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Speaker 1: I'm often asked who was the inspiration for Ruthie's Table
Speaker 1: four and the answer is easy. It all began with
Speaker 1: Ian McKellen. For some years, Richard and I invited a
Speaker 1: collection of actors to give performances in our home. On
Speaker 1: his night, Ian gave a soliloquy from King Lear, sang
Speaker 1: a beautiful song by Sondheim, shared an anecdote about Christmas pantomimes,
Speaker 1: and read a poem by Orden. For the surprise finale,
Speaker 1: he sat on a stool with the River Cafe cookbook
Speaker 1: and read the recipe for Rebelita, a traditional Tuscan soup
Speaker 1: compelling as any story, poem, sonnet or song. We were
Speaker 1: all spellbound. Fifteen years later and an idea for a
Speaker 1: podcast was born. In is known to everyone as different
Speaker 1: characters Macbeth, king Lear, Hamlet, Gandolf. I know him as
Speaker 1: my inspiration and also as my friend. I have so
Speaker 1: many happy memories of Ian Sunday lunches at the River Cafe,
Speaker 1: going to Paris together, and on my birthday one year,
Speaker 1: he even sang my favorite Coporter song, You're the Top.
Speaker 2: I a bride proper confined those rondapots, but it bas
Speaker 2: a hard bottom. Oh that's the sweetest thing I ever heard.
Speaker 1: It's true, it's true. Do you remember those nights? And
Speaker 1: I have a photograph of you with the cookbook reading
Speaker 1: it on the steps. I think, right, yes.
Speaker 2: What I've been inspired by those experience is to do
Speaker 2: something similar here what is that? And above the room
Speaker 2: above where we are now, I can get in seventy
Speaker 2: chairs and I put them on tears so that everyone
Speaker 2: gets a good view, and I got a very nice piano.
Speaker 2: The professionals like to come and play undress. Schiff has
Speaker 2: played in my room upstairs. Joshua Bell comes and plays
Speaker 2: the violin. Just the fundraisers for various things. But I
Speaker 2: don't think I would have done it if I hadn't
Speaker 2: seen that you could turn your home into a concert
Speaker 2: all And it's.
Speaker 1: The intimacy of performance is something special.
Speaker 2: When you can hear the pennis breathing and hear their
Speaker 2: fingers or their nails on the on the keyboard, it's wonderful.
Speaker 1: So what we do is that we ask our guests
Speaker 1: to read a recipe from one of our books. But
Speaker 1: you've chosen, oh, that's fine. I can take it and
Speaker 1: I might learn something because the recipe you're reading is
Speaker 1: very British, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I'm not a cook, but here we are. This is
Speaker 2: Queen of Puddings and it was what my mother used
Speaker 2: to make. The ingredients for this are two ounces, and
Speaker 2: I like aunces rather than drums. I don't understand graunds.
Speaker 2: So two ounces of soft white breadcrumbs, two eggs, two
Speaker 2: ounces of caster sugar, jam, trances of stultanas. I don't
Speaker 2: put sultans in. Ten fluid ounces of milk, an ounce
Speaker 2: of butter, bit of grated rind of a lemon, and
Speaker 2: that's it. It says here. You boil the milk with
Speaker 2: the butter, and you pour on the bread crumbs, and
Speaker 2: you add the sugar and the rind, and you stir thoroughly.
Speaker 2: You beat the egg yolks and you beat each into
Speaker 2: buttered pie dish, and you refrigerate for forty minutes. I
Speaker 2: don't suppose I'd do that. Then you bake it at
Speaker 2: a level four and gas middle shelf until delicately springy.
Speaker 2: I do like that in recipes when there's something really
Speaker 2: homely means what it says, you whip the egg whites
Speaker 2: very stiffly. That's to make a meringue. You put the
Speaker 2: jam on top of the bread crumbs, you pipe or
Speaker 2: fork the egg whites over the top, and you bake
Speaker 2: in the oven for ten minutes. Couldn't be easier, and
Speaker 2: it's absolutely delicious. But it was something you could manage
Speaker 2: during the war.
Speaker 1: Well, let's talk about that. Because you were born in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty nine, I was just before the war in
Speaker 1: Lancas in Lancashire, do you have a first food memory.
Speaker 1: Do you remember?
Speaker 2: Well, we were living in Wigan, which is in Lancashire,
Speaker 2: a coal mining town. The big towns nearby like Manchester
Speaker 2: and Liverpool were bombed regularly and the only bombs we
Speaker 2: ever saw were there was very few that were discarded
Speaker 2: before the Germans flew back east, so there were only
Speaker 2: two bombs in the whole of the war in Wigan.
Speaker 2: So safe it was it that we had evacuee. We
Speaker 2: had a family.
Speaker 1: It was considered a safe place to take children.
Speaker 2: Yes, and how my mother managed I don't know, suddenly
Speaker 2: having to share the tiny kitchen with another woman who
Speaker 2: had two children. How we all fitted into our house.
Speaker 1: I don't know what was the house like to describe
Speaker 1: your house, It had.
Speaker 2: Four bedrooms, but it was a semi detached house in
Speaker 2: the street and near the center of Wigan, with a
Speaker 2: lovely aspect in both front over the park and at
Speaker 2: the back over the cricket club. Bit squeezed inside. I suppose, well,
Speaker 2: we all shared beds. I can't really remember.
Speaker 1: But food, do you remember the kitchen?
Speaker 2: We asked the kitchen was that we had a fire
Speaker 2: which heated the oven, no fridge of course, there was
Speaker 2: a little little room which we called the pantry, which
Speaker 2: was relatively cool.
Speaker 1: But this would be if you were born in thirty nine,
Speaker 1: so you're aware your memories of food in your house
Speaker 1: and the kitchen. You would have been about four or five,
Speaker 1: which was about nineteen forty four forty five.
Speaker 2: I was very aware of the rationing.
Speaker 1: What was it like?
Speaker 2: My mother liked to bake. In order to bake, you
Speaker 2: needed sugar, you needed fat, and the rationing was two
Speaker 2: ounces of butter a week per person and four ounces
Speaker 2: of margarine and one egg. Now there was dried egg
Speaker 2: which was the equivalent of three eggs. You had that
Speaker 2: for a week, so she could bake with that sugar. Again,
Speaker 2: severely irrations and the way we got round things that's
Speaker 2: probably illegal. We used to swap our rations for tea
Speaker 2: and coffee which we didn't drink, and took from those
Speaker 2: people who desperately needed that fix sugar or fat. And
Speaker 2: it was always my job. On a Saturday, when the
Speaker 2: groceries arrived, I would take half a pound of butter,
Speaker 2: which was for four of us double that amount of margarine,
Speaker 2: put it in a big bowl, take the top off
Speaker 2: the milk that was always cream on top of them
Speaker 2: and put those three bits of fat together and in
Speaker 2: front of the fire, warmed it and beat it until
Speaker 2: it was a paste butter.
Speaker 1: The butter in mind, that was the.
Speaker 2: Butter for the week, and it always ran out on
Speaker 2: a Thursday.
Speaker 1: If your mother would make would she bake, would say, okay, children,
Speaker 1: we're not having butter on toast. We're going to save
Speaker 1: the butter. We're not going to fry something in butter.
Speaker 1: We're going to save it for the cake.
Speaker 2: Butter.
Speaker 1: Yes, And that went to what year was that.
Speaker 2: Right through the wall. But I don't ever remember being hungry.
Speaker 1: You weren't hungry, or a sense of denial.
Speaker 2: And there was always a pudding.
Speaker 1: There was. So you were living in a house with
Speaker 1: your mother, your father, and your sister and yourself. So
Speaker 1: there were four of you.
Speaker 2: There are four of us, and then three arrived mother
Speaker 2: and two children. They were just with us for a year.
Speaker 2: I don't remember any arguments. I remember the lad teaching
Speaker 2: me how to tie my shoelaces. There was a pattern
Speaker 2: of life like washing was always done on a Monday.
Speaker 2: Tuesday was ironing.
Speaker 1: Mother was cooking all yeah, your mother was cooking.
Speaker 2: She was a cook. I don't remember my father ever
Speaker 2: cooking anything apart from and you.
Speaker 1: Did you go in the kitchen? Would you say the
Speaker 1: whole time?
Speaker 2: Can I have the bowl? Can I have the bowl?
Speaker 2: And there was a pattern with the food there because
Speaker 2: we went to church on Sunday and she didn't want
Speaker 2: to cook on a Sunday. We always had a roast,
Speaker 2: but we had it on a Saturday, so that was
Speaker 2: our big meal of the of the week. On Sunday
Speaker 2: we would have the cold meat. And on Monday always
Speaker 2: we had the minced meat and turned into shepherd's pie.
Speaker 2: And then we got to get through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
Speaker 2: and that's when it would be baked beans on toast
Speaker 2: as the main meal, which we called the tea. We
Speaker 2: might manage a salad with a bit of ham, maybe
Speaker 2: two ounces a week. And there was probably a Friday
Speaker 2: or two where we didn't have quite enough to eat,
Speaker 2: but I didn't really notice that.
Speaker 1: Was it a solitary life? Did you feel that you
Speaker 1: had friend Your mother had friends and you had friends
Speaker 1: and people. Oh, yes, she was a very social You
Speaker 1: said that you enjoyed being with people, and so they
Speaker 1: were all those friends. Was your father a preacher.
Speaker 2: He was a lay preacher. So we were very We
Speaker 2: were very Christian.
Speaker 1: You grew up in a house that loved culture as well.
Speaker 1: That there was piano music, there was, you know, we
Speaker 1: did think of it as culture.
Speaker 2: We thought of it as a lovely pastime. Dad played
Speaker 2: the piano and my sister learned the piano. I learned
Speaker 2: the piano for a bit. Visitors, always dropping by, close friends,
Speaker 2: everything within walking distance, you know, no car bikes we
Speaker 2: had and once a year or twice a year, close
Speaker 2: together in the autumn, we'd go BlackBerry. That was a
Speaker 2: great thrill. You could get food for free off the bushes.
Speaker 1: Stra did your mother ever make summer pudding with the
Speaker 1: black currants?
Speaker 2: Summer pudding? I love soup because all you needed in
Speaker 2: that was a bit of sugar and you could probably
Speaker 2: use saccharin and some bread crumbs.
Speaker 1: Make it in the river cafe. You have to come.
Speaker 1: We make it with currants raspberries. Now this is not
Speaker 1: a rationing summer pudding, but in Valpolicella, and we cook
Speaker 1: it the berries and the currants down, and then we
Speaker 1: line a beautiful bowl with bread slices of bread, and
Speaker 1: then you put the fruit in and then you close
Speaker 1: it with the bread and you press it down and
Speaker 1: then we leave it and then you demold it, and
Speaker 1: it is one of my favorite. The British do a
Speaker 1: lot of puddings with bread, don't they The one the
Speaker 1: recipe you they like using up the bread.
Speaker 2: But you know, there was every thing was rationed. I
Speaker 2: can remember the first banana.
Speaker 1: When was that.
Speaker 2: That'd been about nineteen forty four.
Speaker 1: Where were you?
Speaker 2: I was at home and missus Baron next door came
Speaker 2: in and she said, I've got something to show you,
Speaker 2: a banana. When i'd heard about bananas, I knew they
Speaker 2: weren't straight. And she came in with this four inch
Speaker 2: banana and we were all allowed to hold it and
Speaker 2: imagine what it might be like inside, and then it
Speaker 2: was explained that you peeled up. There was the banana.
Speaker 2: Missus Baron mashed it up, and the five kids, Jeane
Speaker 2: and I and the three next door shared a banana sandwich.
Speaker 2: It was probably quite a healthy diet.
Speaker 1: Well, they say that you didn't have sugar, you didn't
Speaker 1: your teeth, you didn't have sweets, and you had them.
Speaker 1: People weren't overweight.
Speaker 2: You would see sometimes rolling out of a pub. We
Speaker 2: never went public entrink, some woman with a huge ass,
Speaker 2: and I was riveted by it. I would follow them
Speaker 2: down the street. I've never seen anything like. No, you're right.
Speaker 2: We were all things, but I suppose it's healthy. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it was very exciting school. We went to school and
Speaker 2: food parcels arrived from North America think I think Canada,
Speaker 2: And I remember bringing back I couldn't believe it, a
Speaker 2: huge two pound bag of cocoa powder, and presented it
Speaker 2: to my mother. I loved her so much.
Speaker 1: What was she like here?
Speaker 2: Ah, she was beauty, she was pretty, nature, was very gentle.
Speaker 2: She had a rather flamboyant younger sister who she was
Speaker 2: the one who made the jokes. But it was my
Speaker 2: mother who was all was laughing. But she loved going
Speaker 2: to the theater and so did that. And she did
Speaker 2: a little bit of acting when she was a kid
Speaker 2: in church socials and so on. And I suppose she
Speaker 2: was crazy about me, her little boy. Long after the war,
Speaker 2: when we'd moved from Wigan to Bolton, she was only
Speaker 2: forty four and got breast cats. I wasn't told I was.
Speaker 2: I was eleven or twelve, and I went off on
Speaker 2: a school camp for a couple of weeks and she
Speaker 2: was by that time sleeping downstairs. She couldn't manage to
Speaker 2: walk upstead. And while I was away she died. And
Speaker 2: I've not got over it yet. So when she died,
Speaker 2: I was berefed, really, and I didn't know I was berefed.
Speaker 2: And my father very generous, not just for his own sake.
Speaker 2: He remarried and I think party to give me a mother.
Speaker 2: And my stepmother, Gladys, was very good at that job
Speaker 2: and the reasonable cook herself. What was she like? She
Speaker 2: was short, she was from Liverpool, she'd been a secretary
Speaker 2: I think all her life, and in her early forties
Speaker 2: finally married handsome Dennis McCallum.
Speaker 1: Every year, The River Cafe curates holiday gift boxes filled
Speaker 1: with Italian ingredients. Are extra virgin olive oil bottled exclusively
Speaker 1: for the River Cafe, Paula Petrelli, tomatoes from Pulia, Tuscan
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Speaker 1: the River Cafe, dout co UK or call me an seven. Sorry, Okay, thanks.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the rationing and the discipline and
Speaker 1: the lack of food has stayed with you all your life?
Speaker 1: Do you still think about wastage or about excess?
Speaker 2: Oh? I saw. Well. One way in which is certainly
Speaker 2: effected my life is my parents were teetotal. They'd taken
Speaker 2: the pledge, which is what people did in the twenties,
Speaker 2: swore off drink and we didn't drink tea or coffee,
Speaker 2: so the only thing we drank was water out of
Speaker 2: the tap, but in life water and I never developed
Speaker 2: a taste for alcohol. And three years ago all was
Speaker 2: at four and now I stopped drinking alcohol altogether, So
Speaker 2: that really stayed with me, I do. I was deeply
Speaker 2: shocked when I first went to America and saw the
Speaker 2: size of portions of people at the food will be
Speaker 2: put on your plate as a kid, and you will
Speaker 2: eat it whether you enjoy it or not. It's not
Speaker 2: the point. You must finish everything. Think of the starving
Speaker 2: children in China, we were told. And the day I
Speaker 2: knew I was an adult was when I went to
Speaker 2: Cambridge and on the first day in my little gown,
Speaker 2: sat with other boys in the dining hall and was
Speaker 2: waited on by people, and we had venice venison goodness. Say, now,
Speaker 2: this is way after the war, and cabbage. I think
Speaker 2: it was on the side, and I had my way
Speaker 2: through the venice and I didn't much like it, and
Speaker 2: I decided I wouldn't finish the cabbage, and I left
Speaker 2: it on the table on the plate. I'd never until
Speaker 2: I was the age eighteen left anything on my plate,
Speaker 2: and I knew away from home i'd done that, and
Speaker 2: that I was now an adult. I apparently spoke in
Speaker 2: a funny way. I mean, I was mocked for my accent.
Speaker 1: What's the accent?
Speaker 2: Like? What was it? Something like this? Really it would
Speaker 2: be a little bit broader than I allow myself to be.
Speaker 2: But I could never say the word one. I always
Speaker 2: said one one. Well, horrible little boys from public school
Speaker 2: would point at me and mock me, and so I
Speaker 2: tried to speak like they did, rather posh and didn't succeed.
Speaker 2: Of late, I've let my own accent come back and
Speaker 2: feel much happier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so at Cambridge you were exposed to vedicine
Speaker 1: and meals in the college, but you also did you
Speaker 1: have enough money to go to restaurants in Cambridge? Would
Speaker 1: you go out with your friends to a pub and
Speaker 1: eat well?
Speaker 2: What the great discovery at Cambridge was the Indian restaurant
Speaker 2: And I used to have egg curry was half a
Speaker 2: hard boiled egg with a curry delicious, So that that's
Speaker 2: the first time I really went to have as an
Speaker 2: adult and independent.
Speaker 1: So you were acting in Cambridge, we were there, Jacoby
Speaker 1: and Camber.
Speaker 2: I Swift, a lot, a lot of people who went
Speaker 2: into the businesses. We spent those of us who are
Speaker 2: really keen spent all our time acting rather than studying.
Speaker 2: I never learned how to be a good student.
Speaker 1: What were you studying? What was the course? You went into?
Speaker 2: English literature?
Speaker 1: And so we were able to direct? Did you act?
Speaker 2: Did you didn't direct?
Speaker 1: Do you have any education in acting? Did you have none?
Speaker 2: I've just done at school. Yes. Before I went to
Speaker 2: Cambridge I played him with the fifth Prince hal in
Speaker 2: the earlier and in the fourth I played girls part.
Speaker 2: We also had at miniature theater. It was called just
Speaker 2: down the road from the school, the theater that held
Speaker 2: about fifty audience members and we did constant programs of
Speaker 2: one act place all the time, and if you did
Speaker 2: that you were allowed to miss.
Speaker 1: Pt And what was it like when you left Cambridge
Speaker 1: came you went? Did you have a domestic situation where
Speaker 1: you had to cook for yourself?
Speaker 2: Well? Yes, I went straight off and got a job
Speaker 2: in a repertory company. Most major cities had a repertory company,
Speaker 2: the big group of actors who stayed together for a year.
Speaker 2: It did a different play every two weeks or three weeks.
Speaker 2: And Coventry was such a place at the Belgrade Theater
Speaker 2: in company and I was in that company. It was
Speaker 2: all very post war, an optimistic. Coventry had been appalling
Speaker 2: the bomb, of course, but the center of the town
Speaker 2: rebuilt with a theater, a modern theater with little flats attached,
Speaker 2: and I paid half my weekly salary to pay for
Speaker 2: this flat. Just across the car park was the Hole
Speaker 2: in the Wall pub, which is about now in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four to close down forever more. But big part
Speaker 2: of our lives. We always went there after the show
Speaker 2: you did, and we were allowed to stay there after
Speaker 2: hours and drink with the policeman.
Speaker 1: Is that something you still do now? Do you like
Speaker 1: to go after a performance?
Speaker 2: Do you go out with friends, and now I don't
Speaker 2: go out to pubs because I don't drink.
Speaker 1: So now, but do you go to restaurants after night theater?
Speaker 2: Yes, I do, but not as a matter of course. No,
Speaker 2: I'm happy to get back home and make myself a sandwich,
Speaker 2: so I'd probably at things on toast all the time.
Speaker 2: And we we couldn't afford to go to a restaurant.
Speaker 1: You didn't go to any local restaurants, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: yeah no.
Speaker 2: But when I first came to live in London in
Speaker 2: ninety six six four, in the King's Road, the unfashionable
Speaker 2: end in those days, near World's End, I was living
Speaker 2: with some friends, sharing flat with three or four other people,
Speaker 2: and we did sometimes go out to a restaurant. Yes,
Speaker 2: it was a thrill, felt terribly grown up.
Speaker 1: And of course at that time being gay was still illegal,
Speaker 1: wasn't it.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, oh yes. I went right through Cambridge and
Speaker 2: right through my twenties in a country where you could
Speaker 2: be imprisoned for making love, but because it was just
Speaker 2: what it was, you didn't. I lived with my boyfriend
Speaker 2: in our own flat in London, and he was a
Speaker 2: good cook, and that's when I began to start cooking properly,
Speaker 2: as long as my job to do the roast easy,
Speaker 2: isn't it a roast? But we lived very perfectly openly.
Speaker 2: Everybody knew we lived together. We always went out together.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't hold hands, of course in public, that would
Speaker 2: be to draw attention. I didn't talk to the family
Speaker 2: about being gay, but I didn't feel that I was
Speaker 2: living a repressed life. I had to rather be taught that.
Speaker 2: It was only when the government wanted to pass a
Speaker 2: law to restrict how much schools could discuss homosexuality that
Speaker 2: I realized that I was being treated by the law
Speaker 2: as a second class citizen, and this particularly law was
Speaker 2: going to make it worse. That I got annoyed and
Speaker 2: angry and joined in the fight to stop Section twenty eight,
Speaker 2: and then and then the other laws that already existed.
Speaker 1: And then stonewall Yes.
Speaker 2: Which we did through the lobby group Stonewall that.
Speaker 1: Brought you into an engaged with your success as an
Speaker 1: actor and being traveling. Did you travel to other countries?
Speaker 1: Did you arrive in France or Italy or Germany? And
Speaker 1: think this is also completely as.
Speaker 2: Far as food is concerned, food, food.
Speaker 1: Or culture or just being in a foreign country. What
Speaker 1: did that make you?
Speaker 2: Yes, think again, in my childhood, a visit abroad was
Speaker 2: a very unusual thing.
Speaker 1: Did you go abroad with your parents?
Speaker 2: My mother never left the country. My father, who liked
Speaker 2: walking and climbing mountains, was a bit more adventurous, and
Speaker 2: he did go abroad during my childhood to Germany, where
Speaker 2: we had connections with German Christians who'd corresponded with during
Speaker 2: the war. And in nineteen fifty four I went to
Speaker 2: Germany with my dad and I had my first glass
Speaker 2: of wine on sailing up the Rhine.
Speaker 1: Disgusting.
Speaker 2: It was white wine. It was just like sour. It
Speaker 2: was so sour. Perhaps it was sour, Perhaps it was
Speaker 2: a bit of old cheap wine.
Speaker 1: But now, when you travel for work or when you travel,
Speaker 1: do you enjoy thinking about a different culture of food?
Speaker 1: You know, if you go to Italy, where do you go?
Speaker 2: You go to France and it's all meat, isn't it?
Speaker 2: And I don't eat meat except occasional pork pie, occasional sausage.
Speaker 1: That's what Richard Air said. I asked Richard Air about you,
Speaker 1: and he said he's a vegetarian, but a few lapses everyone.
Speaker 2: But I'm not a strict vegetarian. It's just I don't
Speaker 2: have a taste for meat, so I don't feel guilty
Speaker 2: when I have a little sausage. Christmas is all the
Speaker 2: trimmings I like, I don't like. I don't want the take.
Speaker 1: All those feasts in Shakespeare tell me the Clays with
Speaker 1: a great feasts you Well, it's a joke.
Speaker 2: That the actors in the old days, working these regional companies,
Speaker 2: not being paid enough money or getting enough to eat,
Speaker 2: would say, we're doing check off. There's a practical pork
Speaker 2: high in the third act, so stage management will provide
Speaker 2: them that you could actually eat free, free food. So
Speaker 2: that's the eating that I remember as check off, rather
Speaker 2: than Macbeth, where there's a feast going on. But I
Speaker 2: don't think macbeths in a fit state looking at the
Speaker 2: ghost of a man who's killed to be bothered about
Speaker 2: what's on the table.
Speaker 1: If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you
Speaker 1: please make sure to rate and review the podcast on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thank you tell me about your movie the critic.
Speaker 2: It's written by Patrick Marber, who's a wonderful playwriter and
Speaker 2: screenplay writer. And he rather alluringly he said to me
Speaker 2: when he sent the script, this is the best part
Speaker 2: I've ever written, but you thought, oh, I better play
Speaker 2: it before somebody else gets hold of it. And it's
Speaker 2: about a critic in the nineteen thirties. It's all set
Speaker 2: in that dreadful decade. Really, when fascism is around the corner,
Speaker 2: I won't know, it's on the streets. And my character
Speaker 2: is a critic, major drama critic, who's gay, living at
Speaker 2: a time and it was absolutely illegal to be gay.
Speaker 2: It's when he is in danger of losing his job
Speaker 2: that his true nature emerges and he turns into a
Speaker 2: rather a raw school would be too milder term monstrous behavior.
Speaker 2: It's a thriller, I suppose, but people behaving very badly
Speaker 2: to each other, but you understand why they're doing it.
Speaker 1: What about when you went to New Zealand, when you
Speaker 1: did Lord of the Rings? What was that?
Speaker 2: Oh? Now, Lord of the Rings refilmed nearly twenty five
Speaker 2: years ago in New Zealand. And I had no great
Speaker 2: anticipation that New Zealand would be a source of exciting food,
Speaker 2: but things were beginning to change in New Zealand, and
Speaker 2: so there was a new sort of cuisine arriving fish
Speaker 2: often and the Jacksons, Peter Jackson and his wife partner
Speaker 2: were very alert to providing good food and I looked
Speaker 2: forward to the lunches there every day. They were wonderful.
Speaker 2: It was a choice of food and the standard of
Speaker 2: cooking was amazing, very good puddings.
Speaker 1: A lot of directors say they don't like to stop
Speaker 1: for lunch. What do you feel about it?
Speaker 2: Well, they haven't had to get up as early as
Speaker 2: the actors to go to make up and get to
Speaker 2: the vacation. The best place to film is in Italy,
Speaker 2: where everything stops at noon and you take off three hours,
Speaker 2: three hours to eat and have a rest, and then
Speaker 2: go back and work till the evening. Food's terribly important
Speaker 2: on the film, as it is with a fighting army.
Speaker 1: And this is my last question. After a really interesting
Speaker 1: and beautiful conversation about your life and your childhood and
Speaker 1: your mother and how food connected you through those experiences.
Speaker 1: I think I'd like to know when you need food,
Speaker 1: not because you're hungry or because you're sharing, but you
Speaker 1: want a sense of comfort. Is there something that you
Speaker 1: would go to Yes.
Speaker 2: Two things both involved toast, hot buttered toast, a smear
Speaker 2: of marmite, oh, fresh sliced tomatoes, salt pepper, mayonnaise, mayonnaise
Speaker 2: on top of the tomatoes. Do you think that's the
Speaker 2: wrong thing to do.
Speaker 1: As an American? The one thing I have not I've
Speaker 1: learned very much about your country, and I two things
Speaker 1: actually I don't really understand. One is cricket and the
Speaker 1: other is more mite. You don't get marmite, I'm not
Speaker 1: really Richard did. Richard loved marmite, but I not.
Speaker 2: You don't.
Speaker 1: But the mayonnaise I've never heard. I know about the
Speaker 1: butter and the marmite and the tomatoes. But I'm sitting
Speaker 1: here with three other British.
Speaker 2: I promise we should shoot it just livens up the
Speaker 2: taste buds. But and the textures are interesting. And the
Speaker 2: other would be hot buttered toast with scrambled eggs. It's
Speaker 2: how glad. It's my stepmother made. My mother always used
Speaker 2: to do scrambled eggs if we were likely enough to
Speaker 2: have them, putting some butter and a drop of milk
Speaker 2: in the pan and getting that melted before adding the
Speaker 2: already whisked egg and even then the eggs would sometimes
Speaker 2: separate at the end and you were left with a
Speaker 2: lot of curd and horrible. Dad is his recipe from
Speaker 2: her mother was you put everything in the pan straight away.
Speaker 2: So in you go with a couple of eggs, if
Speaker 2: it's one person, a nice dollop of salted butter, some pepper,
Speaker 2: a drop of milk or cream. Put it on a
Speaker 2: low heat and just keep stirring and it'll start making
Speaker 2: stop sigidifying, and you can pick the exact moment when
Speaker 2: it's ready and put it on the hot buttered toast
Speaker 2: which you've got waiting. It feels nutritious. It reminds me
Speaker 2: of my childhood when scrambled eggs was a real treat
Speaker 2: and it's very easy to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll make it. Well, listeners, let's listen to this
Speaker 1: very easy recipe. We've had in McKellen to ourselves. We've
Speaker 1: had stories to listen to, and now we have two recipes.
Speaker 1: So it's been a lucky day. But most of all,
Speaker 1: it's being with you I and hearing your stories.
Speaker 2: It's lovely to see you and I should never forget
Speaker 2: going with you and Richard to Paris. Oh, you took
Speaker 2: me there. He was having an exhibition and his pompey
Speaker 2: Do Center. And when he arrived there and walked into
Speaker 2: the exhibition space, and there were a lot of Tyro
Speaker 2: architects that they couldn't believe the great man was there
Speaker 2: in person, and what a star he was, and he
Speaker 2: loved you really, and I know that he was so handsome.
Speaker 2: And if you hadn't already got.
Speaker 1: I was watching it. Thank you, Ian, It's lovely, lovely
Speaker 1: to