Speaker 1: Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. A few months ago,
Speaker 1: I walked into a very busy River Cafe lunch to
Speaker 1: be greeted by a buzz from the young waiters and
Speaker 1: chefs working here. They were incredibly excited. Ruthie, Ruthie, they said,
Speaker 1: Rag and bone Man is on table four. Why don't
Speaker 1: you ask him to be on your podcast? I personally
Speaker 1: have a rule not to interrupt anyone's lunch, much less
Speaker 1: Britain's most successful and brilliant blue singer. But this time
Speaker 1: I broke that rule, and here we are today on
Speaker 1: a spring evening in the River Cafe garden, about to
Speaker 1: get to know each other. I am incredibly excited. Alms Sunshine,
Speaker 1: my own sunshine. You made me have me. Skis are
Speaker 1: a great you know, dear love you Shin. Do you
Speaker 1: want to come on tour? Thank you? Okay? Would you
Speaker 1: like to read your recipe? What recipe are you going
Speaker 1: to read? I'm going to read raspberries with Ricotta. I
Speaker 1: was going to try and do my best radio voice
Speaker 1: or like phone voice like my mom used to do.
Speaker 1: Any voice you like, you can sing it, I can
Speaker 1: do my best. This is a delicious summer dessert. We
Speaker 1: only make it when the raspberries are ripe. You will
Speaker 1: need five fifty grams of fresh raspberries, two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty grams of buffalo ricotta, one a mouthia lemon, four
Speaker 1: tablespoons of caster sugar. Finally, grate the lemon pill and
Speaker 1: mix with the sugar. Leave for a while to allow
Speaker 1: the flavors to combine and the sugar to be absorbed.
Speaker 1: Scatter the raspberries on a large plate, Turn the rocotto
Speaker 1: out very carefully, and then slice it as finely as possible.
Speaker 1: Place rocotto slices delicately over the raspberries and sprinkle with
Speaker 1: the lemon and the sugar. My mom would be proud
Speaker 1: of me, that she'd be fair of you. Oh, my
Speaker 1: mom was fantastic. She's an amazing woman. I grew up
Speaker 1: in a single parent household, just my mom, me and
Speaker 1: my sister. And I was lucky with my mom growing
Speaker 1: up because actually my mom and my dad because we
Speaker 1: my mom didn't have much money. You know, my mom
Speaker 1: was quite often on benefits and stuff, but we always
Speaker 1: got buy with decent food. You know, one pot kicking
Speaker 1: a lot of the time. But my mom was always
Speaker 1: good with flavor. And I learned that super young. I
Speaker 1: was maybe like ten or eleven when I started kicking myself.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what she would make? My favorite thing
Speaker 1: was always muscles and just make a huge, huge point
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about huge, like you know, like the big,
Speaker 1: big saucepans, lots of garlic, lots of wine, sometimes cream
Speaker 1: if we had it, but and and you know, loads
Speaker 1: of bread. Did your mother worked did she? Did? She have?
Speaker 1: Not really, because my sister's down syndrome, so that sort
Speaker 1: of meant that she most of the time, you know,
Speaker 1: didn't work much. It was it was at home all
Speaker 1: the time, looking after me and my sister. But what
Speaker 1: was the age difference between We're only a year and
Speaker 1: a half apart, and you said that you started cooking
Speaker 1: when you were I think we guess If my mom
Speaker 1: was busy and we wanted to eat or we were hungry,
Speaker 1: I was told to just you know, either you eat
Speaker 1: what's there, or you'll make something. And I think I
Speaker 1: watched my mom cook a few times. I watched my
Speaker 1: grandma cook, so I think I had a fairly good
Speaker 1: understanding of how things were met A taste or it
Speaker 1: just was trial and error and I was allowed to
Speaker 1: explore whatever. You didn't have fear of lighting the fire
Speaker 1: or those crappy electric cookers with a spiral hobs, you know,
Speaker 1: like that, the properly eighties eighties ones. And so you
Speaker 1: were cooking for your sister. Did she appreciate the food
Speaker 1: that you could? Oh? Yeah, yeah sure. I mean now
Speaker 1: she's got older, she cooked a little bit. She comes
Speaker 1: around to my house and and tries cooking a few things.
Speaker 1: But I think I just wanted to look after it, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that also. You know, young men who have
Speaker 1: lived in a single parent family know how to take
Speaker 1: care of themselves and people around them much more. And
Speaker 1: I think that gives you something, yeah, very special. I
Speaker 1: had a friend who say she only wanted Boyfriends of
Speaker 1: single parents do so much more domestically, you know. But
Speaker 1: going to your parents, there was always music. So that
Speaker 1: was your mom? Was it your mom and your dad
Speaker 1: or was it yeah, my mom and dad. My first
Speaker 1: experience of music was not from like a record player.
Speaker 1: We're just from people being in my house playing music.
Speaker 1: And was it because they had friends from musicians? Was
Speaker 1: your what did your father do? Well, my dad's always
Speaker 1: been a musician by trade. He's a diver actually, it
Speaker 1: was always working away or riggs and stuff, cable lane
Speaker 1: ships and whatnot. But he's always been a guitarist and
Speaker 1: he played like guitar, banjo, own mandolin. Yeah, we because
Speaker 1: we grew up around a lot of folk music. So
Speaker 1: I kind of guess like food and that came together
Speaker 1: when we were super young because it was hand in hand.
Speaker 1: It was like everyone's coming around for dinner and the
Speaker 1: night would end in like wine and songs. You like,
Speaker 1: my dad playing. I don't remember it that well, but
Speaker 1: I remember my uncle Rob being there with my dad
Speaker 1: and they're being bottles of wine and blues being plaid.
Speaker 1: Did he play? When you say American polk music was
Speaker 1: a pizza gur weavers, I would say more like Irish
Speaker 1: folk music, stuff like Planksty and Christie Moore. Yeah, some
Speaker 1: old gypsy songs and stuff like that, and there'd be
Speaker 1: someone playing a fiddle and does he play now he still?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for real, my dad played. My dad actually
Speaker 1: played on my last album. Yeah. Yeah. There's a song
Speaker 1: at the end called Old Habits and there's a little
Speaker 1: piece of guitar music that comes afterwards. Can we listen
Speaker 1: to it? Yeah? Sure, do we have it. It's almost
Speaker 1: like a secret track. So when they when the song
Speaker 1: Old Habits finishes, there's about ten seconds and then the
Speaker 1: guitar parts starts, and it's just something that I recorded
Speaker 1: and my dad one day and I wanted to put
Speaker 1: it on the record, which is nice. My dad actually
Speaker 1: wrote that tune while he was I think waiting for
Speaker 1: one of us to be born. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: it was me, Lucy or my other sister Rhan. Is
Speaker 1: he interested in food? Yeah, I mean my dad's a
Speaker 1: pretty good cook. He's always fairly simple. It takes really
Speaker 1: good but it'd be simple. It'd be like a good salad,
Speaker 1: new potatoes, and then like a good piece of fish.
Speaker 1: But it was always it was always season good and
Speaker 1: it's fresh, you know. There was always like and he
Speaker 1: makes a good dressing for the salad and it would
Speaker 1: be a nice piece of like seabuss or something. He's
Speaker 1: kind of always he went. He wouldn't allow like ketch
Speaker 1: up on the table and stuff like that, which I
Speaker 1: kind of right. You describe your mother, who was very
Speaker 1: careful about flavoring, and you remember that you talked about muscles.
Speaker 1: I don't know where she bought them. I don't know
Speaker 1: where you grew up. And she used wine in the
Speaker 1: sauce for her children. And then your father, who I
Speaker 1: find his music so beautifully compelling. This grilled fish and
Speaker 1: he almost sounds like the way he cooked was the
Speaker 1: way he played his music. And so you grew up
Speaker 1: with us food of your childhood? Where did they learn
Speaker 1: to cook? Well? I mean I actually asked my dad
Speaker 1: that question because I was like, I know, I know
Speaker 1: that we used to have like good food as kids
Speaker 1: and having stuff like muscles, you know, when we were young.
Speaker 1: But I think my mom and dad lived in Spain
Speaker 1: for quite a long time, and I didn't know that,
Speaker 1: saidtle Bit later on. I think they lived in Heavier
Speaker 1: in Spain for maybe like five or six years, but
Speaker 1: have been in what the seventies, I guess late seventies
Speaker 1: before they had us. Yeah, so it's probably from there.
Speaker 1: And actually, like where we grew up in Uckfield is
Speaker 1: pretty close to Brighton, close to a place called Seaford,
Speaker 1: which is on a good place to buy fish and
Speaker 1: Hastings which is awesome for for buying fish, probably more
Speaker 1: so back then, tell me about as a child. The
Speaker 1: story I've heard when you performed in order to buy
Speaker 1: ice cream. Yeah, there's a truth to this story. Uh
Speaker 1: In in the summer, the kids from our street we
Speaker 1: used to sometimes get together, and so we had a
Speaker 1: house full of instruments. We had guitars that were hanging
Speaker 1: on the walls and sometimes there are old crappy ones
Speaker 1: that no one played anymore, or or old keyboard that
Speaker 1: doesn't really work. Um. We we would get those instruments
Speaker 1: and put them out on the front lawn, open the
Speaker 1: windows and play like whatever music it was through the
Speaker 1: stereo as loud as possible and act like we were
Speaker 1: playing it and put a bas get there in front
Speaker 1: of us to ask for money so we could go
Speaker 1: and buy ice cream from the ice cream band. Did
Speaker 1: it well? He did? I mean people came out and
Speaker 1: gave us money. I think we made made enough to
Speaker 1: get some ice cream. That's the version of I grew up,
Speaker 1: you know, selling lemonade when I was a kid. You know,
Speaker 1: take lemonade and then put a table on the front
Speaker 1: lawn and at five cents please. Yeah, we were like
Speaker 1: buskings and like guns and roses. Okay, I am here
Speaker 1: with Rory Dragon Bowman and one of his biggest fans
Speaker 1: apart from me, that is Louie Warwyn, who is a waiter.
Speaker 1: How old you, Louis? I'm three? Okay. So when I
Speaker 1: went around today saying guess who's coming to dinner tonight?
Speaker 1: Guess who's coming to talk? You were especially excited, So
Speaker 1: I thought, why not share the mic with you? Okay,
Speaker 1: here you go, hi, Rory. Um. I think as an artist,
Speaker 1: you've collaborated with loads of different people or so, in
Speaker 1: the spirit of collaborating, who would your dream musical dinner
Speaker 1: guests be alive or dead? Um? Prince Probably. I've got
Speaker 1: to say Prince because I feel like he was a
Speaker 1: bit of a tricky customer and I think he'd probably
Speaker 1: bring a good dynamic to the table. Do you think
Speaker 1: he'd be a fussy eater? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I'd be demanding, you know, but I kind of like that,
Speaker 1: kind of like people to be a bit more rock
Speaker 1: and roll these days. Someone take authority at the table. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: How do you think that fame change the way you
Speaker 1: perceived yourself and others perceived you? And was there ever
Speaker 1: moment of frustration within that? It's a constant battle if
Speaker 1: I'm honest, between being really happy that it gave me
Speaker 1: the opportunity to do what I'm doing now and to
Speaker 1: travel the world and to play shows for lots of people,
Speaker 1: and don't I always feel lucky always, But there are
Speaker 1: points of it that I never thought I would have
Speaker 1: to deal with the feeling of being out in public
Speaker 1: and have people staring at me. And it's not something
Speaker 1: as a person that I really warm to as a
Speaker 1: feeling because I'm quite private and I'm not really an
Speaker 1: outgoing person, if I'm honest, So parts of that made
Speaker 1: me more introvert. And the reason I live in a
Speaker 1: place where no one is. I live in a village
Speaker 1: that probably has about five thousand people in it, so
Speaker 1: I do hide away a little bit. But I'm kind
Speaker 1: of okay with that now. It might be something that
Speaker 1: you know, co with, yeah, yeah, And to be honest,
Speaker 1: I've always liked peace and quiet, not now with the
Speaker 1: kids and that, but but you know, being being around
Speaker 1: nature and suff like that helps for when you do
Speaker 1: have to change world. Um, you know, during the time
Speaker 1: this time, you know, when people didn't go out so much,
Speaker 1: I found myself just forgetting that who I was and
Speaker 1: just going out and doing normal stuff and someone would say, oh,
Speaker 1: can I have a picture? I'm like, what, who by?
Speaker 1: Leave me alone? I think public and private is hard.
Speaker 1: For the most part, people are pretty understanding and nice,
Speaker 1: but we do live in a different world. Now. I've
Speaker 1: noticed in the restaurant, but when people were very, very
Speaker 1: careful of anyone who eats here and whether they're famous
Speaker 1: or not. We do respect privacy, but at the table
Speaker 1: that we really if we see somebody going up to somebody,
Speaker 1: so please respect that. Generally people will give autographs or
Speaker 1: sign something later, but there's a real reluctant to have
Speaker 1: a photograph taken with someone because you don't know where
Speaker 1: it's going to be. Is that a line too far?
Speaker 1: Do you think that you just draw on the photograph.
Speaker 1: If I'm with my kids, it's a straight now every time,
Speaker 1: because they don't they don't deserve to be drawn into
Speaker 1: that world. But if I'm on my own don't. I
Speaker 1: don't really mind, as long as people respectful. I was
Speaker 1: in a hotel the other night and someone put a
Speaker 1: photo in front of my face while I had him up. Well,
Speaker 1: I had spaghetti on my fork, and that's align t far,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I was would it be okay when
Speaker 1: you're finished eating? If if I have a picture outside,
Speaker 1: that's cool. I don't you know, I would never be
Speaker 1: grabbed that. But when I'm when I'm eating, it's not okay.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about food now. You know what.
Speaker 1: I've talked to actors who are in in a play,
Speaker 1: or directors who are making films, or indeed musicians who
Speaker 1: are playing gigs. There seems to be a kind of
Speaker 1: rigor about what they eat and how they're affects your performance,
Speaker 1: most notably Victoria Beckham, who said that when she was
Speaker 1: in The Spice Girl, she discovered very early on what
Speaker 1: she could eat to perform and which she couldn't need
Speaker 1: to perform. And I was wondering whether there was an
Speaker 1: element of that in your work. When you're traveling, when
Speaker 1: you're going on stage to perform, how does that effect
Speaker 1: what you eat. My answer to that question is very simple.
Speaker 1: It's very simple because I can actually can't eat anything
Speaker 1: before I perform um. So I'm not a nervous person,
Speaker 1: well certainly not. I'm actually more nervous to do this
Speaker 1: podcast with you than I am to go on stage,
Speaker 1: because talking like this doesn't always come naturally to me.
Speaker 1: But singing doesn't really make me nervous, or be on
Speaker 1: the stage doesn't make me nervous. It's just the feeling,
Speaker 1: the sensation of being full. When I'm trying to sing,
Speaker 1: it affects the way my diaphragm works and it's harder
Speaker 1: to get the notes. So generally early in the morning,
Speaker 1: I'll have breakfast. Do you know if it's a show
Speaker 1: that I have like a big breakfast, so then I don't.
Speaker 1: Then I kind of gives me enough for the rest
Speaker 1: of the day. Or if I'm real hungry, I have
Speaker 1: like fruit during the day because that doesn't blake you out,
Speaker 1: and then really badly I'll eat like eleven o'clock at
Speaker 1: night after the show because I will be super hungry.
Speaker 1: That's why I say I made the decision to eat
Speaker 1: stuff like sushi or cleaner foods like something Japanese um,
Speaker 1: eat a lot of soups and things like that because
Speaker 1: I'm eating later later on. Where is your next traveling?
Speaker 1: Where are you going? I don't know the first place
Speaker 1: we're going to, but we have we have some great
Speaker 1: gigs coming up this time, some Switzerland dates. And the
Speaker 1: trouble is when we when I go places the places
Speaker 1: that I always wanted to visit, other places that I
Speaker 1: spend the least time in. Well, but I don't know why.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's just fate, you know. I'm like, what do
Speaker 1: you remember about this beautiful place at the airport the
Speaker 1: hotel and the show and then the airport again in
Speaker 1: the morning. You just don't get time sometimes, and you know,
Speaker 1: the Sudds law is always the places that you think,
Speaker 1: I would love to be in this beautiful place, but
Speaker 1: I've only two hours after a show that you can
Speaker 1: go back, of course, and maybe you should go a
Speaker 1: day earlier and stay a day later so you can
Speaker 1: eat the food of where you're going. So it's a
Speaker 1: very very busy summer, but there are a couple of
Speaker 1: days maybe here and there I could, I could do that.
Speaker 1: I think that, you know, having that someone who cares
Speaker 1: about food and as curious as you are and wants
Speaker 1: to eat, well, then you should, you know, being in
Speaker 1: switch free somewhere where the food is good. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: tell them that's the deal. You know that you'll do
Speaker 1: the constitut you do the deal. Music is so important,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Well? For me, food and music as as
Speaker 1: a chef and working in a restaurant, working with people,
Speaker 1: are cooking and serving food to people. We also we
Speaker 1: love to sing. We sing quite a lot if we
Speaker 1: have any chance at all. And somebody's leaving at somebody's birthday, um,
Speaker 1: we sing. And the other day we had a party
Speaker 1: for someone who was leaving from maternity leave and uh,
Speaker 1: and so I just said to them, find out, you know,
Speaker 1: who can play some music. What what can we do
Speaker 1: for the music. And when I came in, we had
Speaker 1: the party and we had a speech and I said
Speaker 1: goodbye to her. You know, we had wine, and then
Speaker 1: one of our waiters came out and played the trombone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he played Babylove, you know, the supreme song, you know,
Speaker 1: because she was going and she was going to have
Speaker 1: a baby. And he came up with his trombone, and
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I discovered something about him. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that he played them blone and it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: And then you find out somebody plays the guitar. We
Speaker 1: have somebody And music is so so important. Do you
Speaker 1: ever have the music in the restaurant? No, because personally
Speaker 1: I don't like background music itself. I always find if
Speaker 1: I go to someone the house and they put music on,
Speaker 1: and then you're trying to talk or trying to eadn't
Speaker 1: the music is playing in the background, and I think
Speaker 1: acoustically it's hard in a restaurant. But when I'm Valentine's Night,
Speaker 1: we get a piano. We have a piano. We take
Speaker 1: out a table and we have somebody coming and play
Speaker 1: the piano. And what do you play when you come
Speaker 1: in the house? Do you turn on music when you're Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean our radio doesn't really stop playing all day long,
Speaker 1: and I find it really relaxed in the mornings. But
Speaker 1: then you know, I'll pick up Ruben from nursery and
Speaker 1: he'll come back and he'll listen to like he wants.
Speaker 1: He wants to listen to the music from the Millions movie.
Speaker 1: But some of the music is quite good. You know
Speaker 1: the New Millions movie. They use the song you know
Speaker 1: the Turtles the tea. So that's some places every day
Speaker 1: of my house so happy and and this song is
Speaker 1: in my house every single day, to the point where
Speaker 1: if it comes to the radio, like, yeah, that's funny.
Speaker 1: Do you talk about having a vegetable garden, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have been growing vegetables not this last year much because
Speaker 1: my had this big polytonnel in my garden to grow in,
Speaker 1: but we had a big storm and it blew away,
Speaker 1: so it was like it was in the next door's house,
Speaker 1: basically got blown over the fence. But do you, like,
Speaker 1: did you do you actually tend the garden yourself? I
Speaker 1: tried to. Yeah, I don't. I feel like I had
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: But sometimes, you know, I've had quite decent amount of
Speaker 1: like carrots and strawberries and stuff sometimes and successfully grow
Speaker 1: loads of chili's way more than I needed, and a
Speaker 1: crazy amount of tomatoes. We were talking before. I think
Speaker 1: it's just fun with especially when with the kids around,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I had a tomato to three maybe
Speaker 1: four tomato plants, all the different kinds, and as soon
Speaker 1: as they would grow, I'd seen them, and then the
Speaker 1: next day they'll be none left because Ruben, we're just
Speaker 1: going to pick them off and eat. That experience of
Speaker 1: going anyway into a garden and taking something from I
Speaker 1: can't get to sit and eat like spaghetti like a carbonaro,
Speaker 1: but he'll pick off like seven Do you make a
Speaker 1: point of trying to eat well, so so Zoe my misses.
Speaker 1: She has three boys and I have I have a
Speaker 1: four year old, So we have a four year old,
Speaker 1: a five year old, a ten year old, and a
Speaker 1: twelve year old in the house, all boys. Boys. So
Speaker 1: it's hectic, and i'd say maybe like once a week
Speaker 1: we managed to get round the table, you know. But
Speaker 1: I'm happy with that at the moment. You give your
Speaker 1: kids to catch up, Yeah, yeah, I try to let them,
Speaker 1: to let them choose, but I tried to not give
Speaker 1: them the ones with too much sugar and stuff in.
Speaker 1: But I was always deprived, not deprived, that's the wrong word.
Speaker 1: I wasn't allow sugary stuff, but for a good reason,
Speaker 1: because you know, kids with dancing drome shouldn't have too
Speaker 1: many sugary foods because they process it differently and they're
Speaker 1: susceptible to more to diabetes. So we were not We
Speaker 1: weren't allowed so much sugar as a kid, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: So I think now I'm like, yeah, go ahead, just
Speaker 1: say what you want kind of thing. Okay, So there
Speaker 1: there's a question that I asked at the end of
Speaker 1: every conversation. And this has been a really lovely conversation.
Speaker 1: So happy that we had time to talk together. If
Speaker 1: food is what we prepare when we're hungry, or food
Speaker 1: is what we feed our children, or food is something
Speaker 1: that we use for celebration, it is also something we
Speaker 1: turned to for comfort. So I was going to ask
Speaker 1: you if you had a comfort food that you could
Speaker 1: describe to me, what would that be? Rory it would be.
Speaker 1: I've gone through this in my head a few times,
Speaker 1: like what would be the most confident food? But I
Speaker 1: think it's it's like an old school bacon sandwich, like cheap,
Speaker 1: pre cut white bread, proper butter bacon that's kind of
Speaker 1: fried to it with an inch of its life like,
Speaker 1: so it's super super crispy, about four slices and cheap
Speaker 1: ketchup and that's it. Bacon catchup and bread and then
Speaker 1: you cut it in half and maybe have a cup
Speaker 1: of tea on the side. Sounds good? Is it? Bacon hot? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You love no dear, oh my child love you? Please
Speaker 1: don't my son shin. That was so nice. Thank you.
Speaker 1: To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go
Speaker 1: to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk. River
Speaker 1: Cafe Table for is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.