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Speaker 1: I'm often asked about the quality I look for when
Speaker 1: interviewing a chef. Is it the way they make an
Speaker 1: omelet own a fish, or perform under stress? For me,
Speaker 1: the answer is easy. The quality I look for is
Speaker 1: quite simply curiosity. The world knows Tony Blair as a
Speaker 1: visionary leader prime Minister. I know him as a close
Speaker 1: and loyal friend, but most of all, he is curious
Speaker 1: and the first dinner we had for him in our
Speaker 1: home in nineteen ninety six, he went straight into the
Speaker 1: kitchen to talk to a young, inexperienced chef, Jamie Oliver,
Speaker 1: asking how he was making the rottolo di spinacci. Tony
Speaker 1: Blair has been interviewed countless times, but tonight on Ruthie's
Speaker 1: table before, we're going to look at his life and
Speaker 1: his career through memories of food, food in politics, food
Speaker 1: and family, And tonight the curiosity is all mine.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Bolle.
Speaker 1: So the recipe that you chose is grilled and roasted
Speaker 1: wild sea bass. Would you like to read the recipe?
Speaker 2: Sure a lot could have chosen fifteen different things. I'm
Speaker 2: just delighted on this because I like it's kind of simplicity.
Speaker 2: Grilled and rose did wild sea bass serves four to
Speaker 2: six one three kilogram wild sea bass. Two tablespoons fennyl seeds,
Speaker 2: two lemons, sliced parsley stalks, fresh fennel bulbs, trimmed and sliced,
Speaker 2: juice of one lemon, seventy five mil white wine, and
Speaker 2: extra virgin olive oil. Preheat oven to two hundred degrees.
Speaker 2: Season the inside of the fish with fennel seeds and
Speaker 2: season well. Brush the skin with olive oil, and grill
Speaker 2: on a cast iron, ridged or oven grill for five
Speaker 2: to six minutes on each side. Put the lemon, parsley,
Speaker 2: remaining fennel seeds in a roasting tin and lay the
Speaker 2: sea bass over. Drizzle the lemon juice, olive oil, white wine,
Speaker 2: and the remaining herbs and vegetables. Bake for thirty minutes
Speaker 2: or until the fish is firm to the touch, delicious
Speaker 2: with salsa verdi.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I was really really pleased that you chose
Speaker 1: this recipe because it's two methods. It's grilled, so you
Speaker 1: have the chargrill on the outside, but then you have
Speaker 1: the juiciness of actually taking it. Was there a reason
Speaker 1: you chose it or did you just?
Speaker 2: I often, if I'm in a restaurant, will order fish,
Speaker 2: just simple fish, and especially when when you if you
Speaker 2: get a nice white fish, which I've just been in
Speaker 2: Greece recently and they do that very well. You know,
Speaker 2: take it from the sea and it's it's a white fish.
Speaker 2: You add a little bit of olive oil and lemon
Speaker 2: and it's it's it's very simple, but it's beautiful and tasty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean, that is the difference I think
Speaker 1: between Greek, Mediterranean food Italian of the South of France
Speaker 1: is that there's not a lot of sauce. You know,
Speaker 1: you just have the great ingredient and then you trust
Speaker 1: it to be It's.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, and I think it's it's you know, it's
Speaker 2: fantastic when you're the food is just very simple but
Speaker 2: well cooked, well prepared, and you know, it's things like
Speaker 2: if you even if you're like a tomato salad, it's
Speaker 2: a very simple thing. But if the tomatoes are really
Speaker 2: nice and it's done with a nice dressing on it,
Speaker 2: I mean it's beautiful. So I'm I'm not a great
Speaker 2: one for very fancy sources, to be honest.
Speaker 1: Although sometimes to go to Paris and have a delicious,
Speaker 1: well kind of turbot with the bourblog not that.
Speaker 2: And by the way, one thing I always say to
Speaker 2: people because sometimes people say to me, what's your favorite
Speaker 2: type of cooking? Yeah, and I say I don't have one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I like good food. I appreciate good food.
Speaker 2: And I could eat Thai, I could eat Japanese and
Speaker 2: eat French, I could eat Italian, I could eat Greek,
Speaker 2: and I could eat English or Scottish.
Speaker 1: So Downing Street is in office, it's a public space,
Speaker 1: it's a governmental space, but it's also a home. And
Speaker 1: you were there with young children and you presumably they
Speaker 1: came home from school and you sat down to me
Speaker 1: or did you not. Did you have a certain way
Speaker 1: that this was work and then you would have family
Speaker 1: time at the weekends. Was there a sort of routine
Speaker 1: or structure for being a family.
Speaker 2: Or before going into Downing Street. I mean, we did
Speaker 2: have a much more structured life, but then once you've
Speaker 2: become premnise to frankly, your schedules just packed, and so
Speaker 2: at the weekends usually when we were through and checkers,
Speaker 2: we would eat all together and that would be great,
Speaker 2: But otherwise it was pretty hand to mouth. When my
Speaker 2: kids knew I was coming on this podcast, they said
Speaker 2: to me, are you going to tell them that you
Speaker 2: used to cook for us and that your cooking was terrible?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, now, what I might just do
Speaker 2: is just say that the meals I cooked for my
Speaker 2: children were memorable. Memorable, believe it at that? So yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean no, Downing Street was just too busy.
Speaker 1: There wasn't a Maybe there still isn't a Downing Street
Speaker 1: chef that hooks bakfast lunch and there wasn't I know
Speaker 1: at the White House they have the residents, and I
Speaker 1: know that the State Department is very careful with ambassadors
Speaker 1: about what they can spend on parties and food. But
Speaker 1: to have the Office of the Prime Minister, you would
Speaker 1: think that there was a yeah.
Speaker 2: And by the way, in our embassies you can eat
Speaker 2: very well in British embassies abroad in the Elisa you get.
Speaker 2: I think it's a high quality for naturally and very
Speaker 2: traditional French cooking.
Speaker 1: You didn't give very many state dinners at Downing Street
Speaker 1: that you would know.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 1: At the Palace, I.
Speaker 2: Almost took the view with we didn't. I mean occasionally
Speaker 2: I would do it and if someone really wanted to
Speaker 2: have a dinner. But I with other political leaders, I mean,
Speaker 2: I just know what I feel like. You know, when
Speaker 2: you're engaged with the political leader, I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe you have a drink together and so on, and
Speaker 2: maybe you do have a meal together occasionally, but you
Speaker 2: want to do business. You want to sort out the
Speaker 2: business of the day. And then if you're a foreign
Speaker 2: leader and you're visiting and you're in London, and you know,
Speaker 2: maybe Franklin would like to go out and spend some
Speaker 2: time with you, your friends or colleagues, and rather than
Speaker 2: be within the formality of these dinners, which on the
Speaker 2: whole I never felt yielded a great deal.
Speaker 1: Was there any in your memory that wasn't in China
Speaker 1: or in Russia, or in Germany or France. Was there
Speaker 1: a steak dinner that really well brings in memory?
Speaker 2: There wasn't a state dinners where the head of state,
Speaker 2: So the only state dinner in the UK would be
Speaker 2: the Queen obviously giving the dinner, and where again the
Speaker 2: food is pretty good actually, but I do remember one
Speaker 2: really memorable meal. So France and the UK and Germany
Speaker 2: we were all together in this consort HM to build
Speaker 2: the airbus three eighty okay, and we visited Toulouse, which
Speaker 2: is where part of the plane was being built, and
Speaker 2: so the leaders all went there, and she actually was
Speaker 2: the president at the time, and I remember we after
Speaker 2: we visited the plant and saw the plane and so on,
Speaker 2: we sat down and we had a I think they
Speaker 2: called it a cash It was complete.
Speaker 1: What was it like?
Speaker 2: What was was just with with the beans and the beans, yeah,
Speaker 2: and the sausage and it was unbelievably good. And the
Speaker 2: funny thing was, so Jacques Shiaq, who's you know, a big,
Speaker 2: big figure and someone I actually, despite our disagreements politically
Speaker 2: from time to time, I liked greatly. But the strange
Speaker 2: thing about Jacques was he didn't drink wine. He's a
Speaker 2: French president, didn't drink wine wine, and I don't think
Speaker 2: it was very interested in food. I mean, I'm and
Speaker 2: so I was saying to it this. He was talking
Speaker 2: to me about the airbus three eighty and I was
Speaker 2: saying to him, Jacques, you gotta understand this food is
Speaker 2: absolutely unbelievable. And I think he's always a bit eccentric
Speaker 2: after a time, because I was calling the chef over
Speaker 2: and talking to him and saying like, okay, that is
Speaker 2: a memorable.
Speaker 1: I went to Richard and I were living in Paris
Speaker 1: and David Owen was given a dinner at the k
Speaker 1: Doors and we were invited. We've been to various dinners here,
Speaker 1: but that one was there was a footman behind every plasma.
Speaker 1: Everyone had their own liveried footman behind you in the service,
Speaker 1: and the grandeur of the palace was it was something
Speaker 1: to behold. What about in Buckingham Palace? Was that more?
Speaker 1: Did you ever have to have the Queen to Downing
Speaker 1: Street or would you always go to the palace?
Speaker 2: Well, we did once at the Queen to Downing Street
Speaker 2: when all myself and the other prime ministers people have
Speaker 2: been prime minister, we all had a dinner with her.
Speaker 2: She said, well you all know each other anyway, But yeah,
Speaker 2: that was I don't remember the details of it.
Speaker 1: And now on your travels, you know, coming up to now,
Speaker 1: do you have a kind of ROUTINEO Do you have
Speaker 1: a way that you eat when you're traveling when you
Speaker 1: know you're taking a long flight? Do you eat on
Speaker 1: the flight or do.
Speaker 2: You mean will I mean I will eat on the flight.
Speaker 2: But I think if I go to anywhere, I mean,
Speaker 2: you know, for example, in the Middle East, I will
Speaker 2: try and if I've got some spare time, then I
Speaker 2: would try and have a dinner in a good restaurant.
Speaker 1: And what is it like the food is it?
Speaker 2: I mean a lot of the restaurants you get in
Speaker 2: the in the Middle East will be restaurants where they're
Speaker 2: serving international food if you like. But I think one
Speaker 2: thing that's happening around the world is a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, you get emerging new cooks and chefs cooking
Speaker 2: traditional food from their culture, but they're doing it in
Speaker 2: a much more innovative and exciting and interesting way. I
Speaker 2: had a actually a great meal not so long ago.
Speaker 2: Because my institute now works in over forty different countries,
Speaker 2: we're very busy around the different parts of the world,
Speaker 2: and we've we have project in Guyana and there was
Speaker 2: a restaurant there that it was suggested I went to
Speaker 2: because I said, I knew I had an evening free
Speaker 2: in the capital city, and so I said, it's a
Speaker 2: really good restaurant eating And they said, well, you know,
Speaker 2: there's this place in the place, but the very best
Speaker 2: food is this place the backyard. But it's not suitable
Speaker 2: for you because it is literally a backyard. I mean
Speaker 2: it's someone's it's a small house and it's the backyard.
Speaker 2: It was a backyard. But the chef was fantastic. There
Speaker 2: were fruits that I'd literally never tasted before, and the
Speaker 2: food was just exceptional. And I think wherever you are
Speaker 2: in the in the world, you can today you will
Speaker 2: find people who are innovating in food. And I think
Speaker 2: it's a very you know, it's a very good and
Speaker 2: healthy thing. And I often say to the leaders I'm
Speaker 2: dealing with, if you are giving a dinner for visiting
Speaker 2: foreign leaders, serve your local produce and your local cuisine,
Speaker 2: don't you know. I remember when I first went to China.
Speaker 2: Used to go there and they would serve you Western food.
Speaker 2: They'd serve you a very sad looking lamb chop, and
Speaker 2: I in the conversation with him, saying, you've got one
Speaker 2: of the great cuisines of the world. Serve that, which
Speaker 2: I think they do far more now. But it's an
Speaker 2: important thing if you want to showcase your country. The
Speaker 2: cuisine is an important part of the culture.
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Speaker 1: grew up in Edinburgh, right, well.
Speaker 2: I went to I was born in Edinburgh, I went
Speaker 2: to school in Edinburgh. My family came from Ireland, but
Speaker 2: we spent a lot of time in Glasgow, so it
Speaker 2: was and then Durham in the northeast, so we were
Speaker 2: kind of a bit of a mix.
Speaker 1: And what was the food your memories of food in
Speaker 1: your house? Who cooked?
Speaker 2: So my mother cooked? And I mean I knew it
Speaker 2: was coming on the podcast and going to speak to you.
Speaker 2: I could remember some things. And then I asked my
Speaker 2: brother and my sister for the any of their memories,
Speaker 2: and oh, my good. As a whole there was a
Speaker 2: whole explosion of yeah, yeah, so and I completely forgotten
Speaker 2: things like my mum cooked curries, which is quite unusual
Speaker 2: for British people to do in the nineteen sixties. She
Speaker 2: introduced me to cachery. She did a wonderful toad in the.
Speaker 1: Hole sausage with kind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, the classics she had.
Speaker 1: She did she have a career, did she work?
Speaker 2: No? But she was actually a super good cook. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sounds like in your house, what would you do? Come
Speaker 1: home and start doing your homework and then have dinner
Speaker 1: around the table or every night. You'd have to know
Speaker 1: pretty much.
Speaker 2: And I always remember when we would go in the
Speaker 2: seaside was not so far away from us, in the
Speaker 2: northeast of England, and we'd occasionally go up to from
Speaker 2: Durham to Northumberland and go by the seaside and the
Speaker 2: great treat was to stab fish and chips in the
Speaker 2: in the car at the end of the of a
Speaker 2: day when usually it was too cold to swim. But yeah,
Speaker 2: but she was interested in food and all sorts of
Speaker 2: memories came back about tell me pineapple upside down cake,
Speaker 2: baked Alaska she did, which is actually quite I think
Speaker 2: quite difficult to do probably, But.
Speaker 1: What would that be?
Speaker 2: What year?
Speaker 1: What decade was that?
Speaker 2: It's all been the sixties, early seventies.
Speaker 1: And would she have come from a home that cared
Speaker 1: about food or.
Speaker 2: Well, she came from her father who died when she
Speaker 2: was quite young, was a farmer, actually a Protestant farmer
Speaker 2: in the south of Ireland or in the Republic of Isoland.
Speaker 2: And then when he died, her mother remarried a butcher
Speaker 2: in Glasgow. So we always had you know.
Speaker 1: Good that was your step grandfather.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was my step grandfather. And I remember he'd
Speaker 2: had an accident when he was young, so he was
Speaker 2: he had hit a limp and walk with a stick.
Speaker 2: And some of my earliest memories were going down to
Speaker 2: the Glasgow meat market with him when he would go
Speaker 2: and you know, you go down these great rows of
Speaker 2: carcasses hung up and he would tap them with his
Speaker 2: stick and decide which ones he wanted to take his business. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: they say, And my grandmother cooked as well. You know,
Speaker 2: she cooked stews, roasts, I mean, very traditional stuff.
Speaker 1: But to grab in a house where one night you
Speaker 1: had bachel ask and one night you heard pineapple offside
Speaker 1: down cake and tone on the whole and a curry
Speaker 1: so it was a currie. Do you think that was
Speaker 1: just from her ambition to cook or did she Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I think it was because she was I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean I think at the time not many people
Speaker 2: were making curries. I mean obviously later it became completely different.
Speaker 2: I think she had the funny credit cookbook. Yes that's mine.
Speaker 1: I have a chef here who has said that she
Speaker 1: was from Wales. In her she and her mother entertained
Speaker 1: she had to do those kind of rolls of butter,
Speaker 1: and there was a kind of I think there was
Speaker 1: probably a resurgence you know, of cooking maybe in the
Speaker 1: sixties after also probably after the terribleness of rationing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were rationing the war. Yeah, but people people did.
Speaker 2: The great leap forward in Britain I think came later
Speaker 2: the late days nineties. It really started then and then yeah,
Speaker 2: because I mean Britain say you can eat well. But
Speaker 2: there was a time when Franklin it was a struggle.
Speaker 1: But I never come down hard on British for that
Speaker 1: because they did come from a war and they came
Speaker 1: from rushing, and so I always say cut them some
Speaker 1: slack when people say how food bad food was until yeah.
Speaker 2: It was also I think there was this thing at
Speaker 2: the time. I remember I used to have this debate
Speaker 2: quite often because I represented then a Northeast constituency near
Speaker 2: to where I was brought up. And you know, now
Speaker 2: it is much much better, by the way, but at
Speaker 2: the time when I first came there, I mean, the
Speaker 2: food was poor. And I used to have this debate
Speaker 2: with people where they'd say, yeah, but you know, working
Speaker 2: class people, they're not so interested in fancy food and
Speaker 2: all the rest of it, And I was just say,
Speaker 2: I can't believe anyone's my interest in food. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's a ridiculous piece of snobbery to think that if
Speaker 2: you come from working class background, Okay, maybe you can't
Speaker 2: afford some of the fancy dishes, but why would you
Speaker 2: want to eat bad food rather than good.
Speaker 1: For And it's very patronizing and as you say.
Speaker 2: And it turns out it's wrong because now a lot
Speaker 2: of these places have got good, good pubs, restaurants and do.
Speaker 1: Well did you go out to restaurants as a child?
Speaker 1: Would your parents take you out occasionally? They for special
Speaker 1: occasions or would.
Speaker 2: You but yeah, we'd have to be pretty special occasion.
Speaker 2: And then when we would go on a holiday to France,
Speaker 2: for example, we would we would eat in restaurants there
Speaker 2: and that was that was great.
Speaker 1: That So your parents took you to Europe? Did you
Speaker 1: as a child? All three of you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well three of us, and we would drive down
Speaker 2: there and usually rent a little place. And certainly then
Speaker 2: in a lot of the small villages. We used to
Speaker 2: go to the Pyrenees a lot, and the small villages
Speaker 2: there you would you would go to a restaurant that
Speaker 2: wouldn't really be a menu. You just sometimes you'd sit
Speaker 2: at a long table and they'll just be whatever they had,
Speaker 2: But it was always good.
Speaker 1: What did your father do? What was his? What was his?
Speaker 2: So my father was a lawyer. He was also an
Speaker 2: aspiring politician, and he was a conservative in fact, and
Speaker 2: he was head of the local Conservative association. And then
Speaker 2: just before the nineteen sixty four election, he was going
Speaker 2: to become an MP. He'd been selected for a good
Speaker 2: Conservative seat and unfortunately he had a very serious stroke
Speaker 2: that kind of ended his career all together. How old
Speaker 2: was he He was forty.
Speaker 1: Now hit a stroke when he was forty.
Speaker 2: How old are you ten? So it was quite a
Speaker 2: big moment for our family, obviously, because all our circumstances
Speaker 2: changed overnight. But I know he then lived for another
Speaker 2: almost half century.
Speaker 1: Actually I was able to travel to France and take
Speaker 1: you on trip.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean he never fully recovered, but he recovered
Speaker 2: enough to better work again and so on. But I
Speaker 2: remember conversations around the table. My earliest political conversations were
Speaker 2: around that table where they have aspiring conservative politicians would
Speaker 2: come and pay him a visit because they would want
Speaker 2: nominations in the local constituencies. And so on, usually young
Speaker 2: conservative those who wanted to be MPs. So some of
Speaker 2: my earliest conversations around politics, which is absorbing that, I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as a child to be around the table. I
Speaker 1: did an interview with Valerie Biden, President Biden's sister, and
Speaker 1: she described having that that was orchestrated in a very
Speaker 1: there were I think six children, There was a very
Speaker 1: Catholic Irish family, you know, and that every night there
Speaker 1: was a conversation about a political issue. Did that meals
Speaker 1: around the table? Did that matter to you?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it was, it was. I guess my
Speaker 2: earliest political memories were doing that. I mean I wasn't
Speaker 2: particularly part of the conversation that I was just listening
Speaker 2: to it, but I was aware of it, and I
Speaker 2: remember things from it. And I remember some of the people.
Speaker 1: That came and your mother would cook them and the
Speaker 1: children would be there'd be present.
Speaker 2: I mean I was sort of feeling that my mum
Speaker 2: was not fully signed up to the conservative course. Actually yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean she never sort of expressed a view particularly
Speaker 2: on it, but that was always my impression. But you know,
Speaker 2: the food to which would cook the food.
Speaker 1: Obviously when you were young, we went to boarding school
Speaker 1: at what age thirteen? Was that a big change for
Speaker 1: you to go from these very domestic, cozy dinners, family
Speaker 1: dinners to a boarding school.
Speaker 2: I mean the absence of good food was only one
Speaker 2: of the changes, as it were. It was quite a
Speaker 2: I mean, look, I always say to be like, I
Speaker 2: got a good education at the school, so I'm grateful
Speaker 2: to the school for that. But the food was awful.
Speaker 2: I'm afraid the only thing they could get just about
Speaker 2: got right was the breakfast because you got porridge because
Speaker 2: it was a Scottish school. And the one thing I
Speaker 2: do remember is that the bread rolls that they would
Speaker 2: have would usually be fresh. The breakfast went too bad,
Speaker 2: but some of the other meals.
Speaker 1: Did they force you to eat as well?
Speaker 2: Did you have to did you have to finish for
Speaker 2: you when you're a young teenager growing up hungry? So
Speaker 2: in the annually pretty much enery, which we did, you
Speaker 2: know during holiday times of course I'd come back home,
Speaker 2: so yeah, and you'd have half terms and I remember
Speaker 2: I also had This is interesting, So my father was
Speaker 2: actually brought up as a foster child. He was he
Speaker 2: was his real mother left him with someone because she
Speaker 2: was on the stage she was an actress and anyways,
Speaker 2: a long story, but he never got given back, so
Speaker 2: he stayed with my foster grandmother. But we used to
Speaker 2: go through because the schools in Edinbury used to go
Speaker 2: through to Glasgow where she would live. And she lived
Speaker 2: in one of the corporation flats in Glasgow, and I
Speaker 2: remember it was always a treat with her Scotch pie.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like a mutton insider inside a crusty pie,
Speaker 2: and you'd have it with baked beans and Scotch pries.
Speaker 2: I mean it's years since I've had one, but they
Speaker 2: actually really good, and I remember that you'd have it
Speaker 2: hot hot, they'd make you know, it's like the Scottish loads.
Speaker 2: I remember as well. They had a different type of
Speaker 2: loaf in Scotland, where the outside of it would be
Speaker 2: much the crust would be much firmer and stronger, and
Speaker 2: it was very good bread to toast.
Speaker 1: From fatties coming home and going to that school. You
Speaker 1: then took a gap year or what did you do?
Speaker 2: I took a gap year. I came down to London
Speaker 2: and I did various things, you know, with music.
Speaker 1: But well, tell me what did you do well?
Speaker 2: For a time? I worked in Barker's food store in
Speaker 2: town and down in the basement, and then I.
Speaker 1: Was that in Kensington High School.
Speaker 2: It was in Kensington High Street. And then I we
Speaker 2: myself and a few friends used to manage some groups
Speaker 2: and put on some gigs and things, and we started
Speaker 2: to make enough money so I could give up the
Speaker 2: Barker's job and did that for a year.
Speaker 1: And you had your own flat. And do you remember
Speaker 1: any of the food sperience as your head as a
Speaker 1: young adventurer in London.
Speaker 2: I do remember that.
Speaker 1: I can remember a meal.
Speaker 2: Do remember was that I had a girlfriend whose mum
Speaker 2: was a fantastic cook. That's good. Yeah, that was good
Speaker 2: because I wasn't eating a very well during that I
Speaker 2: wasn't eating there. I wasn't really eating much at all.
Speaker 1: Do you remember what you ate? What she cooked?
Speaker 2: What I remember is that for the first time in
Speaker 2: my life I had spinach and broccoli and liked it
Speaker 2: because we used to do this strange thing back in
Speaker 2: the old days in Britain where you just boil these things.
Speaker 2: You just boil them and they just be there boiled
Speaker 2: and usually over boiled. So it was not a pleasant experience.
Speaker 2: And I remember the first time, thinking it is really tasty, and.
Speaker 1: Of mine was talking about how now that women had careers,
Speaker 1: this is a long time ago, they didn't have time
Speaker 1: to cook and they thought what a sad thing that is.
Speaker 1: But actually vegetables would be better because they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the time too. For an hour. Hurry up, we only
Speaker 1: have an hour to dinner.
Speaker 2: Get the cabbage on, boil them disintegration. Yeah, cabbage was
Speaker 2: the other thing I remember. Yeah, that's right. I remember
Speaker 2: she did the cabbage in her I didn't didn't like
Speaker 2: cabbage either, and this was the first time it was
Speaker 2: done with her. I can't remember exactly what was in it,
Speaker 2: but I remember tasting and thinking, because I've been school,
Speaker 2: cabbage up to them have been my experience.
Speaker 1: Did you but did you ever? We were ever attempted
Speaker 1: to cook at all?
Speaker 2: When you were When I went to university and for
Speaker 2: my first period I was it was in the hall,
Speaker 2: and then I shared a house with one of my
Speaker 2: friends and myself and my my friend who was a guy,
Speaker 2: and three women, and I remember, you know, we all
Speaker 2: sat down and said, right, everyone's taking turns and cooking.
Speaker 2: And I said said, wow, I can't cook, and so
Speaker 2: the women said, we're going to show you, so they did.
Speaker 2: I remember making stews, the traditional kind of spaghetti, bolignieers
Speaker 2: type stuff, maybe the odd roast, but I needed a
Speaker 2: lot of supervision to be to be absolute frank it was,
Speaker 2: I should say that I went to We just joined
Speaker 2: the European Union in the UK is in the seventies,
Speaker 2: and one of the great things was you could just
Speaker 2: go and work in any European country. So I decided
Speaker 2: to go to Paris. And I just decided to go there.
Speaker 2: I literally went there. I knew someone who was there.
Speaker 2: I mean a bit live when I came down to London.
Speaker 2: I never really been to London before. I just turned
Speaker 2: up and thought, you know, let's get on with it.
Speaker 2: And so I went to Paris. I worked in a
Speaker 2: restaurant there, in a hotel, do you remember the name.
Speaker 2: The hotel was called the Hotel Superindu La tour was
Speaker 2: just by the Eiffel Tower. And I was just I
Speaker 2: was a comedy du bar. I was just a you know, waiter.
Speaker 2: But in Paris you had well virtually any anywhere and
Speaker 2: even in the in the cheapest of restaurants. And then
Speaker 2: at the end of my time, because I then did
Speaker 2: some sorry this had been nineteen seventy six, I think.
Speaker 2: And then I worked for a time for an organization
Speaker 2: called the Group DISASSINOLSNACNL, which is which was a nationalized
Speaker 2: insurance company. And I remember the great thing was every morning,
Speaker 2: I mean I was I was this young guy in
Speaker 2: the office and it was just me. I was just
Speaker 2: a gopher in the office, and there would be all
Speaker 2: I think there was mean about twenty women in this office.
Speaker 2: I don't think. I think I was the only man
Speaker 2: who was in there. But every morning, before we settled
Speaker 2: down to work, they would discuss the meals they'd had
Speaker 2: the night before. I'm just thinking, this is, this is wonderful.
Speaker 2: And I would be sent off to the local patisserie
Speaker 2: to get in a croissant, cakes for everyone. And then
Speaker 2: when I finished that I spent a few weeks, they
Speaker 2: gave me a bonus and I took a bite. You
Speaker 2: used to have this thing which you would hire a
Speaker 2: bike and have a train ticket at the same time.
Speaker 2: And I went down to the door doin and I
Speaker 2: cycled round it. And I remember going to places right
Speaker 2: up in the in the hills and having these fantastic meals.
Speaker 2: Really really great French, very simple French cooking, and I
Speaker 2: think that was when I I'd always been interested in
Speaker 2: but that's when I decided this is something I like,
Speaker 2: so something that matters to me.
Speaker 1: And I think they except, you know, as you say,
Speaker 1: to be able to arrive in a small town in
Speaker 1: the middle of France and have a meal that's care,
Speaker 1: it's part of the culture. Always say that Melbourne has
Speaker 1: a great food culture. But then when you go to
Speaker 1: Paris and the taxi curfer can tell you how to
Speaker 1: poach a seabas or they will tell you in the patisserie,
Speaker 1: there's no your point about fresh bread that if you
Speaker 1: want bread for lunch you go in the morning, and
Speaker 1: you can want bread for dinner you go in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: That was the bigetts. Yeah, and you can have a
Speaker 1: bigette which was crusty or non crusty. You could have
Speaker 1: a croissant that had butter or no butter. It's just
Speaker 1: so imbued when you travel, do you do you think
Speaker 1: about what you're going to eat when you go to.
Speaker 2: Do so With Si, I mean we it was. It's
Speaker 2: always been important to us and when we would go
Speaker 2: on holiday particularly, we would always trying to used to
Speaker 2: go a lot to France and we get out that
Speaker 2: Michelin Guide with the the restaurants that were not the
Speaker 2: Michelin Star ones, but they used to have this thing
Speaker 2: called Redar which was good food of reasonable prices, and
Speaker 2: it was my job was to plan out the itinerary
Speaker 2: for eating out.
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, O, wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thank you. We would be a missed opportunity if we
Speaker 1: didn't talk about food and politics, and we were talking
Speaker 1: about Jamie Oliver and his campaign for school food. You
Speaker 1: know that there's a great poster saying today four hundred
Speaker 1: thousand children in Britain will have the same thing for dinner.
Speaker 2: Nothing.
Speaker 1: And we found out during COVID when kids didn't go
Speaker 1: to school, that they weren't being fed and that we
Speaker 1: live in a country, or we live in a world
Speaker 1: where we know that there is food inequality. And I
Speaker 1: know you're dealing a lot with climate. Is that a
Speaker 1: concern of yours?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I think one of the reasons why
Speaker 2: when I was in government we did a lot on
Speaker 2: early years education, sure start and school meals. Indeed with
Speaker 2: Jamie is because could you not go to school and
Speaker 2: be hungry, because they won't learn so well, And to
Speaker 2: give them an appreciation of good food early and healthy
Speaker 2: food is important. It's going to be important for their
Speaker 2: later life. And I think we know much more about
Speaker 2: nutrition today than we ever used to, so I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot you can do there, and then on
Speaker 2: a more kind of global scale with some of the
Speaker 2: work we do with governments. For example, the new president
Speaker 2: in Indonesia, his principal program is all around school meals
Speaker 2: for children, and I think there's a recognition in countries
Speaker 2: where previously there wasn't of the importance of this. But
Speaker 2: I also think there's a whole set of policies around
Speaker 2: famine and agriculture which we can develop with the use
Speaker 2: of technology to a much much better degree today. And
Speaker 2: there are still many of the countries we work in
Speaker 2: in Africa, because we're in roughly twenty different countries in
Speaker 2: Africa and we work with the governments there, But I
Speaker 2: would say large numbers of those countries will import a
Speaker 2: lot of basic food stuffs when they've got a large
Speaker 2: amount of arable land, and then one thing that's in
Speaker 2: a way almost worse because it deprives them of income.
Speaker 2: And it's something we work on with some kind tries
Speaker 2: is how you add value to the food that you create.
Speaker 2: So you will have countries that, for example, will produce
Speaker 2: the raw commodity of nuts, but then they will be
Speaker 2: sent to Vietnam or to India to process and then
Speaker 2: come back into that country, and obviously then it's not
Speaker 2: merely that you're losing the income from that, but you're
Speaker 2: losing the higher value added skills that come with that,
Speaker 2: and thatfore your economy really suffers. So there's a whole
Speaker 2: series of things I think we need to do today
Speaker 2: around food, how we grow it, where we grow it.
Speaker 2: I think there'll be a lot of work done on
Speaker 2: drought resistant crops, which are going to be necessary for
Speaker 2: the future because of climate is changing. And how you
Speaker 2: raise productivity when you look at different countries equal potential,
Speaker 2: but one country will be producing from the same land
Speaker 2: four or five times the amount of crops.
Speaker 1: And so this brings us to your book on leadership,
Speaker 1: Tony Blair, Lessons for the twenty first Century. So this
Speaker 1: is a book that was published in September, I would
Speaker 1: love you to tell us about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's an unusual book in a wait because
Speaker 2: when I said to the publishers, I want to write
Speaker 2: a book about the lessons I've learned from governing and leadership,
Speaker 2: not just in my time as Prime Minister, but in
Speaker 2: the work that i've been doing now for the last
Speaker 2: seventeen years with governments around the world. And I think
Speaker 2: they struggled at first to think of whether a book
Speaker 2: on governing could be of any interest to anyone. But
Speaker 2: I've tried to write it therefore, in a style that
Speaker 2: is short chapters, just about what I think of the
Speaker 2: lessons of leadership and really apply whether you're in government
Speaker 2: or you're running a country, a company, a community center.
Speaker 1: Family, Yeah, parenting, parenting.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I was reading it and I thought these are someone
Speaker 1: else said that to me. Actually, yeah, about listening, about
Speaker 1: being honest, this is about family, to be about friends.
Speaker 2: Well, most of the learnings have come through mistakes. I
Speaker 2: have to say. When you come into a position of leadership,
Speaker 2: when you first come in, you know you know nothing,
Speaker 2: so you're very open to learning. The second stage of
Speaker 2: leadership is you've then got your feet under the table.
Speaker 2: You've been doing a whole lot of stuff, and the
Speaker 2: risk is you think you know everything and you stop listening.
Speaker 2: The thing that you should aspire to is to get
Speaker 2: to the third stage of leadership, where you realize what
Speaker 2: you do know and you realize what you don't know,
Speaker 2: you understand the difference, and you're back to listening again.
Speaker 2: And it's the dangerous when you get stuck on two.
Speaker 1: I have to say that when we knew that we
Speaker 1: had to close the restaurant for COVID, and we didn't
Speaker 1: know where to know how we do it, and I thought,
Speaker 1: we have to get all the staff together, it's about
Speaker 1: leadership and tell them that they're not going to come
Speaker 1: to work. We don't know for how long, in weeks
Speaker 1: or months or this was such a serious thing that
Speaker 1: what we were going to do and how are we
Speaker 1: going to do it? And so we said, okay, get
Speaker 1: everyone to come in at four o'clock and we'll sit down.
Speaker 1: And I went, I googled how to tell yourself bad news.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess what.
Speaker 1: Harvard Business School I told you. Of course, how to
Speaker 1: give your staff bad news.
Speaker 2: You know, the.
Speaker 1: First thing you do is tell them what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Then you tell them. Step two is how it will
Speaker 1: affect them, and then number three was what you're going
Speaker 1: to do to help them. It was just but as
Speaker 1: you say, I've been working in this restaurant for a
Speaker 1: long time, and you say, the first step is to
Speaker 1: know that you know, and then the second one is
Speaker 1: to know that you don't know, and the third one
Speaker 1: is to get some help. So I think it's a
Speaker 1: very very important book and everybody listening should buy it
Speaker 1: and read it and write to me and tell me
Speaker 1: how much you like it. When we're going to eat
Speaker 1: in the river Cuft have dinner, but before you do go,
Speaker 1: we do have a question that we do ask everyone,
Speaker 1: and it is about food. Is teaching about the culture.
Speaker 1: If food is feeding your children or going to a
Speaker 1: state dinner, or entertaining the queen. It's also comfort when
Speaker 1: you do need comfort for it. Is there a food
Speaker 1: that you would actually go to.
Speaker 2: I would go for something very simple. I still can
Speaker 2: cook a decent omelet. I would do that
Speaker 1: Probably tell me that and the bread would be fresh,
Speaker 1: The bread would definitely be Thank you, Jim