Keith Floyd

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a cook. Five years ago he was not always sure he could afford the ingredients for his next meal. Now, five television series and nine books later, he can buy all the food and drink he needs. His success lies in his enthusiasm for his subject and his anarchic approach to its presentation.

Presenter0:49

His television programmes are appreciated as much for the garrulous charm of their presenter as for their culinary content.

Presenter0:56

A constantly replenished wine glass usually to hand, he's become known as the drinking man's cook. He is Keith Floyd. Keith, I didn't intend to make you sound like an overnight success, but it was a bit like that, wasn't it? Suddenly you were somebody.

Keith Floyd1:10

Yes, I was. Um it was a very strange, strange thing. I was running a near bankrupt restaurant in Bristol.

Keith Floyd1:18

And about midnight the waitress came up and said, There's a gentleman on table five who wants to have a quick word with you and I went over to table five and there was this

Keith Floyd1:27

Plump

Keith Floyd1:29

Balding, very red moon faced gentleman in a leather jacket and Doc Martin shoes and a Communist Party C C P red scarf.

Keith Floyd1:38

sort of half asleep in a pile of lobsters and mussels and stuff like that.

Keith Floyd1:43

And I thought, Oh dear, oh dear What am I going to do with this one? and I thought probably the inevitable complaint is going to happen, it's too expensive or something like that. Wasn't a bit of that. He said, I think that was a very good meal.

Speaker 11:43

Oh dear, oh dear what

Keith Floyd1:52

Would you like to appear on television?

Keith Floyd1:55

I thought, well, yeah, great, thanks a lot. I'll do that. That's fine, thank you. But you can still pay for your meal. So I thought, you know, we were quite close to the BBC and I was quite used to BBC people coming in.

Keith Floyd2:05

And they're always late, or they always or booked a table for five and turned out to be three, and they were always a nuisance loved the people really, but they were a nuisance. So I took absolutely no notice of this chap, but said, Fine, that's grand. The following day he phoned me up, said, I was absolutely serious last night. Would you like to make a T V programme?

Keith Floyd2:22

I said, Good Lord. Um yes. So we filmed a very brief five minute segment on how to cook a rabbit for an arts rock and roll programme called RPM for BBC Bristol.

Keith Floyd2:34

And I had the the deal was I had to cook a meal for four people for a pound or something like that. So I cooked rabbit, flamed it in cognac, cooked it with prunes and it was great. And off it went and he phoned me up a few weeks. I said it was terrific. We must do lots and lots more of those. But in fact that was the last in the series and I thought that was the end of my broadcasting career. Two weeks later after that he got promoted from Bristol to Plymouth. He called me up and said do you want to make a cookery series? And I said yes please and I sort of had to hitchhike down to Plymouth to do it.

Presenter3:01

And that was the beginning of it all. Tell me about how you developed the style of your programmes, because obviously what they're appreciated for, as I was trying to say in the introduction there, is as much for their entertainment value, actually, as for what you cook. How did that style develop, you haranguing the cameraman and so on?

Keith Floyd3:17

We were filming for the first time, and what I thought would happen.

Keith Floyd3:22

That the people would tell you what to do. I thought the director would tell you what to do. I thought the I thought there'd be a script. I thought there would be an outline of a programme and stuff like that. And what actually happened was they said, There, what are you going to do? I said, I don't know what I'm going to do. I've never done it before.

Keith Floyd3:39

And so I said, Well where's the script? And I was trying to do this thing. Hello, this is um I'm I'm um I have to cook um this is a haddock and oh god, I can't do that.

Keith Floyd3:51

I said, the hell with it. You don't know what you're doing. I don't know what we're doing.

Keith Floyd3:55

Clive, look, have a look at this. This is a piece of fish. This is some parsley. This is a liquidizer. And it was just like that.

Presenter4:02

And who decided that you should pour yourself a large drink at the same time and use that throughout?

Keith Floyd4:06

I did. I was petrified. I didn't know what to do. Suddenly you you get to a stage where and you now let that simmer for three minutes and you're fighting for a word. You don't so ah and now while that simmers and you pour yourself it's not for drinking, it's it's it's a problem. It's a problem. It's only a problem. You reach out for something.

Presenter4:21

Now listen, there's no booze on our desert island. There's just a fresh water stream, we hope. Um and a grammophone on which to play some music. Now what sort of music will keep you sane?

Keith Floyd4:31

It's got to be really rock and roll and blues. Rock and roll is absolutely vital to me. I mean, I've been on desert islands. I've been on desert islands all my life, you know, through

Keith Floyd4:41

Sort of imaginary desert islands where I like running a restaurant on my own is a desert island.

Keith Floyd4:47

Being a child and sitting fishing and stuff like that.

Keith Floyd4:50

Being alone and being thinking. And when I was very little, when I was about twelve, a strange thing happened. The world changed completely. From David Whitfield and St. Therese of the Roses, suddenly there was rock and roll. And so.

Keith Floyd5:05

When I first heard blue suede shoes, I have from that day to this wanted a pair of blue suede shoes. So blue suede shoes would have to be one of my very, very important records.

Speaker 45:16

Well it's one for the money, two for the show three to get it ready now, go can't go but don't

Speaker 45:23

Step on my blue suede shoe

Speaker 45:27

Well you can do anything but sticky old mama blue sweatshoe.

Speaker 45:32

Well you can knock me down, step in my face, slender my name all over the place We'll do anything that you wanna do But uh uh honey, lay off them shoes and don't shoes Step on my blue sway shoes

Presenter5:45

Elvis Presley and blue suede shoes. Okay, let's go back to the beginning. A lifelong obsession with food, obviously. What are the roots of that obsession? Where did it all start?

Keith Floyd5:55

The roots of all of that.

Keith Floyd5:57

Uh what happens to you if you live in a small rural village in Somerset and you're being brought up just after the war?

Keith Floyd6:06

In a perfectly ordinary family that doesn't have any money and has no great ambitions except to please people at a table, my household is the sort of time my mother's and father's was that there would only be one half a pound of butter a week, but that was spread thickly for as long as it lasted. And to supplement their incomes or to help the household, they would have a big garden.

Keith Floyd6:32

So vegetables were grown in that and chickens were kept and we lived next door to my grandparents. He was a cobbler and would often be paid by farmers in tubs of clotted cream or a side of bacon or something like that. We as kids, mandatory after Sunday school walk, to collect, depending on the season, blackberries or you know, or Sunday mornings mushrooms or collecting chestnuts. Watercress we used to pick every Sunday afternoon for tea. And you were always hungry as well. And that meant things called midnight feasts. And what you would do when they'd gone to bed, you would nip out into perhaps the garden. We worked out the first thing I ever actually cooked at home was runner beans.

Keith Floyd7:12

And um

Keith Floyd7:14

I just boiled them and melted some butter and put some grated cheese on them.

Keith Floyd7:19

And my sister had a a penchant for getting tomatoes, which we grew, and getting bits of parsley and cheese and putting it and so we'd have these midnight feasts. And then

Keith Floyd7:29

Because

Keith Floyd7:30

We would sometimes eat with my eat with my grandmother, who was living next door, even though it wasn't a luxurious place, on Fridays would be a steamed and a fried fish. There was a rhythm to eating. Mondays was cold meat and pickles. There was a larder which had things that human beings had made in it. And these were exciting places to raid.

Presenter7:45

And these

Presenter7:47

And did men cook as well as women?

Keith Floyd7:48

Yes, it did. My grandfather.

Keith Floyd7:51

Ah, he was a dear, irascible, one-legged he only had one leg'cause he had a tin leg.

Keith Floyd7:56

which I used to adore sitting on and he'd tell me about how he lost it in the First World War and he would stomp up and down to his workshop and go and kill a chicken or something like that and decide to curry it. He was absolutely bad at it and he would make huge vats of chutneys and tomato. He made his own tomato ketchup, I remember, for years on end and pickled onions and things like that. And the uncles, my uncle Ken, would get snails from the garden. And it's only 1950 something, but they would. And they'd put them onto the shovel over the coal fire in the living room. Every man on my mother's side of the family is a very good cook.

Presenter8:33

But the experience was obviously idyllic in in that childhood sense as you describe. I mean and also it was large families, was it coming together, meals, just enjoying that kind of company, that kind of bonhomie which you still love today?

Keith Floyd8:45

Yes. The table is the other important piece of furniture in the house. The other one is the marital bed.

Presenter8:51

With that I shall ask for your second record.

Keith Floyd8:54

I love these kind of sad songs. You know, when you're

Keith Floyd8:58

Flying across to Australia 30 hours, albeit you're sitting up in the front having too much shiraz poured down you, or if you've just done something good.

Keith Floyd9:07

You wish that there was somebody there who would know

Keith Floyd9:11

What you were really doing.

Keith Floyd9:13

For that reason I've always, always uh been terribly stirred by Nina Simone to love somebody.

Speaker 49:21

It's a lie.

Speaker 49:24

Maybe you don't know what it's like special ups and five.

Speaker 49:31

Love somebody in the way I love you.

Presenter9:40

Nina Simone To Love Somebody. There's a song that tells more about the man. Would you say you'd been unlucky in love, Keith?

Keith Floyd9:48

I would I wouldn't say unlucky as the word, but catastrophic, you're pretty closer to the mark, I think.

Presenter9:53

Married twice, divorced twice? Yes. How many times has your heart been broken?

Keith Floyd9:58

Two or three?

Presenter10:00

Would you admit to your being at fault in all of this? I mean, are you would you admit to being difficult to live with?

Keith Floyd10:06

I'm impossible to live with, but I don't think it's my fault.

Presenter10:10

Grumpy is the word that crops up about you in the cuttings.

Keith Floyd10:14

I'm not grumpy. I have um

Keith Floyd10:18

I can go so far.

Keith Floyd10:20

You know, um and then I get grumpy or I lose my temper or whatever. If I do something, I do it to the to the maximum, I really do.

Keith Floyd10:29

And that sometimes leaves people breathless. And then when I collapse in some way, temporarily or for a short time or long time, whatever, they think, Hold on, something's gone wrong with him. In fact, it's because I've been running too fast, and then when I stop

Keith Floyd10:42

It seems that my character changes and I go into being very quiet, reclusive, and

Presenter10:48

But there's bound to be that other side, isn't there? Because the the public front is so ebulliant, so enthusiastic. There's bound to be the other side.

Keith Floyd10:53

There is the other side.

Keith Floyd10:58

Um it is a a a a a quiet, introspective, dull, boring

Keith Floyd11:03

Person, you know.

Presenter11:04

So what sort of woman do you need? What are the qualities that you look for in a woman?

Keith Floyd11:09

Um

Keith Floyd11:11

I don't know. I don't think you look.

Keith Floyd11:14

I mean, it it hits you, right?

Keith Floyd11:16

In the eyes, when it's when it's right, and it doesn't matter anything more than that.

Presenter11:21

But whoever she is, she isn't in your life at the moment. I mean

Keith Floyd11:24

No, no.

Presenter11:25

How strong is your determination to find her?

Presenter11:28

Um

Presenter11:29

Or is it a bit of a hopeless business?

Keith Floyd11:32

I would say it's hopeless. I mean, it's very difficult. I mean, I live in the country.

Keith Floyd11:36

Uh and I see the same six people every day. And when I'm working

Keith Floyd11:40

I say hi, goodbye, and off we go to the next place, so yes.

Presenter11:43

It's a it's a classic tale, though, isn't it? The the man who would appear to have everything and you've got this amazing sacks full of fan mail, women fancying you rotten.

Speaker 411:52

Come on.

Presenter11:52

pouring in all of the time, a modicum of money um and uh success. And yet, you know, underneath you talk of being a bit isolated and probably reveal that you're a bit unhappy.

Keith Floyd12:05

Yeah. I shouldn't be. I mean I've got all the toys. I mean

Keith Floyd12:08

Pum

Keith Floyd12:10

Yeah. I am a bit unhappy, but I I'm not, because you see

Keith Floyd12:14

When I'm working

Keith Floyd12:16

I am so happy.

Keith Floyd12:17

Although it's tiring and exhausting and you're grumpy because, oh god, not another take and all that sort of stuff. But that's so, that's so much fun. I've got, you know.

Keith Floyd12:26

I have been so fortunate that I'm doing what I'm

Keith Floyd12:30

What I'm quite good at, what I get paid for. I'm just very, very lucky. And I think if I'm lucky in that way, I can't be lucky right across the board.

Presenter12:37

Let's have your next record.

Keith Floyd12:39

In the sixties, when I was running

Keith Floyd12:43

Successful restaurants then, because there was lots of money about and I was young and life was enthusiastic and stuff like that. All my chums were wearing caftans or flowered ties, they were all smoking pot, they were all getting into transit vans and driving to driving to Greece on their wife's father's money and stuff like that.

Keith Floyd13:00

I, on the other hand, was always pulling out dustbins at two o'clock in the morning and mopping kitchen floors, and carving myself a superb and very happy lifestyle in a restaurant.

Keith Floyd13:09

And it was rock and roll, and it was music. And I just think this is really great. And if there was one.

Keith Floyd13:15

Record that encouraged me and said, You can really do it because it ain't that bad. It was Hey June.

Speaker 413:20

Hey J

Speaker 413:23

Don't make it back.

Speaker 413:26

Take a sad song and make it better

Speaker 413:33

Remember to let her into your heart.

Speaker 413:38

Then you can start.

Speaker 413:41

To make it bad.

Presenter13:45

Hey Jude from the Beatles. What about school, Keith? Did you distinguish yourself at anything?

Keith Floyd13:50

No. I was very good at English. I was very good on the rugger field. Otherwise I was permanently in trouble.

Presenter13:56

Then after that you became a Cub reporter on the Bristol Evening Post. What did you envisage for yourself then? I mean, it's Floyd the intrepid investigative reporter.

Keith Floyd14:05

No, it it is this uh romantic imaginary life I lead. I had read by the time I was sixteen I had read Evelyn Waugh and Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald and Graham Greene and I I was such a prodigious or avid reader of things that I thought I could be a writer and I thought the way to be a writer is to be a reporter.

Keith Floyd14:27

And

Keith Floyd14:29

I found out that you had to go to a weekly newspaper for three years and learn to do shorthand and and do funerals and women's guild and things like that, and I

Keith Floyd14:38

At sixteen and a half, didn't really have the time to spend as you don't.

Keith Floyd14:43

Spent three years doing that, and um it was at the time of late the trial of Lady Chatterley's lover.

Keith Floyd14:49

that I decided to write to the Bristol Evening Post and said, I want a job, and I am coming to see you. And for some bizarre reason, Richard Hawkins, the editor,

Keith Floyd14:59

Agree to see me.

Keith Floyd15:01

And for that occasion I bought a trench coat.

Keith Floyd15:05

A bow tie and a trumpy hat. I must have looked a right wally.

Keith Floyd15:09

And anyway, he agreed.

Keith Floyd15:12

To hire me, and the next day I started as a reporter on a newspaper that had three daily editions.

Keith Floyd15:19

against the the evening world and with a morning paper in about six local papers. I was just overwhelmed. I couldn't believe it. That those typewriters, the telephones, the

Keith Floyd15:29

The paper, the rush, the hurly burley of the whole thing only just absolutely gripped me.

Presenter15:34

But you didn't stay for long, did you?

Keith Floyd15:36

No.

Presenter15:37

Why not?

Keith Floyd15:37

I got sacked.

Presenter15:38

Why?

Keith Floyd15:39

The pace was too much for me. I was overambitious. I couldn't hack it, is the truth of it.

Presenter15:45

So instead of that you went into the army. Now did you arrive there in the bow tie and the trilby and the trench coat?

Keith Floyd15:51

Yes, um one night I went to see a film called Zulu.

Keith Floyd15:56

which is um a film about the Zulu wars and one particular battle at Rourke's Drift. And I was I don't know why I was complete again, foolishly taken by the whole thing, and the following morning I walked into the recruiting office.

Keith Floyd16:09

and said, I want to be a soldier.

Presenter16:11

Which regiment

Keith Floyd16:11

Wait.

Presenter16:11

Uh

Keith Floyd16:11

As in the Royal Tank Regiment.

Presenter16:13

You an officer?

Keith Floyd16:14

Mm-hmm.

Presenter16:14

You commanded three tanks, twelve men.

Keith Floyd16:16

Yes.

Presenter16:16

and reorganise the food in the officer's mess. What did you do to it? Make it edible?

Keith Floyd16:21

And it'ed edible. We had you see, the officers' mess didn't get the same quality rations as the sergeant's mess or the soldier's mess, and not only that we had to pay six and eightpence a day towards it.

Keith Floyd16:32

And I thought we're living in Germany, and yet we ha we are actually having brown Windsor soup.

Keith Floyd16:36

Place with cheese sort of sauce on it and overcooked tough lamb every day, every day. It's crazy. When in fact there are German civilians working in the kitchen and stuff, and we could have hairs and we could make tureens. And so I bought a book by Elizabeth David and my only job I was a messing member. I was just meant to sort of organise functions on behalf of the mess. I wasn't meant to go anywhere near the kitchen.

Keith Floyd16:58

But there was a curious cook called Corporal Feast. It's true, he was called Corporal Feast. And um I said, Look, can you make a tarin? Now it's very simple,'cause I knew how to eat it. I certainly didn't know how to cook it, but I told him how to cook it, and he did.

Keith Floyd17:09

In exchange he taught me how to chop things and basic skills like that, which got me into trouble with the Colonel because I wasn't spending enough time

Keith Floyd17:16

Playing with my tank.

Presenter17:17

So you left the army and opened a restaurant, and we shall find out what went wrong in a minute. But let's have your next record first.

Keith Floyd17:24

I know I would on this island be thinking about things and people. There's a melancholy side to my character, and there's a cowardly side to my character.

Keith Floyd17:36

And I haven't always got the courage.

Keith Floyd17:38

to tell people what I really think of them, but there's one person who has, and that's Bob Dylan with Positively Fourth Street. It has the most vicious line in the twentieth century history of pop songs in it. Then you'd know what a drag it is to see you.

Speaker 417:53

I wish that for just one time You could stand inside my shoes

Speaker 418:01

And just for that one moment I could be you Yes, I wish that but just one time You could stand inside my shoes

Speaker 418:18

You know what a drag it is Is the

Presenter18:22

See ya.

Presenter18:24

Positively Fourth Street and Bog Delaney. It's a devastating line, that, isn't it?

Keith Floyd18:28

Isn't it? It is the most cruel song written. I mean, he's a master poet. He's fantastic. But that is.

Keith Floyd18:36

That says it all.

Presenter18:37

So you opened a restaurant in Bristol in the mid sixties, which, as I recall, was awash with bistros, wasn't it? Lots of stewed red cabbage in little earthenware pots with lids on them and things.

Keith Floyd18:46

Yes, it was a bit. Mine was rather different to that, I have to say.

Presenter18:51

What were you cooking?

Keith Floyd18:52

I was cooking Bouff Bourguignon and Coquevin and um sweetbreads cooked in black butter.

Presenter18:58

One of the added attractions of your restaurant uh was, I understand, that you were jolly rude to your customers sometimes.

Keith Floyd19:04

But this is a myth. I just wouldn't tolerate rudeness from other people. There are no such things as masters and servants in this world. I mean, you are meant to come in and spend your money. I'm meant to try to give you a jolly good time. We're both meant to behave ourselves in the process.

Presenter19:17

But you were also telling them off, weren't you, for for ordering steak and chips, because it was sort of unimaginative.

Keith Floyd19:21

Yes, I couldn't see the point. I thought it'd be more fun for them if they would have something which was actually cooked rather than something that was simply grilled. I wanted them to eat real food.

Presenter19:32

But anyway, you were a rotten business man, and despite the enormous popularity, I think, of your establishments, you didn't make any money, did you?

Keith Floyd19:39

No, no, I didn't.

Presenter19:40

Well why not?

Keith Floyd19:41

I'm not mean enough fundamentally. Well, you gave them too much food. Probably. I mean, I I I expect I didn't really I used too much cream or too much butter or didn't quite charge enough or

Keith Floyd19:50

Whatever.

Presenter19:51

But at that point you gave it all up and um put to sea, didn't you?

Keith Floyd19:55

Hm. Another fatal mistake. I bought a a wonderful yacht called Flirty.

Keith Floyd20:00

And she was forty four feet long and built in nineteen hundred and twelve and it was fabulous. I could just go sailing. It hadn't occurred to me that you needed money to go sailing.

Keith Floyd20:09

And by about Gibraltar, I was sort of busted flat in Baton Rouge and headed for the trains, really. And um.

Keith Floyd20:16

I started selling bits of it. I sold the outboard motor, I sold the dinghy, I sold the compass and stuff like that, and went ashore.

Keith Floyd20:23

to places to work for a while in somebody's restaurant or to cook or to wash up to get enough money to to sail on.

Presenter20:28

But you were running away a bit, I suppose, were you?

Keith Floyd20:30

Yeah, I was. Yes.

Presenter20:32

But are you still attracted by doing that kind of thing? I mean, would you quite like just to to disappear, what to go to our desert island? I it's you strike me as somebody who would quite enjoy the desert island.

Keith Floyd20:32

Uh

Keith Floyd20:41

Yes, yes, I like desert islands.

Presenter20:44

You'd enjoy the life, the the doing nothing, the contemplation.

Keith Floyd20:45

Then

Keith Floyd20:48

Well, no, I'd I'd like doing all the things you have to do to survive on it,'cause they'd be meaningful.

Presenter20:53

Yeah.

Keith Floyd20:53

Some more music

Keith Floyd20:55

I lead a life where everybody tells me off. I'm one of those people that people will adjust my bow tie. They will say, you're looking grim today. They're always telling me off for something. And so there's this lovely song by Bessie Smith which says it just ain't nobody's business but mine what I do. So I'd have to have that to remind me that I can choose what I do.

Speaker 421:21

I'm happy I can

Speaker 121:22

Yeah.

Presenter21:38

Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do, Bessie Smith. That was recorded in nineteen twenty three in New York, and Clarence Williams was on the piano.

Presenter21:46

Let's just talk about that that um period in your life after you

Presenter21:51

sailed away and escaped um and and then returned to this country eventually after running a restaurant in France actually, didn't you?

Keith Floyd21:58

Yes, I did. Uh that was an accident. What I'd started out to do was to take bric-a-brac and antiques down to the south of France and bring back wine in the empty lorry to sell to the restaurateurs that I knew to try to survive. Um that didn't work very well, as usual. Um I couldn't really carry enough wine to make it profitable and I kept being turned over by the customs even though I was declaring it. So I thought, well, I'll do. I'll open a little restaurant in the house which we lived in. It was an old grocery shop. And we had four or five tables and fed about eighteen people a day. And it was the easiest thing in the world because you could walk up the road.

Keith Floyd22:33

Select all the produce from the market square for at six o'clock in the morning. The French are quite happy to have three things on the menu as long as they're cooked brilliantly. I mean, to begin with, they came to laugh because they expected to have fish with jam on it, and they've got some idea that we eat lamb with jam. We've got jam on everything. But once I'd show them that I could cook,

Keith Floyd22:50

It was a joy and it was easy to do, but as usual, and needless to say, it um it didn't make any money.

Presenter22:56

It's a terrible catalogue of failure, your life, isn't it?

Keith Floyd22:58

You know it's a success.

Presenter22:59

Failed Cub reporter, failed captain in the army, failed restaurateur, failed wine merchant, failed antiques dealer. It's a wonder you've ever gone on.

Keith Floyd23:08

But that's the whole point of everything, isn't it? I mean, is to keep on keeping on.

Presenter23:13

Number six, I think we've got to, have we?

Keith Floyd23:15

Yeah, um it's been so difficult to to choose these records I've got to live with, but The Rolling Stones very important band.

Keith Floyd23:22

I always find when I think about music it it always seems to be downbeat, but it's just too bad, but you can't always get what you want.

Speaker 423:28

Can't always get what you want.

Speaker 423:34

You can't always get what you want.

Speaker 423:40

You can't always get what you want.

Speaker 423:45

But if you try sometime

Presenter23:47

Uh

Speaker 423:48

Yeah.

Presenter23:48

My

Presenter23:53

You can't always get what you want by the Rolling Stones. Let's talk about food, Keith. Fish was the first big hit, wasn't it?

Keith Floyd24:00

Yes, it was. Um fish it goes back to me back to childhood again because um

Keith Floyd24:06

I remember catching my first fish with my father on a piece of thread with which my grandfather used to stitch up shoes.

Keith Floyd24:16

And we tied a hook on the end of a thing and put a worm on it, and we caught this fish which was sort of red and had

Keith Floyd24:21

Brown with red and little gold spots on it and things like that. It was flipping and flapping, and we took it home and ate it. And we didn't know what it was. We had to look it up in the Observer's Book of Fish, and it was a trout.

Presenter24:31

But

Keith Floyd24:31

And uh since then I've eaten plenty of trout.

Presenter24:34

And you cooked it?

Keith Floyd24:35

I did cook it, yes. But th I cooked it like you would cook any other piece of fish, as I understood it in those days. We dipped it in batter and deep fried it and served it with chips.

Presenter24:35

If

Presenter24:43

But someone has said that in the past five years you've done more for the fishing industry than the past five governments put together.

Keith Floyd24:50

The programmes have dramatically influenced uh the consumption of fish in in this country. Even now when they're repeated, the fishmongers will tell me that customers were coming in saying Floyd was on last night, have you got scallops? Or whatever it was.

Presenter25:02

Two

Presenter25:03

Because as a nation we're quite wary about things.

Keith Floyd25:05

Well we're very silly because we we are surrounded by the most magnificent seafood. Um but fundamentally as a nation we eat place, haddock and cod. Whereas all our lovely things, crayfish and langosteen and things like that, all get exported to people of of much more refined tastes than us, you know, the French, the Italians, the Spanish, who will pay proper money for it, you see. We don't like to spend money on food.

Presenter25:27

So what how would you how would you answer that challenge? I mean what's your basic approach?

Presenter25:32

What makes it special?

Keith Floyd25:33

Well, what the idea is, is to use fresh, real ingredients and, as Jane Grigson said, do as little as possible to it.

Presenter25:41

But it's very easy, isn't it, to say that kind of thing, when when you have a talent, which patently you have, because there's always a magic little ingredient, there's always a little bit of basil or a little added something that just

Presenter25:53

lifts it above the ordinary omelet or whatever.

Keith Floyd25:56

Yes, there is, but I don't know what it is because I know that and this is arrogant of me, but I can put sunshine onto a plate. I really can. I can make tomatoes taste like Provence. And I don't know what I do. I can make a cocovan taste of burgundy. And I can show that to people and say this is all you have to do.

Keith Floyd26:14

And they they repeat it exactly and it's diluted in some way and I don't mind.

Presenter26:16

But if you don't know, how are we supposed to know?

Keith Floyd26:18

I don't know. I mean, and in my programmes, I'm not trying to teach anybody anything either, by the way. All I am trying to do is enthuse people. All right. Another record.

Keith Floyd26:28

An imaginary love affair is a most wonderful experience. It's a Chris Christofferson song. Now he's a bloke I sort of identify with a bit.

Keith Floyd26:40

I don't have any heroes, but if I do, he might be one of them.

Keith Floyd26:43

And uh in one of his songs is I'm just a river that never quite got to the sea. And I feel that that about myself a bit sometimes. But um the way he's screwed up on all his love affairs is apparently done in me and Bobby McGee, so I'd need to listen to that lots.

Speaker 426:56

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Speaker 427:03

Nothing ain't worth nothing, but it's free.

Speaker 427:10

Feeling good was easy loan bodies ain't blue.

Speaker 427:18

Feeling good was good enough for me.

Speaker 427:24

Gooder and I found me and Bobby.

Presenter27:28

Chris Christopherson and me and Bobby Magee. So now you own and run, when you're there, Keith, a pub and restaurant on the River Dart in Devon, a place I see described as as the love of your life, your mistress.

Keith Floyd27:39

It is. Yes, and like all mistresses, she's terribly expensive and very demanding.

Presenter27:44

But very romantic. Um hard work too.

Keith Floyd27:46

It's very hard work, but it's a very important thing to me. I mean, again.

Keith Floyd27:51

I shouldn't be doing it. I mean, it's costing me more than I make, but that again doesn't matter because it gives me some kind of reality, something to actually touch and do. And if the bass is off, they jolly well tell me. And if the chips aren't crisp enough, they tell me. And it's a real thing.

Presenter28:06

Well, we've had Floyd on Fish, Floyd on France, Floyd on Fire, which is barbecues. You've been to the Deep South. You're off to Spain next. Um Floyd on Spain.

Presenter28:17

Continuing to lead the the double life, really, the globe-trotting tele-star and the Devonian publican. Is that the way you intend to keep it?

Keith Floyd28:24

I have no plans of any kind. I never asked to do what I'm doing. I should be disappointed if it stops, but if it stops, I will go and do something else. I have no idea what's happening tomorrow.

Presenter28:35

Record number eight, the last one.

Keith Floyd28:38

Chuck Berry wrote a brilliant song. It's called I Suppose It's All to Do With Where I'd Like To Be. It's a very upbeat sort of thing. It's in fact um

Keith Floyd28:46

A little known recording by Johnny Allen. It's called Promised Land and I think it's a really great place to be.

Speaker 428:54

Lived my home in North Arbor Deane, California, oh my man.

Speaker 429:00

I spent a language hunt rolling on a rally all across Caroline We stopped in Shorley, we bypassed Rock Hill, we never was a minute late.

Speaker 429:11

Ninety miles by the banana by Sunday, ruling goes to Georgia Speed

Speaker 429:17

Right away I'm on it through the training and right across Mississippi.

Presenter29:22

Johnny Allen and Promised Land. So which of the records, Keith, must you have more than any of the others?

Keith Floyd29:28

Um

Keith Floyd29:29

Dear oh dear old dear old dear.

Presenter29:32

Any particular reason for that?

Keith Floyd29:35

It reminds me of of

Keith Floyd29:37

for the sixties, which I never really had, only through music.

Keith Floyd29:40

'Cause I was working. But it's a positive song. It's a good song and

Keith Floyd29:43

I think the Beatles were

Keith Floyd29:45

Just amazing.

Presenter29:47

Now, a book. We've got the Bible and the complete works of Shakspere, waiting for you on the sand. What do you want as well?

Keith Floyd29:53

Well, I agonized long and hard and um there's a I can't take a trilogy, can I? It's got to be no, because I wanted to take um

Presenter29:59

Not me.

Keith Floyd30:01

Titus Grone, Gormengast and Titus Alone. I've chosen Gormengast.

Keith Floyd30:08

It's a fundamental story of good trumphing over evil, and it's a very m magnificent, big, big book. You can read it forever. I've read it four times.

Presenter30:19

Mervyn Peake's Goldman Gast, and The Luxury.

Keith Floyd30:22

The luxury item because on Saturday nights on this desert island

Keith Floyd30:28

I want to go and do a bit of rock and rolling, so I want a really good pair of handmade blue suede shoes.

Presenter30:34

But of course. Did we have to ask? Keith Floyd, um we'll see if we can find you those. We may not succeed.

Keith Floyd30:41

Nine, size nine, please.

Presenter30:42

Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Keith Floyd30:46

Thank you.

Speaker 130:54

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.