressing. It was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, I'll get there and they chat at me,
Speaker 1: or this would happen. All that would happen. I wasn't
Speaker 1: doing what I wanted to do, So the last few
Speaker 1: months when I went back, I just did art for
Speaker 1: four months more or less three days a week, and
Speaker 1: then left when I was fifteen, and then came to
Speaker 1: London the day I could leave school, that the first
Speaker 1: of May, I think it was. I just came straight
Speaker 1: to London with a bag to David Bowie albums and
Speaker 1: some clothes and stare. I stayed in all different places.
Speaker 1: I stayed in a school in Warren Street which was
Speaker 1: pretty educational, with quite a lot of well known they're
Speaker 1: quite well known people now, very successful people lived there,
Speaker 1: and I stayed with different friends different floors. Stayed in
Speaker 1: a cupboard in Clapham for quite some time. And and
Speaker 1: it's a real mystery how I never really got into
Speaker 1: trouble or but I was kind of sassy and sort
Speaker 1: of streetwise, so that saved me quite a bit. So
Speaker 1: I learned a lot and I grew up. But I
Speaker 1: was always a lot more mature from my age. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I just grew up very quickly. I
Speaker 1: had too and but I don't really have such big
Speaker 1: regrets over that because it wasn't it wasn't my fault,
Speaker 1: it wasn't my doing. Do you have memories of food
Speaker 1: in that poverty at that time in London when you
Speaker 1: first came, it's okay. So this is my only Scott
Speaker 1: memory of food at Warren Street. I was only fifteen
Speaker 1: or sixteen and I turned up and they were in
Speaker 1: the basement cooking there. A lot of them went to
Speaker 1: St Martin's in the Royal College of Art whatever, so
Speaker 1: it was a good influence in lots of ways. And
Speaker 1: I was so hungry and they said, you're hungry tracers.
Speaker 1: So I probably haven't eaten for about two days, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: And then they told me they were cooking dog and
Speaker 1: I believe them, so I wouldn't eat it. And that
Speaker 1: was one of my And when I bring this up
Speaker 1: but in a step, when I see any of them,
Speaker 1: they always yeah, it's not a good story. But that's
Speaker 1: my only real big story about food. I think parvary
Speaker 1: parvarty and food youth and food loneliness and food being
Speaker 1: the first into world. But you don't know where you're sleeping,
Speaker 1: what you're eating, you know, the lack of being taken
Speaker 1: care of is would make it. It's true because now
Speaker 1: I have this thing that i'll i'll work on, my
Speaker 1: war covered, and I have one in France and my
Speaker 1: house there and one in London, and my war cover
Speaker 1: is just full of like literally, if there was like
Speaker 1: a war, I've got enough food to keep me going
Speaker 1: in tins and tins of saldines and all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff and everything. And it just gives me a sense
Speaker 1: of security. And I really love going shopping for really
Speaker 1: nice food and putting it in the fridge and looking
Speaker 1: at it, and it makes me feel so safe and
Speaker 1: cozy and secure. And it's taken me a long time
Speaker 1: to realize that I had to hang up about it.
Speaker 1: I think probably only in the last few years that
Speaker 1: I realized how much it meant to me to that
Speaker 1: food makes you feel secure and come portable. And for
Speaker 1: a long time I didn't eat. I used to be
Speaker 1: so thin and everything and whatnot. I didn't care about it.
Speaker 1: I didn't care about food at all. For years and
Speaker 1: years and years. I was very um, sort of not
Speaker 1: anti food, but it just wasn't on my list of
Speaker 1: things as a priority for living. But now now it
Speaker 1: really is because because I understand about my strange relationship
Speaker 1: with it and food and art and food and creating,
Speaker 1: and you know, the the solitariness. I was thinking of
Speaker 1: an artist, you know, in the studio working and then
Speaker 1: um going out at night and partying and having food, drinking,
Speaker 1: being together with other artists. When you were in art school,
Speaker 1: was that something that you sort of where you exposed
Speaker 1: to the idea that you all were painting and working together.
Speaker 1: There was that hole? What was it like being now?
Speaker 1: When I when I was at art school, I worked.
Speaker 1: I used to get in wors getting late in the morning,
Speaker 1: getting about quarter to eleven, which I was. I went
Speaker 1: to Maidstone College of Art and the Royal College of Art.
Speaker 1: Did painting at the Royal College of Art. When I
Speaker 1: was at the Royal College of Art, I get in
Speaker 1: about quarter to eleven in the morning, and I'd stayed
Speaker 1: at ten o'clock every night, and I'd work at the
Speaker 1: weekends as well. I had no social life when I
Speaker 1: was at the Royal College of Art, none at all.
Speaker 1: Just worked every single day. So and but the thing
Speaker 1: about artists and restaurants is brilliant because then after I
Speaker 1: left art school years later when when I m I
Speaker 1: think one of the first things I did as soon
Speaker 1: as I started having got money was oysters, and I
Speaker 1: just I love oysters, and I all of my excess
Speaker 1: income was spent on oysters. Absolutely. However, anywhere everywhere I'd go,
Speaker 1: well like, I actually liked I actually really like rock oysters.
Speaker 1: So that was quite easy in Witstable in those days,
Speaker 1: and you get you get free oysters for seventy five
Speaker 1: or something. It was amazing. And um, I used to
Speaker 1: just try all different restaurants or different oysters, work out
Speaker 1: what I like, what I don't like. And I think
Speaker 1: my my biggest moment was I was on about a
Speaker 1: hundred a week oysters, hundred oysters, and I used to
Speaker 1: cycle everywhere, and I was so fit and I was
Speaker 1: just lean on, sort of like a ballerine. I just
Speaker 1: sind youw muscle and just like oyster diet, I was
Speaker 1: just like on fire. It was fantastic. Do you have
Speaker 1: a house in the south of France? What is what
Speaker 1: is eating like there? Did you choose it? Also because
Speaker 1: it was on the Mediterranean, I chose it by default,
Speaker 1: but yes, it is on the Mediterranean, and I'm on
Speaker 1: the top of a hill. On top of a hill,
Speaker 1: looking at I have a sort of two hundred and
Speaker 1: maybe two hundred and sixty degree of the sea. It's
Speaker 1: just behind me that I can't see the sea, and
Speaker 1: it is really beautiful. And it's in the middle of
Speaker 1: a nate you reserve. I don't have any neighbors, and
Speaker 1: it's a sort of twenty five minute drive to the
Speaker 1: little town to buy food and everything. So what I
Speaker 1: tend to do is do one shop in a week
Speaker 1: and that's it. And then I have my war cupboard.
Speaker 1: And my favorite cooking is when I get down and
Speaker 1: I've got a vegetable garden as well, really Britute vegetable garden,
Speaker 1: and I get down to the real nitty gritty and
Speaker 1: I have to be really inventive with what I cook.
Speaker 1: I really love it and it's exciting and it's funny
Speaker 1: with what I come up with and everything. And and
Speaker 1: I just cook for myself there as well, because there's
Speaker 1: no there's no restaurants whenywhere to eat near me, and
Speaker 1: I love to produce there do you go and you
Speaker 1: go around vegetables. I don't know if you if you
Speaker 1: do want to talk about this, but we've had quite
Speaker 1: a to multuous time, but probably nobody, certainly in this room,
Speaker 1: certainly that mean more than you with your illness. And
Speaker 1: I think your illness must have affected the way you
Speaker 1: eat because it was to do with your digestive system,
Speaker 1: isn't it? And so did you did you have to
Speaker 1: start eating when you were ill? Or because actually it's
Speaker 1: not my digestive system, it's my bladder, okay, so different bag.
Speaker 1: And and yes, it has affected the way that I
Speaker 1: eat because I can't have I still can't couldn't have
Speaker 1: I can't have a full bow. I can't be because
Speaker 1: it affects the stormer and everything. And my diets completely
Speaker 1: changed since I was ill, which is quite quite strange.
Speaker 1: It's like totally, I mean totally changed. To tell me,
Speaker 1: what do you I am vast amounts of fish, vast
Speaker 1: amounts of apples, vast amounts of fruit all day long.
Speaker 1: I am a lot of which is not supposed to
Speaker 1: be good for me. By eat a lot of cold food,
Speaker 1: and I don't know why, much more than hot food.
Speaker 1: I am a lot more lemon all the time because
Speaker 1: they alkaline. I am my diet and it's not conscious
Speaker 1: thing either. It's really sub I haven't even tried. I'm
Speaker 1: not even thinking about it. It's just what's happened. It's strange.
Speaker 1: So you haven't been directed by doctors of what you can.
Speaker 1: I eat quite healthily. So they when you're when you're
Speaker 1: coming out of hospitals that you see nutritions and they
Speaker 1: tell you this, and they tell you that. But I'm
Speaker 1: kind of quite forward thinking on good food. So when
Speaker 1: I eat something bad, it's because I really want to.
Speaker 1: And when you there are so many reasons we eat.
Speaker 1: There isn't There are reasons we eat because we're hungry,
Speaker 1: or eat because we're in a beautiful place and we
Speaker 1: want to celebrate, or we eat because we are feeling
Speaker 1: a certain way. We need comfort. If you needed food,
Speaker 1: if you needed it for comfort, is there a food
Speaker 1: that you might reach for and be totally apples? Apples, apples.
Speaker 1: I eat probably about six D eight apples a day
Speaker 1: a day, apples. I couldn't live without apples. What kind
Speaker 1: I like? I've forgotten what they called it. Those pink
Speaker 1: ones and they're kind of sweet, pink lady. Yes, I
Speaker 1: absolutely loved them. I washed them, put them on the
Speaker 1: bread board, and I get the knife and I don't
Speaker 1: cut them equally. I just slice all bits off till
Speaker 1: I gets the course. So it's all different shapes. And
Speaker 1: maybe I take three of them, and I'm like a
Speaker 1: big pile on a very beautiful blue Delf plate. And
Speaker 1: then I sit anywhere and just slowly eat three apples
Speaker 1: at a time that are all different bits, shapes and pieces,
Speaker 1: and it makes me feel so good. That's what we
Speaker 1: want you to feel, Drecy, we want you to feel good.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you. To visit the online shop of
Speaker 1: the River Cafe, go to shop the River Cafe dot
Speaker 1: co dot uk. River Cafe Table four is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.