Speaker 1: You were listening to Ruthie's Table four in Partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2: When I think of Richardy Grant, of course I think
Speaker 2: of his brilliant films and him as a great actor.
Speaker 2: But what I really think of is Richard and his
Speaker 2: wife Joan in the early days of the River Cafe.
Speaker 2: They were married a year before the restaurant opened and
Speaker 2: lived right across the river. Coming in for lunch, are
Speaker 2: we sitting at the same table. They were warm and
Speaker 2: lovely and absorbed in each other. I remember their daughter,
Speaker 2: Olivia being born a few years later, and then bringing
Speaker 2: her in as a baby when the restaurant was still
Speaker 2: small and starting up. Just like her. We all grew
Speaker 2: up and off into our own lives. Now over thirty
Speaker 2: years later, Richard and I share something else in common,
Speaker 2: the loss of the partner we loved. People once asked me.
Speaker 2: Someone asked me about my advice on grief, and I
Speaker 2: have no advice on grief because it's so personal how
Speaker 2: you do it. Whether I have a friend whose mother
Speaker 2: went to bed for six months and never got out
Speaker 2: because her son had died. She just took to her bed,
Speaker 2: and you know, I never stopped. So we all have
Speaker 2: different ways, And I was thinking, if we start with
Speaker 2: the food part of that, do you eat for comfort
Speaker 2: or did you stop eating when.
Speaker 1: I add for comfort? And the last once Journal was diagnosed,
Speaker 1: and the subsequent eight months that she had left, which
Speaker 1: we didn't know we're going to be so short, I
Speaker 1: cooked three times a day, did you? But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so struck when everybody, anybody subsequent to her death
Speaker 1: says to me, what would your final meal be? And
Speaker 1: I said, well, the experience is of somebody who is
Speaker 1: dying is that food is the last thing that they want.
Speaker 1: That Because of the drugs that she was on for
Speaker 1: lung cancer, everything started tasting like sam so it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: It got to the point where it didn't matter what
Speaker 1: I cooked. She would say, well, this doesn't really taste
Speaker 1: of anything, or the texture of it is awful. So
Speaker 1: she lost interest completely in food. But it didn't stop
Speaker 1: having to make meals all the time. So I got
Speaker 1: very inventive, more inventive in going through cookbooks, obviously yours,
Speaker 1: trying to find things that would that she would like.
Speaker 2: So you were thinking of her when you were cooking.
Speaker 2: It was not just a distraction for you to kind
Speaker 2: of do something, because cooking can be that way. You
Speaker 2: have to follow the recipe, you have to put the matter,
Speaker 2: how sad you feel, you do have to put the
Speaker 2: olive oil in the pan at a certain time. And
Speaker 2: it does create a rhythm. It came as a method,
Speaker 2: It came to order, almost, doesn't it. It does.
Speaker 1: And it's also because she said to me when she
Speaker 1: was diagnosed, please make a promise to me, if you
Speaker 1: can possibly keep it, that we are together all the
Speaker 1: time and that I die with you in our house.
Speaker 1: And I said, well, you know, I can try and
Speaker 1: make that promise, but we just don't know what's down
Speaker 1: the line. And apart from four days when she had
Speaker 1: to go into the Royal Marsden because she got an infection,
Speaker 1: we managed to honor that. So to go back to
Speaker 1: your thing about cooking, it meant that, however short the
Speaker 1: time was that I was in the kitchen, it meant
Speaker 1: that it gave me some respite from dealing with her
Speaker 1: pending imminent loss. And I suppose gave her time away
Speaker 1: from me as well. And sometimes, you know, she would
Speaker 1: fall asleep and then that gave me time to go
Speaker 1: and cook. But having that routine and something to do
Speaker 1: was incredibly important. And in terms of what you said
Speaker 1: earlier that you can't give advice about how to deal
Speaker 1: with loss or death. What I've found is when people
Speaker 1: have said to me, oh, you get over it in time,
Speaker 1: I really object to that because I think that I've
Speaker 1: never wanted to get over it. It's a navigation around
Speaker 1: it on a daily basis, and that's that really is
Speaker 1: the way that I find that is the way that
Speaker 1: I've I've coped with it that I don't have an
Speaker 1: anticipation that is sort of a hump in the road
Speaker 1: that I'm going to get over and the other side
Speaker 1: it is going to be. You know, I'm now free
Speaker 1: because I don't feel like that.
Speaker 2: I always thought the worst two words in the English
Speaker 2: language was move on.
Speaker 1: So somebody said to me the other day, said, it's
Speaker 1: been five years, Richard, you know you've got to move
Speaker 1: on and you've got a man up and you've got
Speaker 1: to start dating other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that tells you more about the other person than
Speaker 2: I think. If you can, I would say that because
Speaker 2: I kind of went through a death experience of my
Speaker 2: son six maybe ten years before, Richard, so I kind.
Speaker 1: Of knew and you had no preparation for that.
Speaker 2: That one was that I always say there too, because
Speaker 2: he had a seizure and yeah, it was like a
Speaker 2: car crash.
Speaker 1: He was here one day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the ones like you know, Richard, my Richard
Speaker 2: and your jone is kind of being eased into that
Speaker 2: world and the knowledge and everything. And then there's the
Speaker 2: ones that you get a call and it's a car crash.
Speaker 2: But I think that and so each one, you know,
Speaker 2: for me, I couldn't cook after bo died, after the
Speaker 2: car you know, I got the phone, I'd go in
Speaker 2: the kitchen, I'd start cooking and start to cry or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know. And actually coming in here was for me,
Speaker 2: it was like coming home. But with Richard, we you know,
Speaker 2: we ate all the time. We had meals around you know,
Speaker 2: in the bed, we had meals upstairs, we had you know,
Speaker 2: and he really loved to eat, not at all, No,
Speaker 2: he loved yeah, you know, But but what about it?
Speaker 2: What about cooking for your daughter? Where was Olivia at
Speaker 2: this time?
Speaker 1: She was she came to stay with us for that
Speaker 1: entire time. Did she eat? She yeah, and she yes,
Speaker 1: she did, she cooked sometimes, but I think she found
Speaker 1: it so overwhelming. Yeah, you know, dealing with what was
Speaker 1: what was coming. And I don't know whether you found this,
Speaker 1: but did you did you have a sense or get
Speaker 1: told when Richard's life was nearing it its.
Speaker 2: End, not really, not until because he had brained down.
Speaker 2: He had Richard had a fall, yeah, and he fell
Speaker 2: on his head and he had a bleed, and then
Speaker 2: it was a slow We were in Mexico, and that
Speaker 2: was also interesting because Mexico to be away from my country,
Speaker 2: away from my friends, away from well, although I was surrounded,
Speaker 2: I never I took two rooms in a hotel and
Speaker 2: I was never alone for four months, but I was
Speaker 2: suddenly in the Mexican world of eating at a different time,
Speaker 2: eating different foods, having no wine, but eating drinking tequila.
Speaker 2: And there was a whole thing. And the hospital that
Speaker 2: he was in was a beautiful place, and the food
Speaker 2: was part of the whole. It was really important that
Speaker 2: people would bring food and he always ate and you know,
Speaker 2: he was a great eating Richard. So it was something
Speaker 2: we share to the very end. I knew he was
Speaker 2: going to die. Probably we knew we were coming towards
Speaker 2: the end, probably about a month before, because he had
Speaker 2: as true, this is after two years, but I think
Speaker 2: it might have been a different kind of experience in
Speaker 2: terms of JOm did she eat?
Speaker 1: She didn't eat. In the last week of her life,
Speaker 1: she at almost nothing. And we had a palliative care
Speaker 1: who would come in twice a day for ten to
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. And she said to me ten days before,
Speaker 1: she said, when in her experience, when the person who
Speaker 1: is terminally ill stops really not wanting to eat, that
Speaker 1: is usually three four days. And Joan had said to
Speaker 1: Olivia and I two weeks before she died, she said,
Speaker 1: I know that it's the end is very near. And
Speaker 1: she said, please let me go. And I think that
Speaker 1: this is I've now my reading and other people who
Speaker 1: share their experience said that that it is a very
Speaker 1: common thing for people to say, let me go. They
Speaker 1: want they want you to give them permission to not
Speaker 1: hold on anymore. And said, you know, I'm so exhausted.
Speaker 1: I've had a good life. I want you to, you know,
Speaker 1: to find a pocket full of happiness in each day
Speaker 1: and not be sad when I'm gone, she said, because
Speaker 1: all of us are going to die. She said, you too, included, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have it. It's been a great mantra by which
Speaker 1: to navigate grief. Ever since then, I found consciously finding
Speaker 1: joy in things that you may have just taken for
Speaker 1: granted beforehand. And that's been a great gift that she's
Speaker 1: given me and our daughter.
Speaker 2: And what about work.
Speaker 1: I have had a huge amount of work since Joan died,
Speaker 1: and rather than retreat, I have grabbed all of it
Speaker 1: with great gusts.
Speaker 2: Me too, I have I have moments where I think,
Speaker 2: you know, how are we going to get through this?
Speaker 2: But never that idea that I might stop or give up.
Speaker 2: You know, I love doing this, We love writing our books.
Speaker 2: As I said, love the podcast. Sit down and have
Speaker 2: excuse me go on? Did you get that on camera?
Speaker 2: You just lifted the plate, clicked every bit of the plate.
Speaker 2: Why not? Why not?
Speaker 1: You can't really do it in a restaurant without offending people.
Speaker 2: Do you think maybe you know, have you done it
Speaker 2: and offended? A woman actually said I'm offended by this?
Speaker 2: Or you could just see the.
Speaker 1: Look accommodation and JOm used to say, for God's sake, please,
Speaker 1: so all I would do is do this and then
Speaker 1: do it behind or lean down pretending that I'm doing
Speaker 1: something on the floor.
Speaker 2: Do you think it tastes different when you look what
Speaker 2: you're tasting looking off the plate. Is that different what
Speaker 2: you've put in your mouth?
Speaker 1: I think that. I think that what it is is
Speaker 1: like the encore at the end of a performance.
Speaker 2: What is an encore like at the end of a performance.
Speaker 1: I've only done one musical, My Fair Lady, And because
Speaker 1: a musical there's music for people to reperform, you can
Speaker 1: do a sort of final verse of something, but in
Speaker 1: the theater you can't. All you can do is about it.
Speaker 1: You can't say, oh well I'll do I'll do to
Speaker 1: be or not to be again, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 2: That's what I really love is sometimes when the end
Speaker 2: of a musical then it's all over, and then they
Speaker 2: come like guys and dolls will come out and do
Speaker 2: you know lucky a lady or when you see a
Speaker 2: guy or My fair Lady, you could come out. You
Speaker 2: obviously played Henry Higgins.
Speaker 1: Higgins, what a great part, absolutely amazing role.
Speaker 2: What's your favorite song from My Fair Lady? I think
Speaker 2: whenever the same as mine go on?
Speaker 1: What is yours?
Speaker 2: I've grown accustomed to her face?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Is there a better song? No, I've grown a custom
Speaker 2: begin I've gone accustomed.
Speaker 1: To the to you, she whistles nice and new smiles
Speaker 1: her friends, her das secondment to me, now just to you.
Speaker 1: That should be the ending of this from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Oh, I we should sang it for my seventeenth birthday
Speaker 2: to be, I said, that's all I want you to
Speaker 2: do is to sing me. I've gon accustomed to it.
Speaker 2: I do think it's a beautiful BEAUTI is amazing. Was
Speaker 2: that the last theater that you did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the last time I did theater and I
Speaker 1: did it in Chicago ten years ago, and then I
Speaker 1: did it at the Sydney Opera fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2: I should bring it to London. I would love to
Speaker 2: see it again. You can't do it now because of misogyny,
Speaker 2: because yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 1: McCarthy's daughters came to see it in Chicago and they
Speaker 1: were ten and thirteen, and they were appalled by the
Speaker 1: misogyny of it. They said, how can any woman put
Speaker 1: up with that?
Speaker 2: When you were performing it, did you feel a sense.
Speaker 1: Well, my steer on it was that Higgins is on
Speaker 1: the spectrum, and that he is. He doesn't mean to
Speaker 1: be as cruel as he is. He just he you know,
Speaker 1: he says that there's no filter whatsoever, so it just
Speaker 1: comes out, you know, you should be thrown out like
Speaker 1: a cabbage le for whatever. And he is so joy
Speaker 1: filled when Eliza gets all the words phonetically correct yees,
Speaker 1: he embraces her. Yeah. And you know, it's no accident
Speaker 1: to me that straight after that she sings, I could
Speaker 1: have danced all night. And it is the way that
Speaker 1: I interpreted it was that that was as close as
Speaker 1: he could ever get to saying he's in love with
Speaker 1: somebody interesting. So it was very physical and we grabbed
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 2: And I think it's the first musical I ever saw.
Speaker 2: I think I went to see it. I was saying
Speaker 2: the other day that my dad used to take me
Speaker 2: because we lived in upstate New York, and every sort
Speaker 2: of big treat, maybe once every couple of months, you
Speaker 2: would take me down to New York in the car
Speaker 2: and we'd have lunch, and then you'd take me to
Speaker 2: a musical, and then we would buy the record, and
Speaker 2: then we would take it home to the country, and
Speaker 2: there was nothing else to do except just listen to
Speaker 2: it all the time.
Speaker 1: So I yeah, really, this is really generational that we
Speaker 1: share on this because in the sixties, every musical that
Speaker 1: came out, my parents had the lp of it and
Speaker 1: played it incessantly, so our whole family knew the lyrics
Speaker 1: of every single musical that came out. You say it
Speaker 1: to people now, I think you're yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 2: But the other thing about the musicals, without being naming
Speaker 2: any is that they don't have those two and so
Speaker 2: much anymore. They're not as kind of hummable, are they
Speaker 2: that you come out you can remember on the street
Speaker 2: where you live.
Speaker 1: People who would argue with probably yeah.
Speaker 2: But I find it, yeah, I find it slightly challenging.
Speaker 2: But but it isn't. I haven't seen My Fair Lady ever,
Speaker 2: probably even since I was a kid a long time ago.
Speaker 1: Broadway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I remember. I think it was Julie Andrews and
Speaker 2: Rex Harrison. I think it was, but I was really young,
Speaker 2: I have to say so, I think. But it was
Speaker 2: my very first musical. And then I saw I saw
Speaker 2: West Side Story, I saw My Fair Lady. I saw
Speaker 2: I really one that and he used to come in here,
Speaker 2: stop the world, I want to get off. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and Leslie and Evie came here all the time. But
Speaker 2: I used to come up to it. I remember the
Speaker 2: first time I met him, he was with Michael Gate
Speaker 2: and I said, I bet, I'm the only person in
Speaker 2: this room that knows, you know, say my Miski mischial
Speaker 2: for whatever those songs are or what kind of full
Speaker 2: of And he loved and he would sing it with
Speaker 2: me because you could see I have any chance to see.
Speaker 2: But those, yeah, they kind of grow up with those,
Speaker 2: you know, do you know what your first one are?
Speaker 1: The first one was the Sound of Music, and then
Speaker 1: Mary Poppins. But I'd heard My Fair Lady before I
Speaker 1: saw those, before I saw the movie, and my parents
Speaker 1: had all the Rogers and Hammerstein, Carousel King, and I
Speaker 1: had all of those record collection, so I knew all
Speaker 1: of those before I ever saw the movies.
Speaker 2: An open kitchen in the River Cafe means we as
Speaker 2: chefs are able to talk to our guests dining in
Speaker 2: the restaurant, sharing how we cook their food, where the
Speaker 2: ingredients come from, as well as hints and advice for
Speaker 2: cooking the recipes in the books. And now we're bringing
Speaker 2: that same ethos to our podcast, a question and answer
Speaker 2: episode with me and our two executive chefs, Sean Winnow,
Speaker 2: and Joseph Travelli. We need is to hear from you
Speaker 2: about what you would like to know. Send a voice
Speaker 2: note with your question to Questions at Rivercafe dot co
Speaker 2: dot uk and you might just be our next great
Speaker 2: guest on Ruthie's Table four.
Speaker 1: You were born in Swaziland, which is now called Eswatini,
Speaker 1: which is the tiniest country in the Southern Hemisphere Southeast Africa,
Speaker 1: below Zimbabwe besides South Africa and Mozambique.
Speaker 2: And why were you there?
Speaker 1: My father was the director of education for the British government,
Speaker 1: so that's why we were there, and that's why I
Speaker 1: went to school there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and tell you it was az Tell me about
Speaker 2: your dad, what did he he was?
Speaker 1: He was incredibly charming good man by day and then
Speaker 1: a very violent, unrecognizable alcoholic by night, because after my
Speaker 1: mother cuckolded and left him for his best friend. Yeah
Speaker 1: that or did you? No? No?
Speaker 2: I stayed with my father as an only child.
Speaker 1: I had a younger brother. But I think my mother
Speaker 1: was Her argument was that she didn't want to take
Speaker 1: me away from everything that was familiar to me and
Speaker 1: living at home. She was not a very maternal person.
Speaker 1: I think she's one of those people that you might yeah,
Speaker 1: if you unkind, would call it narcissism. Shouldn't really have
Speaker 1: had children?
Speaker 2: Did she marry very young?
Speaker 1: I think in that time, that generation, she got married
Speaker 1: at twenty four, which was when people got married in
Speaker 1: Jane Austin, not that she was in Jane Olson time.
Speaker 1: But by the time you were twenty six, you were
Speaker 1: an old maid.
Speaker 2: You're exactly exactly what are we going to do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so twenty four was not when when was your
Speaker 1: mother married to your father?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Probably the same, maybe even younger.
Speaker 1: And I was young.
Speaker 2: I was married when I was twenty. Well, I met
Speaker 2: Richard when I was nineteen and then was married, had
Speaker 2: my first kid at twenty four, so I started very
Speaker 2: very y. That was a baby. But so did your
Speaker 2: mother move down the street or did she know?
Speaker 1: She moved to another country, another country, another country, and
Speaker 1: then that man got transferred to Peru, and then she
Speaker 1: came back to Swaziland and was treated like she may
Speaker 1: as well have adulters. Yeah, and so people it was
Speaker 1: that awful situation where I would meet, you know, in
Speaker 1: the Saturday market where people were buying fruit and vegetables.
Speaker 1: I would be with my mother on her weekend visit
Speaker 1: twice a month, and people would speak to me who
Speaker 1: were her former friends and would literally blank her. It
Speaker 1: was it felt very cruel.
Speaker 2: So what was food like my mother?
Speaker 1: My mother had no interest in cooking, so she we
Speaker 1: had a cook who she taught to cook seven meals,
Speaker 1: so I know every day of the week.
Speaker 2: You say seven meals, seven as in seven days.
Speaker 1: And they did not rotate and they did not altar.
Speaker 1: So every Monday tin fish was on a Friday. Okay,
Speaker 1: so fishy fish on Fridays. No fresh fresh fish. There,
Speaker 1: beef on a Monday, pork on a Tuesday, chicken on
Speaker 1: a Wednesday, lamb on a Thursday, fish on a Friday,
Speaker 1: and then we'd have roast beef again on the Saturday,
Speaker 1: and then a barbecue on Sunday unless we went to Mozambique,
Speaker 1: which we would then have Peri Pery prawns, prawns with
Speaker 1: Perry Perry sauce on them.
Speaker 2: That's Perry Pery sauce.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's the stuff that the Nando's chain have based
Speaker 1: all their fortune on. It's a very very hot sauce.
Speaker 1: Rectal fire basically for your head. What did you say,
Speaker 1: rectal fire? Yeah, Yeah, you have to sit on an
Speaker 1: inner tube. If you have no sensitivity, if you have
Speaker 1: no tolerance for spice like I don't, you have to
Speaker 1: sit on an inner tube for about three days. It
Speaker 1: is brutal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, before we leave the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday was the
Speaker 2: Tinfish cook exactly the same way there.
Speaker 1: Exactly the same as tin tuna cooked with a fresh today.
Speaker 2: You looked forward to more in when you dreaded.
Speaker 1: No, because if you don't know anything else, then you're
Speaker 1: used to that. And then my father remarried when I
Speaker 1: was twelve and my stepmother cooked spaghetti for the first time.
Speaker 1: I'd never seen spaghetti, had a spaghetti. So in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine I had spaghetti and I was absolutely appalled.
Speaker 1: I thought that it looked like white worms in a bowl,
Speaker 1: and how could you possibly eat that? I mean, that's
Speaker 1: how provincial and isolated we were.
Speaker 2: So you grew up there when you came to London.
Speaker 2: Back to London.
Speaker 1: I came to London in nineteen eighty two when I
Speaker 1: was twenty five years old.
Speaker 2: To see he grew up in Africa college there.
Speaker 1: I went to college in University in Cape Town, which
Speaker 1: is the nearest by twelve hundred miles that you could
Speaker 1: do a combined English degree as well as a theaterre diploma,
Speaker 1: because my father said he wouldn't pay for me to
Speaker 1: just go to a drama school in England.
Speaker 2: At what age that you wanted to be an actor?
Speaker 1: Well, I made shoe box theaters with cutouts and when
Speaker 1: I was seven, and then when I was nine I
Speaker 1: made clove puppets and then when I was twelve I
Speaker 1: got some marionettes. So and then I had full scale
Speaker 1: marionette theater in my parents garage and did school you know,
Speaker 1: plays in the school holidays.
Speaker 2: For kids who well encourage you to do actor to have.
Speaker 1: To some extent. And there was an amateur theater club
Speaker 1: in swarzil Ad, so I was a member of that.
Speaker 1: So it was you know, the line of when I
Speaker 1: look back on it is very very clear that I
Speaker 1: think it chooses you. But the notion of saying that
Speaker 1: you were going to be an actor where I grew
Speaker 1: up was you know people's.
Speaker 2: You know, father was head of education. You would have
Speaker 2: thought it was an educationalist that he would have encouraged
Speaker 2: the edu know the education that you would.
Speaker 1: Think, but he said, you know, you were a good
Speaker 1: brain and you have good school results, why waste it
Speaker 1: on becoming an active because ninety nine percent of their
Speaker 1: unemployed from what I've statistically read. And he said, you know,
Speaker 1: I dread that you're going to spend your life destitute,
Speaker 1: wearing tights, makeup and avoiding a buggery.
Speaker 2: Did he enjoy the theater that?
Speaker 1: Yeah? He loved it. Yeah. Whenever we came back to
Speaker 1: England every three years, he would take me to every
Speaker 1: single show that was on. So I remember when I
Speaker 1: came when I was seven, and then especially when I
Speaker 1: was twelve years old, I saw just a huge variety
Speaker 1: of things. I saw Oliver the Musical in the in
Speaker 1: the theater, I saw Ginger Rogers do Auntie Mame and
Speaker 1: Jory Lane.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow, so what year is that?
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty nine?
Speaker 2: Did she dance?
Speaker 1: Yeah? She did dance outside wow.
Speaker 2: Anti Ma, did you feel like, in food terms and
Speaker 2: real terms that you were always a foreigner in another
Speaker 2: country growing.
Speaker 1: Because all the food that I had was English food,
Speaker 1: where I grew up was English, and all the people
Speaker 1: that I grew up with were English. So they were yes,
Speaker 1: so they weren't all the expat community there were essentially
Speaker 1: mainly from England. So or people that had been on
Speaker 1: the colonial circuit that if they had lived in India
Speaker 1: had then coming to Kenya. It was as it was
Speaker 1: then called then Kenya, then to Rhodesia was then became Zimbabwe.
Speaker 1: It was like this sort of the trail of the
Speaker 1: last country is becoming independent one by one from the
Speaker 1: British Empire. And the people who couldn't face coming back
Speaker 1: to live in England had got so enamored of a
Speaker 1: colonial life ended up in Swaziland.
Speaker 2: So do you remember what the food of Swaziland, apart
Speaker 2: from the prons which you described, was there a kind
Speaker 2: of cultural.
Speaker 1: Maze people maize which is corn and it was made
Speaker 1: into a kind of polanta type mixture with gravy and
Speaker 1: a small amount of meat. Yeah, that was the traditional food.
Speaker 2: And that was whether vegetables or fruits or anything exotic that.
Speaker 1: You were There were amazing subtropical fruit there, light cheese
Speaker 1: or we called the lee cheese mangoes. But it was
Speaker 1: all seasonal. You couldn't you know. That is what is
Speaker 1: so extraordin about living in London is that you can
Speaker 1: get all of this stuff all year around for the
Speaker 1: most part.
Speaker 2: But started going to the market where your mother was snubbed.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the market?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, it was big. What was it like? It
Speaker 1: was a big, open air market and all the people
Speaker 1: running the market were Swazi women and they had piled
Speaker 1: up stores of fresh fruit and vegetables, and you bartered
Speaker 1: and every every person arrived at the basket and bought
Speaker 1: their stuff. And there was there was one supermarket as well,
Speaker 1: but going to the market on Saturday was an absolute ritual.
Speaker 1: And I think that going to the market, my mother
Speaker 1: would buy these vegetables. She didn't cook them, of course,
Speaker 1: but she would buy all the produce. And it was
Speaker 1: also a very social thing that you got to meet
Speaker 1: everybody else. And then she stopped going when all these
Speaker 1: people snubbed her.
Speaker 2: And what was the move like to Cape Town because
Speaker 2: then you were in university there. Yeah, it was you
Speaker 2: have your own place.
Speaker 1: It was. Yeah. It was nineteen seventy six, and it
Speaker 1: was the year that black South African students rioted against
Speaker 1: being taught in Afrikaans. So you felt that it was
Speaker 1: the kind of crucible of revolution, and being nineteen years
Speaker 1: old at that I just thought it's all going to happen.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: The whole thing is going to change because I've been
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela's daughter, cinzian Zenni were at school with me
Speaker 1: in Swazia and I did school plays with them. So
Speaker 1: we really felt that this was this was the moment
Speaker 1: that apart it would end. And of course it took
Speaker 1: another Did you never never met her, No, because they
Speaker 1: used to. They used to come to Swazland by by
Speaker 1: bus from South Africa and then go back by bus.
Speaker 2: Then you were taking drama courses? What was that like?
Speaker 2: It was?
Speaker 1: I found doing the academic part extremely tiresome because all
Speaker 1: I wanted to do was the practical theater stuff. But
Speaker 1: in order to appease my father to get a degree
Speaker 1: because he said, you know, without that, there's no guarantee
Speaker 1: that you could have a job at the other end.
Speaker 2: Maybe he was right, Yeah, maybe he was right, so
Speaker 2: partly right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he heedged his bets, but I think he was What.
Speaker 2: Was the other degree? I can't remember.
Speaker 1: You said, oh, does an English drama degree? And then
Speaker 1: I did a theatre diploma. Yeah, I love doing it.
Speaker 1: I co founded a multiracial theater company in Cape Town
Speaker 1: for a year for the true Theater Company.
Speaker 2: Was that a challenge for you.
Speaker 1: The the what is so contradictory and a knack chronistic
Speaker 1: about the apartheid system was that you could in the theater,
Speaker 1: you could work with black actors and you could socialize together,
Speaker 1: but you couldn't live in the same place, and you
Speaker 1: couldn't go to the same restaurants, which was really bizarre.
Speaker 1: So people could shag each other, and you know, if
Speaker 1: people came to stay that I was at school with
Speaker 1: neighbors in the apartment block that I was living in
Speaker 1: reported us and said there were black people staying in
Speaker 1: a white area. So I then had to go every
Speaker 1: two weeks to police station to take my up Swazland
Speaker 1: and British passports and hand them over and make a
Speaker 1: declaration that I was not harboring any subversives or terrorists.
Speaker 2: The theater company did well, Yeah, did really well.
Speaker 1: We were the right people at the right time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did both.
Speaker 2: Do you remember any of the players you put on?
Speaker 1: Oh, we did. The first play that we did we launched,
Speaker 1: was a play about the Communist revolution in nineteen forty
Speaker 1: seven by David Hare called Fanshan, and he very graciously
Speaker 1: because of the politics, all other British playwrights said embargoed.
Speaker 1: Their weren't being done in South Africa, and he allowed
Speaker 1: it because he thought that a play about social change
Speaker 1: was apt for that country. And they flew the censorship
Speaker 1: board from Pretoria, twelve hundred miles away to Cape Town
Speaker 1: to come and watch this said. So this bunch of
Speaker 1: very grumpy looking men in suits sat watching us playing
Speaker 1: Chinese peasants.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and when you went to Cape Town, you
Speaker 2: were on your own, and you didn't have that Monday
Speaker 2: Monday beef. Monday beef, I know, the tinfish on Friday?
Speaker 2: What did you eat?
Speaker 1: I moved in with two other students who could cook,
Speaker 1: and I used to barter with them, so I will
Speaker 1: do other things. I'll do the shopping is as long
Speaker 1: as you do the cooking. So that's that's sort of
Speaker 1: how it worked. But when I came to England, I
Speaker 1: couldn't I couldn't cook.
Speaker 2: How old are you then?
Speaker 1: I have twenty five? I couldn't even boil an egg kitchen.
Speaker 1: My first job in London was as a waiter at
Speaker 1: Touttan's Brasserie Garden. Ye still there? So I was there
Speaker 1: for seven months and worked as a waiter and I
Speaker 1: never got fired. Because I didn't drink allergic to alcohol,
Speaker 1: and I didn't steal because the amount of stealing that
Speaker 1: went on was just extortiny. People take sort a wheel
Speaker 1: of cheese and a winter coat and say, come on mate,
Speaker 1: just get that out, or take this bottle for me.
Speaker 2: What did you learn from working in a restaurant? Oh?
Speaker 1: Just the entitlement of some guests was absolutely extraordinary. And
Speaker 1: if people were very rude, their service became even slower.
Speaker 1: And then you could always blame the kitchen and say,
Speaker 1: I'm ly sorry, but oh your food is cold, or
Speaker 1: oh it isn't the full order or whatever. There are
Speaker 1: ways of torturing people.
Speaker 2: How long did you work there? Seven months? And was
Speaker 2: that the only restaurant job you had?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a strong job.
Speaker 1: And then I started getting work as an actor, And tell.
Speaker 2: Me about those days. Did you have your own apartment?
Speaker 1: I had a bedsit on Blenham Crescent number eighty nine,
Speaker 1: which was thirty pounds a week. You could put your
Speaker 1: hands out either side and touch both walls. It had
Speaker 1: a loo, a tiny cubicle for a shower, and a
Speaker 1: kitchenette beneath a bed that was upper ladder, so the
Speaker 1: width of the bed was the width of the kitchenette underneath.
Speaker 1: Because it was parallel to Portobello Road. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the market day we didn't have much money.
Speaker 1: You could go and get you'd get the throwaway and
Speaker 1: the leftover. It's very, very cheap, all for free. So
Speaker 1: I lived.
Speaker 2: I lived on that, and so acting and starting what
Speaker 2: year are we in now?
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty three I met the person who I then married.
Speaker 1: It did, yeah, And she was a brilliant court absolutely
Speaker 1: amazing cook and rarely followed recipe books, but if she did,
Speaker 1: it was a kind of what do you call a blueprint,
Speaker 1: and then she would improvise on top of that.
Speaker 2: So this became a cooking eating relationship.
Speaker 1: And when we got married, she said, you have to
Speaker 1: cook every other night out one night you cooked the
Speaker 1: other night. You have to be an evolved twentieth century
Speaker 1: late twentieth century man. You have to cook as much
Speaker 1: as I do.
Speaker 2: And did you go for that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she also insisted that when we
Speaker 1: got married she'd been married before, that we cook for
Speaker 1: our own wedding party. So we had one hundred people
Speaker 1: and we cooked the day before, well for two days before.
Speaker 2: Remember the things we cooked.
Speaker 1: Everything was cold, but we cooked poach, salmon and chicken
Speaker 1: and beefillt. All of this stuff was done in advance.
Speaker 1: She had one rule that whatever party we had, specially
Speaker 1: a Christmas party, she said, every guest has to know
Speaker 1: a minimum of two other people. Otherwise you're not going
Speaker 1: to get harmony in a group of people. And I
Speaker 1: found that pretty fool proof, a safeguard for getting people together.
Speaker 1: Although it's always interesting to have people that don't know
Speaker 1: each other at all, but for that real buzz of
Speaker 1: an event, knowing people some of the people knowing each
Speaker 1: other really helps, I think. And so and she also
Speaker 1: thought that cooking for people that people appreciated it more
Speaker 1: than if you got in a cater or somebody to
Speaker 1: help you. Joe used to make your chocolate Nemesis every
Speaker 1: single Christmas party we had, and she'd make two of them.
Speaker 1: And I think the combination of that is must be
Speaker 1: thirty six eggs exactly who is I used to make
Speaker 1: it with her?
Speaker 2: What about food and film?
Speaker 1: Oh, the first film I was ever in with now
Speaker 1: and I Richard Griffiths, who was playing Uncle Monte. My
Speaker 1: uncle had arrived from Italy had been filming there with
Speaker 1: the Hunchild and had not done any he hadn't learnt
Speaker 1: the lines terribly well, and Paul McGann and I had
Speaker 1: had a ten days of rehearsal, so we knew the
Speaker 1: script back to front, and Richard kept fluffing his lines
Speaker 1: in this Cumbrian cottage where we were filming, And because
Speaker 1: my character had not supposedly eaten for three days, I
Speaker 1: had to eat very very fast a Sunday lunch of
Speaker 1: roast lamb and roast potatoes, and I think I got
Speaker 1: through four legs of lamb, and I don't know how
Speaker 1: many kilos of potatoes. Eventually had to have a vomit
Speaker 1: bucket next next to me because I couldn't keep it down.
Speaker 1: So I've never eaten lamb willingly since then. But that
Speaker 1: is my That is an extreme experience of eating on set.
Speaker 1: But we used to join and I used to do
Speaker 1: a movie night once a month where if we did
Speaker 1: The Godfather, we had spaghetti. Yeah, we did China Town,
Speaker 1: we had Chinese food, watched Cabaret, we had German food.
Speaker 1: So we do food according to the thing slender excuse
Speaker 1: to to rewatch a great movie and also he delicious food.
Speaker 2: We did a podcast with Francis a couple of I
Speaker 2: know recently, and it was you know, he went into
Speaker 2: great detail about the food and the Godfather, yeah, and
Speaker 2: making the past sauce. There was a movie called The
Speaker 2: Grand Bouf Did you Receive? It was about the many yourself,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: And I was in couple ofs dracked with Gary Olden
Speaker 1: one hundred years ago and we were all staying at
Speaker 1: the Napa Valley estate at his house for a week
Speaker 1: of rehearsals because the sony wouldn't pay for them. And
Speaker 1: every night he would cook. There must have been fifteen
Speaker 1: sixteen people. And I asked him whether he ever cooked
Speaker 1: just for his wife, and he said he didn't know
Speaker 1: how to cook for two people. He could only cook
Speaker 1: for fifteen to thirty people.
Speaker 2: Imagine a state bottled olive oil chosen and bottled for
Speaker 2: the River Cafe, arriving at your door every month. Our
Speaker 2: subscription is available for six or twelve months, with each
Speaker 2: oil chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with
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Speaker 2: really care for them with the gift. Visit our website
Speaker 2: shop the Rivercafe dot co UK to place your order. Now, So, Richard,
Speaker 2: we are going to talk about food because I would
Speaker 2: ask you, having watched the make crabblinguenie, would you like
Speaker 2: to read the recipe for crabblingueni because I have it here.
Speaker 1: Linguini with crabs of ten two large live mail crabs cooked.
Speaker 1: The don't know how you distablished their mail. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the River Cafe recipe. Three fresh red chilies, seeded and
Speaker 1: finely chopped, juice of four lemons, three clothes of garlic
Speaker 1: peeled and grown to a paste. Two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: miles of olive oil, five hundred grams of linguini. Remove
Speaker 1: the claws and legs from the crabs, break the bodies open, carefully,
Speaker 1: remove the brown meat from inside the shell, and transfer,
Speaker 1: along with any juice, to a large bowl. I get
Speaker 1: rid of most of the brown meat. Remove the white
Speaker 1: meat from the claws and eggs, and add to the
Speaker 1: brown meat in the bowl and mix together a tiny amount.
Speaker 1: Add the chili, is, the lemon juice and the garlic
Speaker 1: to the crab. Mikejuke, you have have enough of those
Speaker 1: season well, lots of molden salt, stirring the olive oil.
Speaker 1: The sauce should be quite liquid. Cook the linguini and
Speaker 1: a generous amount of boiling salted water. Then drain thoroughly,
Speaker 1: stir into the crab sauce, but do not reheat. Serve
Speaker 1: immediately and stuff your face.
Speaker 2: So tell me what you saw differently in rast doing
Speaker 2: it with you? Did it well?
Speaker 1: Ross? I mean, he's so brilliantly fast at doing everything.
Speaker 1: And he put in dried chili, and he put in
Speaker 1: fae as well, which I'd never had. I'd never used that,
Speaker 1: and it isn't specified in your on your recipe changes.
Speaker 1: And he added a little bit of the liquid that
Speaker 1: the pastor was cooked in into the sauce, which gave
Speaker 1: it its cre Yeah, maybe whatever it does or the
Speaker 1: magic of science. And it was absolutely delicious.
Speaker 2: So did you miss the coriander? And did you miss? No?
Speaker 1: No means the version.
Speaker 2: There you go, And that's about cooking, isn't it. Let's
Speaker 2: compare a recipe to a script. So when you're verrising
Speaker 2: your lines, tell me about the difference between a kind
Speaker 2: of script and.
Speaker 1: The exact same way. You have the recipe in front
Speaker 1: of you. But then something inspires you to add something,
Speaker 1: or though you're you go of in a tangent, do
Speaker 1: you ask if the director or the writer are open
Speaker 1: to an adjunct to something, or an addition or an
Speaker 1: improvisation of round sections. So it means that it evolves,
Speaker 1: is not? Unless it's Shakespeare. You can't improve on a genius. Really,
Speaker 1: I don't think so. And because of the rhythm and
Speaker 1: the meter of it, you would be doing a disservice,
Speaker 1: I think if you tried to extemporize on it.
Speaker 2: Do you remember cooking for Olivia as a baby? It
Speaker 2: was important? Does she cook?
Speaker 1: She cooks fantastic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she loves her mother's influence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we do still do cook together.
Speaker 2: And she's working on your fragrance.
Speaker 1: She does. Oh I was. I've been obsessed with smelling
Speaker 1: everything all my life, and I don't understand why everybody doesn't.
Speaker 2: Can you remember the smells of the markets?
Speaker 1: And oh yeah you can? Yeah, And if you go
Speaker 1: into an old fashioned green groser that there's one still
Speaker 1: in twicken Them that I go to every other other week,
Speaker 1: where you can smell the soil and you can smell
Speaker 1: vegetables and fruits in a way that is completely non
Speaker 1: existent in a supermarket. You have to go to French
Speaker 1: or Italian street markets together that as you know all
Speaker 1: too well. So I remember that that smell very much.
Speaker 1: But I've had a mad crush on the first American
Speaker 1: that I'd ever met in nineteen sixty nine, called Betsy
Speaker 1: Clap with a double pa and Armstrong had just landed
Speaker 1: on the Moon that July, so everything American was so exotic.
Speaker 1: I'd never met an American, you know, I'd seen them
Speaker 1: in the movies, so it had this gum chewing, fast talking.
Speaker 1: Taught me out a French kiss, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'd try and make her perfume for her birthday, And
Speaker 1: of course I boiled up rose and gardenia petals into
Speaker 1: boiled sugar water, and of course it didn't turn it
Speaker 1: to osmos itself into beautiful scent, just into a stink bomb.
Speaker 1: And then forty years later, I was on holiday in
Speaker 1: the Caribbean and a fellow house guest, Annie Heinmarch, said,
Speaker 1: I've never seen anybody so obsessed with smelling everything and
Speaker 1: scent as you are. Try and make do one professionally,
Speaker 1: So that's what inspired me to do.
Speaker 2: So are those smells that you can't be in the
Speaker 2: rooms if you smell it. You can't be with cheese.
Speaker 1: When the cheese course comes out, I will I'll just
Speaker 1: remove myself, do you Yeah, I think it's the most putrid,
Speaker 1: almost all cheese. Yeah. I can tolerate a caesar salad
Speaker 1: because it is delicious, but that's about as smell as
Speaker 1: I can go.
Speaker 2: And so if you have a pastor, you'll never have
Speaker 2: parmesan on it.
Speaker 1: And I'll never eat a pizza with cheese. Yeah. Chocolate
Speaker 1: is another thing that I find that the smell of
Speaker 1: it is not so it's a bit claggy, but the
Speaker 1: taste of it is absolutely repellent to me.
Speaker 2: I see that smells and music, You know, I can
Speaker 2: remember the song. If I hear a song, I can remember,
Speaker 2: you know, what I was wearing, where I was when
Speaker 2: I was with.
Speaker 1: Scent is exactly the same, the same. Scent is the
Speaker 1: shortest synaptic leap in your brain to your memory. So
Speaker 1: you can smell something that you haven't smell for forty
Speaker 1: years and it will like music, it will instantly take
Speaker 1: you back to the place where you first smelled.
Speaker 2: That is there a smell that if you need comfort
Speaker 2: that you want to smell. What is yours tomato sauce?
Speaker 2: When my son died and we were all ran back
Speaker 2: to the house, everybody was everywhere, and so all the
Speaker 2: other children and my husband we got to the house
Speaker 2: and I was going up the steps into our bedroom
Speaker 2: and one of my kids came in and I said, Abe,
Speaker 2: put tomato sauce on. I need to smell tomato sauce
Speaker 2: cooking that I just needed to have that smell in
Speaker 2: the house, that somehow there was a continuation was whatever
Speaker 2: it was. So I think that smelled to me always
Speaker 2: is a sense of comfort.
Speaker 1: What is yours Christmas pudding?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 1: Which I eat once a month? You don't, I do?
Speaker 1: You don't?
Speaker 2: You don't wait up all year for Christmas?
Speaker 1: Can't wait that long. I'd need one once a week,
Speaker 1: but I'd explode. And in January every store and shop
Speaker 1: is literally throwing them like footballs at such a scant
Speaker 1: to get So I got twenty seven waiting in my
Speaker 1: pantry at the moment.
Speaker 2: So we have your smell, your favorite smell Christmas pudding?
Speaker 2: What is your comfort food?
Speaker 1: Baked beans? Oh?
Speaker 2: Is it? Tell me about that?
Speaker 1: Oh? Just baked beans, because I've had them my entire life,
Speaker 1: and you just heat them up and put them on
Speaker 1: a piece of toast. What's yours probably does.
Speaker 2: If I feel a sense of stress or pandic, I
Speaker 2: do want chocolate. I do find a piece of chocolate.
Speaker 2: It's that crave. I crave a piece of chocolate. But
Speaker 2: then again, for me, it would be tomato pasta. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that if I can have, even if it's cold the
Speaker 2: next morning, I can have. If I have that carb
Speaker 2: of the of the pasta with tomato sauce, I'm a
Speaker 2: happy person.
Speaker 1: Have you always said tomato sauce instead of tomato? So
Speaker 1: I go back and forth, you do?
Speaker 2: It just depends on my where I am. But I'll say, yeah,
Speaker 2: you say tomato asking tomatow Okay, but let's definitely not
Speaker 2: call the whole thing off.
Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you, Richard, thank you, thank you for listening
Speaker 1: to Ruthie's Table for in partnership with Montclair