Nigel Slater

Speaker 20:00

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. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a food writer. He's very much a one man band. He always cooks his own recipes in his own kitchen for the photographs and generally does the washing up afterwards as well. His style is straightforward, the best ingredients cleverly combined and served to satisfy and relax. His childhood was miserable, so food became his escape. Buttered toast, gammon with pineapple, arctic roll, all were his friends. After catering college too much sole veronique, not enough crusty peasant flavours he worked in a number of hotels and restaurants before starting to write for magazines. Eventually he became food editor of The Observer, where his easy, tasty approach found favour with a wide audience. His books are now bestsellers and regularly win awards. I make what I call real food, he says, food with a proper heart and soul that tastes good. He is Nigel Slater. So what, Nigel, imagining that you were wasting away on this desert island and could have one last meal before you meet your maker, what would it be?

Nigel Slater1:32

Well, I often think it might be Sunday lunch, but what I really want as my last meal is a slice of cake and a cup of tea, but it has to be my favourite cake, which is coffee and walnut, a proper old fashioned sort of village fate cake.

Presenter1:47

I'm very disappointed. I thought you were going to have roast pork with wonderful crackling and dauphin noise potatoes and all sorts of things.

Nigel Slater1:54

I think pork with crackling is probably one of the best things to eat in the world, if you can get the crackling right.

Presenter2:00

It doesn't crackle like it used to, does it?

Nigel Slater2:03

No. It's the breed of pigs. It's the old fashioned varieties with their wonderful tough hides that roast so beautifully, and you can still get them, and you rub some salt into that crackling and roast it, and it will still be utterly delicious, and uh and go beautifully golden.

Presenter2:18

And potatoes d'aufenois? Fiendishly difficult to get right. I know they're a favourite of yours. How do you get them right? I mean, it's really nice, but it doesn't happen.

Nigel Slater2:26

It doesn't always happen, but you see, with something like Dauphinoir, it's food that you forget. You put it into the oven and get on with other things. A slow oven. I don't think it should ever really bubble. The less you do to it, the better. I think a lot of food's like that actually.

Presenter2:42

I wonder why you turned out to care so much about food when patently, as we shall gather, you were brought up in a totally uninspired culinary environment you know, burnt toast and chop and to

Nigel Slater2:53

You see, food in a way um was a bit

Presenter2:56

Yeah.

Nigel Slater2:56

Yeah.

Presenter2:56

If an escape

Nigel Slater2:57

Really. I adored cookbooks, and we only had about two books. We had Marguerite Patton's wonderful old cookbook. But Mum wasn't a cook.

Nigel Slater3:07

Cooking was something that she had to do. It was part of the deal of getting married and bringing up a family. She did it, I suppose, without much love, and and it was something that had to be done, like doing the washing or, you know, the hoovering.

Presenter3:22

So it was just sort of cannon fodder, really, keep the body going. Anyway, we shall hear more about your home life, Nigel Slater, but tell me first about your first record for this desert island.

Nigel Slater3:31

When I was um about nine, I used to be left alone in the house at night and I had to put myself to bed. And it was a creaky house with lots of dark wooden boards and panelling. And I used to put this record on. It was my sort of comfort blanket. And last year when I was um I was in New York and I was walking and walked too far and suddenly felt uncomfortable and I had to retrace my steps back to what I thought was safety.

Nigel Slater3:59

And I was humming this piece of music. It is my comfort blanket, and it's the teddy bears picnic.

Speaker 44:07

If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise. If you go down in the woods today, you'd better go in disguise. For every bear that ever there was will gather there for certain because today's the day the teddy bears have their peak.

Presenter4:32

The Teddy Bears Picnic sung by Henry Hall and Val Rosing with the B B C Dance Orchestra, and that was recorded in nineteen thirty two.

Presenter4:40

A lot of the recipes you enjoy now are comfort food, and um as a child food was important to you, Nigel, wasn't it, for its comforting qualities too, walnut whips and those pink and white marshmallows with powdery stuff on. When you wrote the memoir of your childhood, did you go back and and taste them, and did they unlock memories for you in that sort of Prousty and Madeleine sense?

Nigel Slater5:02

When I wrote Toast, my autobiography, I tasted everything in the book. But funnily enough,

Nigel Slater5:10

It wasn't actually the taste of the food that unlocked the memories. It was the smell of it. It was unwrapping.

Nigel Slater5:18

A chocolate flake. I mean, I wrote each chapter with that food on my desk. So give me a few links.

Presenter5:25

Thanks then. Tell me about smoked haddock.

Nigel Slater5:27

Well, smoked haddock was one of my father's very favourite meals. And when mum died I decided that he hadn't had smoked haddock for ages, so I saved up my pocket money and bought this piece of smoked haddock and cooked it all by myself as the first thing I'd ever made.

Nigel Slater5:45

And of course he was late. It was the one day of the week that he was late, and this piece of smoked haddock sort of dried up under the grill. I mean it looked like sort of roadkill. And then afterwards, um I walked through the kitchen and he was sitting with his head in his hands and he was just crying, and his plate was empty.

Presenter6:06

What about

Nigel Slater6:07

Not the p

Presenter6:07

Yeah.

Nigel Slater6:07

Can what

Presenter6:07

It might

Nigel Slater6:07

Marshmallows

Nigel Slater6:09

My mother died.

Nigel Slater6:10

At Christmas. And

Nigel Slater6:13

When I um when I got into bed at night, there were some marshmallows on my bedside table, and I said to my father, Wh what are these for? and he said, Well, they're yours to eat before you go to sleep, because I know that they're your favourite thing.

Nigel Slater6:28

And before mum died I'd written in an essay at school that a marshmallow was the nearest thing to a kiss. It was soft and sweet and pink. And my father had read this, and so every night for a couple of years after mum died I had these marshmallows on my bedside table.

Speaker 46:36

Right.

Presenter6:49

And this all happened. All these things were eaten and all of these events occurred in uh in Wolverhampton, or just outside, obviously in quite a a a a a posh bit. I have a an image of detached mock Tudor short gravel drive. Are we talking nineteen fifties, early sixties?

Nigel Slater7:04

We're talking sixties and yes, I think it was a little bit posh, and also there were quite a lot of us. Um you know, my brothers would turn up, mum and dad, and of course a very aged aunt who lived with us, who much to the delight of an eight-year-old boy, was stone deaf and spectacularly flatulent, so she became a sort of figure of fun in the house.

Presenter7:24

All of this sounds, you know, like quite a sort of normal happy family, but the fact is.

Presenter7:32

Well, bottom line, you weren't cherished, really, were you?

Nigel Slater7:35

No.

Nigel Slater7:37

I was a bit of a shock. I came along when mum was forty.

Nigel Slater7:41

And while she was expecting me, she developed asthma.

Nigel Slater7:45

And I think I was sort of in the way really.

Nigel Slater7:49

Dad was not somebody that I warmed to. I mean, it was mum to whom I was absolutely devoted and and loved her. Dad, to be honest, I was absolutely terrified of him.

Nigel Slater8:03

I mean this idea of sending me to bed, if I'd been naughty, not with a good hiding, but with a warning of a good hiding. I will come up later. And I would lie in bed, crying, waiting for that creak on the stairs. So I went to bed, scared, night after night.

Presenter8:22

Look for number two.

Nigel Slater8:23

Most of my pocket money.

Nigel Slater8:25

was I think like most kids was actually spent on sweets.

Nigel Slater8:28

And we

Presenter8:28

Oh, you bought an icing set to do your fairy cakes.

Nigel Slater8:31

I bought an icing set. I saved up my money for an icing set, absolutely. But I could save up for a single. So I bought this, The Supremes Baby Love. It's my first ever purchase.

Speaker 48:49

My baby dog

Speaker 48:51

I need you, oh my

Speaker 48:55

But all you do is treat me bad.

Speaker 48:58

Break my heart and leave me sad.

Speaker 49:02

Tell me what did I do to make you stay away so long Me Ja

Speaker 49:09

Nature

Presenter9:15

The Supremes and Baby Love. Your father was obviously a successful businessman. He had his own company Car Parks, was it?

Nigel Slater9:22

He built up his own factory.

Nigel Slater9:25

Making parts for

Nigel Slater9:27

For cars that were made in the Midlands.

Nigel Slater9:30

And he desperately wanted his little son to go into the business, I think.

Presenter9:33

'Cause his other two hadn't, his two big sons who'd grown up and gone away by then. So you were effectively a a a total disappointment to him, weren't you?

Nigel Slater9:42

Totally. I mean, the fact that I was useless at sport and I wanted to cook, which was a great worry to him, I think. Um, women cooked. He didn't he didn't want a son who who made scones and fairy cakes.

Presenter9:48

Which one?

Presenter9:57

It was, in his words, a Nancy Boy activity.

Nigel Slater9:59

What

Presenter10:00

That's right.

Nigel Slater10:00

Yeah.

Nigel Slater10:01

He was somebody who cooked himself once a year. He used to make his dreaded turkey stew on Boxing Day. And that was it. That was his country's culinary contribution. And no, cooking was was woman's work.

Presenter10:14

But your mother obviously protected you from him because she didn't let him know that you didn't eat eggs. I mean you're obviously a fussy, picky, oversensitive kid, let's be fair. Let's balance this up a bit.

Nigel Slater10:24

I was a sensitive kid. I was also quite fragile and very gentle. And no, I didn't like eggs. So mum kept it a secret that I wouldn't eat boiled or fried eggs.

Presenter10:36

But after she died he force-fed you eggs.

Nigel Slater10:39

Yeah.

Nigel Slater10:41

I wasn't the son he wanted, and so to build me up, to make me into this big, strong, rugby playing lad, he thought eggs were the answer. And on Sunday mornings I would come downstairs, sit at the table, and just wait to have these congealed fried eggs pushed into my mouth.

Nigel Slater11:01

most of which I stored in my cheeks and then, you know, later disposed of upstairs.

Presenter11:06

It took you what?

Presenter11:07

A lifetime, really, before you started writing all of this down.

Presenter11:13

I still get, reading it, your having written down, I mean, an awful lot of anger.

Presenter11:19

Um against him. You obviously haven't offloaded this anger against him yet.

Nigel Slater11:24

I'm still angry.

Nigel Slater11:27

If you sit down and read Toast from beginning to end, it's probably, I don't know, six to seven hours.

Nigel Slater11:34

He made my life a misery for six to seven years. And no, I'm not going to forget that. I can't forget it.

Nigel Slater11:41

The kids I played with when I was young, they had dads who were fun.

Nigel Slater11:46

Not dads they were they were scared of, that they used to, you know, wet themselves at the thought of of his temper.

Nigel Slater11:53

So y yes, maybe I'm hard on him, but to be honest, um, he deserved it.

Presenter11:59

Record number three.

Nigel Slater12:03

Stab at Martyr. I would love to be able to sing. And when I was at school, I used to go to Sunday school and

Nigel Slater12:12

I thought it was all about singing loudly. I thought the louder the better. And then I was taken aside by the choir master, who actually said Is there any way I could just tone my voice down a bit? And this is just one of the most beautiful pieces of music.

Speaker 412:51

Until Christmas.

Presenter13:16

Part of the Starbutt Martyr Dolorosa from Pergolesi's Starbutt Martyr with Felicity Palmer and Alfreda Hodgson and the choir of St John's College, Cambridge, accompanied by the Argo Chamber Orchestra, directed by George Guest. Um was there food, Nigel Slater, that wasn't allowed into this suburban life in Wolverhampton of the nineteen sixties? I mean we've talked about arctic roll and walnut whips, but what wasn't allowed?'Cause there was a sort of element of snobbery about it, wasn't there?

Nigel Slater13:44

There was a huge element of snobbery. I mean I didn't taste baked beans until I was in my twenties. Fizzy Pop was very much frowned upon. They were things my father considered to be a bit common, and he just wouldn't have them in the house. Um crisps I wasn't allowed crisps. And of course all my friends were, and I felt very deprived.

Presenter14:02

Life

Presenter14:04

Fish based salmon Is

Nigel Slater14:05

Yeah.

Presenter14:05

Uh

Nigel Slater14:05

Nope, not allowed.

Presenter14:07

Common

Nigel Slater14:07

Come on.

Presenter14:08

I see.

Presenter14:09

So you weren't you were a bit of a nuisance. We've established this. You were not your parents' priority. Your late arrival had triggered asthma in your mother. You had you obviously a sense of guilt about that was somehow imparted to you.

Nigel Slater14:23

I think so, yes. Um

Presenter14:25

And then when you were nine she died and your father

Presenter14:29

And you were left alone. How how did he cope, first of all, domestically, in the house?

Nigel Slater14:34

Yeah.

Nigel Slater14:35

Well the answer is he didn't.

Nigel Slater14:37

Dad had never cooked, he'd never made a bed, he'd certainly never washed an iron sheet.

Nigel Slater14:43

And suddenly he had to look after this little boy, and of course I was quite a finicky eater. So he would come home from work, covered in oil, from the factory,

Nigel Slater14:54

and would have to make a meal, and night after night after night it was cheese on toast. And then he would give me a little chocolate mini roll for pudding.

Nigel Slater15:05

And

Nigel Slater15:06

He couldn't cope. He couldn't deal with it. It wasn't his world.

Nigel Slater15:10

And I was aware of you know, very much aware of that, and he needed help really.

Presenter15:15

So it wasn't surprising that he um fell in the end for a housekeeper and a woman who could cook, about whom we shall hear in just a moment. But let's pause for record number four.

Nigel Slater15:26

It sounds a bit shallow that that my mood can be completely changed by a piece of music, but it can. No matter how sort of down I might be, there is one piece of music that just has me up and I have to say dancing around the kitchen on my own, and it's The Beach Boys Do You Wanna Dance?

Speaker 415:44

Do you wanna dance and hold my hand?

Speaker 415:47

Tell me, baby, I'm your loving man. Oh baby, do you wanna dance?

Speaker 415:57

Do you wanna dance for me?

Speaker 416:01

Maybe I'll

Presenter16:13

The Beach Boys and Do You Wanna Dance? Um so after your mother's death and mould in the larder and unchanged sheets on the bed and all the rest of it, into your and your father's life came a woman you've called Joan Potter, which is a pseudonym. In what ways was she not like your mother?

Nigel Slater16:29

Mum was very gentle.

Nigel Slater16:32

She was a very elegant woman.

Nigel Slater16:34

and was one of those rather old fashioned people who wouldn't leave the house without the shoes to match the bag, and she always wore a brooch. You never saw her putting on make up.

Nigel Slater16:45

And suddenly the woman who replaced her was, you know, the woman with curlers in her hair and two inches of cigarette ash hanging off her her cigarette.

Speaker 416:49

Yeah.

Nigel Slater16:54

She was a woman who um swore she was so different to mum.

Presenter17:00

Has she captured your father's heart?

Nigel Slater17:02

She captured my father's heart, but he was a man in a very dire situation.

Nigel Slater17:10

Absolutely brilliant.

Presenter17:12

But it became a kind of competition between you and her in the end, didn't it? I mean, your your war was carried out through food.

Nigel Slater17:19

I decided that whatever I did, it was going to be to do with cooking. And at school, I

Nigel Slater17:26

got permission, which was quite rare in those days, to do cooking with the girls instead of metal work.

Nigel Slater17:32

And I would bring home once a week, very proudly, something I'd made in my cookery lesson.

Nigel Slater17:40

But I'd come home to find that on that day of all days

Nigel Slater17:45

This woman had baked for England. There would be jam tarts, there would be Victoria sponge, there'd be Dundee cake. And yes,

Nigel Slater17:54

We used food.

Nigel Slater17:56

To gain my father's affection and to gain his love, I think. And she also used it as a weapon, I think, against me.

Presenter18:04

But she was after your dad, wasn't she? She was

Presenter18:07

Well, I mean, you said sounds to me like she was some

Presenter18:11

A bit of a gold digger.

Nigel Slater18:13

I think that word might have been used.

Nigel Slater18:15

And yes, of course she had, I think, designs on him from the word go, but you know, it's very difficult for a lonely, recently bereaved man to resist the charms of apple crumble and um sex life.

Presenter18:29

And then, when you were sixteen, you came home to discover that your father had died that morning on the tennis court.

Presenter18:37

You imply in your memoir

Presenter18:39

that Joan Potter had fed him to death.

Nigel Slater18:42

Uh

Presenter18:42

My phone

Nigel Slater18:42

Mother had a a small sort of heart attack.

Nigel Slater18:46

and was in hospital for a couple of days and then came out.

Nigel Slater18:49

And

Nigel Slater18:50

After that, I felt things changed a little, and meals became more elaborate. There were three courses every day. And.

Nigel Slater18:58

This was a man who really should have been watching what he ate.

Nigel Slater19:02

I know he wasn't happy with it. In fact, he he did say at one point, I don't need all this food. Whether she fed him to death I don't know, but I certainly wonder about it.

Presenter19:14

Next piece of music.

Nigel Slater19:16

Very occasionally, um I feel I can be I can almost enjoy being sad nowadays. I think I'm okay with it. All the music I ever listened to really was happy music.

Nigel Slater19:26

Now I'm I'm quite okay with sitting and indulging and wallowing in something and Chet Baker, particularly his version of The Thrill Is Gone, is a very sad piece of music, but it's um one that I thoroughly enjoy.

Speaker 419:49

The thrill is good.

Speaker 419:58

I can see it in your eyes.

Presenter20:07

I can't

Presenter20:10

Chet Baker, and the thrill is gone. So you went off to catering college, Nigel, uh, to get a culinary education, taught you the fundamentals of oat cuisine. So you got bechemelon demiglasse sauces and how to turn a tomato skin into a rose. You were not impressed.

Nigel Slater20:26

Catering College to me was a a a great escape. Uh it was actually good fun, but the food was very weird because it was very old-fashioned French cooking, done over and over again. Endless, endless lessons of how to turn a tomato skin into a rose, which I've used precisely never since I left.

Presenter20:46

When did you discover then the tastes and food that really turned you on?

Nigel Slater20:51

Well funnily enough it was actually at college because we had a lecturer called Joe Yates who came in part-time one afternoon a week and he taught a very different style of cookery. Peasant food. Wonderful rustic flavors. Things that were grilled or toasted. I mean just wonderful cooking.

Nigel Slater21:11

And I knew that this was what I called real food. This was the food I wanted to learn about.

Presenter21:13

Two.

Presenter21:15

And you worked at at several places after that um places that appeared then in the Good Food Guide, which was the Bible. You went to Thornbury Castle and you went to the Miller Howe in the Lake District, you went to the Boxtree Restaurant in Ilkley all all these places that became family.

Nigel Slater21:32

Um the Good Food Guide was the Bible, and I looked through and I worked out who might have living in um accommodation. Because you become really part of a large family that is the waiters and the chefs and the cooks. And because there's living in, it becomes home as well. And these places were, they were absolutely a new home for me.

Presenter21:52

So there's a sense of camaraderie and there's a sense of cooking new and different things that were really exciting you. But at the same time you seemed to have discovered that you didn't want to be a chef.

Nigel Slater22:01

Well funny enough, I I I did actually want to become a chef, but I because I thought it was about cooking. I really thought that being a chef was all about cooking, and it's not. It's as much about teamwork and organization. Now I don't do teamwork. I don't do team games to this day.

Presenter22:20

To this death.

Nigel Slater22:22

and having to get a meal out.

Nigel Slater22:24

All the little bits, all cooked by different people at the same time. I couldn't do it, although I wanted to become a chef.

Nigel Slater22:32

Couldn't get it together to be one.

Presenter22:34

You also describe, amongst all of this camaraderie and tea work, some pretty disgusting practices that went on not not in the places, I hasten to add, that that we've just uh mentioned by name, but in other places. Used condoms in the prom cocktail, mm I miss just ask mould being scraped off food before you served it. I was that common practice, and do you think it goes on still in some places?

Nigel Slater22:59

I'm afraid it was common practice in as you say, not in the places that that um we've named, but I went through a patch of working anywhere really that I could I could get a job, and some of the kitchens were absolutely filthy. I mean I have scraped mould off things and served them to people.

Nigel Slater23:17

It was part of that style of catering. I would like to think it doesn't go on today, I say with fingers crossed.

Presenter23:23

Don't want to talk about new pride in cookery in Britain, but let's pause for record number six.

Nigel Slater23:30

I wanted to include something from uh my very favorite album, which is um The Beatles Revolver, but I found that when I started to cherry pick tracks, they didn't work, so I went to my second favorite album, which is Roxy Music's Avalon.

Speaker 423:46

Now the party's over

Speaker 423:49

I'm Satanic.

Speaker 423:53

Then I see you coming

Speaker 423:56

Outta no way.

Speaker 424:00

Much communication.

Speaker 424:03

In a motion.

Speaker 424:07

Without conversation.

Speaker 424:10

Arano Shana.

Presenter24:14

Roxy Music and Avalon. When did you realize you could write for a living about food, Knight? Or when did the breakthrough come?

Nigel Slater24:22

I'd been asked by a customer at a at a cafe I was working at um if I'd test some recipes for a magazine that she was setting up.

Nigel Slater24:31

I tested them and found that actually some of them didn't work, and I just wrote a little introduction to her saying look

Nigel Slater24:36

These recipes aren't going to work. Don't publish them.

Nigel Slater24:40

And she liked what I wrote and and and said, Well, do some of your own then. So I did, absolutely terrified. And it suddenly felt very comfortable. I thought I love this and I liked the writing, introducing the recipe, as much as I did the technical side of actually developing the recipe and making sure it worked.

Presenter24:58

Yeah.

Presenter25:00

So you worked then for Allicarte magazine, and then you went on to Marry Clare and so on, and five years after that to The Observer, where you've now been for ten years, I think?

Nigel Slater25:10

I yes I mean it's twelve actually.

Presenter25:11

Twelve years, and started writing the books that have made you rich and famous. You've come a long way. I mean, it has to be said from Marguerite Patton and Fanny Craddock, I presume, featured somewhere back there. Um but so have we all. It's been a steep learning curve, really, food wise, for the British, hasn't it? Do you think we're there yet, or is there still a way to go?

Nigel Slater25:32

I think in a way we are there because somebody is buying the lemongrass and the coriander and all the wonderful things in the shops, and people are going to the farmers' markets and buying real ingredients.

Nigel Slater25:46

But you know what?

Nigel Slater25:48

I'm not sure that good cooking is part of our national

Nigel Slater25:52

DNA.

Presenter25:53

No.

Nigel Slater25:56

We've had a heritage, I think, of food that was

Nigel Slater26:00

Fodder was there to keep us warm in a cold climate.

Nigel Slater26:05

We didn't really eat for pleasure, we didn't eat to be excited by food, and now we're discovering that we can.

Nigel Slater26:12

We're getting there.

Presenter26:13

You sure?

Nigel Slater26:14

I'm positive.

Presenter26:17

Echo number seven.

Nigel Slater26:19

When I was in my twenties I had a chance of going on holiday alone with a backpack to India.

Nigel Slater26:26

and I took one tape on my Wilkerman which I thought would keep me going for the entire holiday. And there was a point during that during that trip when I just was aware of being incredibly happy.

Nigel Slater26:41

on my own, having a blissfully wonderful

Nigel Slater26:45

Time.

Nigel Slater26:46

And the tape was one I still listen to, It's The Stone Roses, and this track, This Is the One.

Speaker 427:21

Uh

Presenter27:22

Stone Roses, and this is the one. If the Brits have come a long way in the kitchen, Nigel, you've come a long way from that Wolverhampton suburb. You live, I'm told, in a in a vast but minimalist Grade Two listed Georgian house in Islington with a seventy thousand pound designer kitchen. How can you spend seventy thousand? What what's it got?

Nigel Slater27:41

I don't know where that figure came from. I think I probably threw that at the journalist a while ago.

Presenter27:42

We haven't

Nigel Slater27:47

When she was prying. Um

Nigel Slater27:50

I like

Nigel Slater27:51

light and space when I'm cooking and

Nigel Slater27:55

Yes, my kitchen is a big white box. I enjoy cooking in a serene space, and that's what the house has to be.

Presenter28:01

Hmm.

Presenter28:03

But the whole house sounds quite serene. I don't mean you've got sort of five or six bedrooms and it just goes on it's all white and minimalist, as I say, inside.

Presenter28:12

What is interesting is that it's obviously completely different from, you know, the Mock Tudor detached place in in Wolverhampton. Did did you go on out of your way to

Presenter28:23

create something that was entirely different.

Nigel Slater28:25

It wasn't so much creating anything that was sort of starkly different from them. It's simply what I'm happy with and what I'm comfortable with, which is.

Nigel Slater28:36

The less the more, really.

Presenter28:37

And you live there with um more cats rather than fewer three, I think. Paul's

Nigel Slater28:42

Three very ancient cats, Digger, McGrath, and Poppy. Digger, who is, I think, bless him, on his last legs now. He's stone deaf and incontinent like my old aunt was and yes, and assorted lodgers and house guests, and there's always people to cook for.

Presenter28:58

But do you walk around it feeling rather proud of yourself? You'd be allowed.

Nigel Slater29:02

Occasionally I think I might have done that. Um it's not an everyday thought.

Presenter29:07

Yes, but the fact that you found the facility to do it, that's what's impressive, isn't it? Because you really didn't have a lot of help and encouragement along the way, as we've heard. That's my point.

Nigel Slater29:08

Uh

Nigel Slater29:16

No, but I mean I as I say, physically I was a very fragile little boy, but I think maybe quite strong in other ways maybe maybe quite determined. I don't know.

Presenter29:26

What do you think your Dad would think of you now if he could see your success?

Presenter29:31

Hmm.

Nigel Slater29:33

I don't know. I'm still a cook, aren't I?

Presenter29:36

And your mum? She would just think what's happened to you is just inc completely brilliant, wouldn't she?

Nigel Slater29:42

Well, I'd like to think she'd be thrilled to bits.

Presenter29:45

Sure she would. Last record.

Nigel Slater29:48

I've recently um discovered a little bit of early music and this piece is the uh the Heliod Ensemble and Palestrina's uh Canticus Canticorum.

Presenter30:00

And this is your funeral music, I'm told.

Nigel Slater30:02

Oh, I'd be very happy if this was played at my funeral. It's also my waking up music. This is my alarm clock.

Speaker 430:37

Antioch

Speaker 430:41

It is like

Presenter31:07

Osculator me osculo oris sui Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for their love is better than wine, from Palestrina's Canticis Canticorum, performed by the Hilliard Ensemble, directed by Paul Hillier.

Presenter31:20

Um, if you could only take one of those eight records, Nigel, which one would you take?

Nigel Slater31:27

I'm not sure I'm going to be terribly happy on my desert island, to be honest. It would have to be the Teddy Bears Picnic.

Presenter31:35

And, as you know, we give you the Bible, and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. What other one book would you like?

Nigel Slater31:41

It's very difficult. But I'm going to miss my garden, too. I'm really going to miss it. So the book I take is Derek Jarman's story of the garden that he created in the shingle opposite the Dungeness nuclear reactor.

Presenter31:55

And your luxury.

Nigel Slater31:56

Well, my luxury was going to be the cat, and then I found out I can't take him.

Presenter32:00

Only good if he died.

Nigel Slater32:06

I'm not going to be happy with the endless stretches of beige sand and blue sea. I need something that is incredibly colourful. And my luxury would be a painting, and it would be a particular one. It would be

Nigel Slater32:20

Howard Hodgkins learning about Russian music.

Nigel Slater32:24

which is a painting that changed everything I believe about colour. The incredibly intense oranges and magentas and pinks.

Nigel Slater32:33

They just fill me with energy and I love that that picture and that would be my luxury.

Presenter32:40

Nigel Slater, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 232:52

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