Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Presenter0:00

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 nine.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is the food writer and cook Hugh Fernie Whittingstall.

Presenter0:32

His nickname, Hugh Fearlessly Eats It All, has been well earned. Impala, giraffe and crocodile found their way on to his plate in Africa, whilst in Britain squirrels, baby rooks, and pigeon have been on the menu.

Presenter0:45

He set up River Cottage more than a decade ago, and since then his unsentimental approach to Nature's larder has brought him his fair share of hate mail. He is unrepentant, though.

Presenter0:55

It's all about understanding the balance of life around you, seeing that the animals have healthy lives and stress-free deaths, and then not wasting the food you've got.

Presenter1:04

If everything you eat is presented to you finished in a foil pack with unrecognizable bits in it, he says, that creates the inappropriate relationship with food. It is a a trick that you first pulled off you when you were at school, with a duck.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall1:18

The duck

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall1:20

I'm perhaps a little reluctant to agree that that was the first time I pulled it off, because I think I'd probably plucked a few carrots from the ground and eaten a few peas from the pod, but in carnivorous terms, yes, there was an incident. A friend and I used to um sneak up under the bridge over the River Thames at Windsor to smoke cigarettes, and there was often a little parade of ducks going up and down underneath the bridge. And one day we took a couple of half bricks in our overcoat pockets, thinking we'd nab ourselves a a duck supper.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall1:52

And we agreed our target duck and launched our bricks, and to both our astonishments we made a direct hit.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall2:00

The duck went under and then bobbed up ten yards further downstream, stone dead. We knew we had to do the right thing then, which was to even if we'd already done perhaps the wrong thing. So we scuttled off the bridge and down the bank and fished it out with a long stick. So we cooked up roast Thames duck with a little bit of orange sauce.

Presenter2:19

It was Dacca Laurent, I was gonna

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall2:21

Of course it was Doc Allarange. What what else are you going to cook in nineteen eighty three?

Presenter2:25

Was it all the more satisfying to me because, indeed, you had killed it?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall2:28

Well, I think it was actually the whole thing was a little bit traumatic,'cause I don't think we quite knew what we were about to do. But it was certainly one of the more unusual ways that I've earned a meal, and since then I've raised my own ducks and slaughtered them at home along with chickens, sheep, pigs, and other animals,

Presenter2:34

Hmm.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall2:46

I tend to have known the meat that I eat.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall2:50

Uh

Presenter2:50

Eck tell me about your first try.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall2:51

Yeah. Uh

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall2:52

Well, my first track also takes me back to school days, and in fact, to my friend Charlie. I'm I'm going to name him, if not shame him, in the duck incident. But Charlie was my friend.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall3:02

Best friend still is my best friend, and he made quite a convincing punk.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall3:07

I didn't. But when the whole scar two-tone thing came along, I thought this is something I can do. I can't do bondage trousers and spiky hair with lots of gel in it. Was it the curls that made it impossible to be a punk?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall3:19

I think it actually I had very straight hair, and I think it was my attempt to get it to spike that made it curl, probably.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall3:26

But uh but then I could just cut it short and go and buy a second hand shiny suit from a charity shop, and a Fred Perry shirt and a pair of loafers and some white socks.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall3:37

and strot up and down the street thinking that I was some sort of a rude boy. So my first song is Gangsters by the Specials.

Speaker 43:46

Who's ready for my phone call?

Speaker 43:52

And I love like Albany.

Speaker 44:01

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter4:13

The specials and gangsters. You you said while that was playing that your mum even knitted you a two-turned jumper.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall4:18

Yes, the best garment I've ever owned. It was a fabulous thing and I I wore it day in, day out for several weeks and then ridiculously on the way back from some party I I left it on a train.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall4:30

If it's out there, if anyone's seen Mohawk. Or indeed is still wearing Hugh Fernley Whittingstall's two-to-one jumper. I'd love to have it back. It's about the best thing I can think of if someone sent that jersey back.

Presenter4:35

Yeah.

Presenter4:40

Is it true that in the kitchen you are a complete and I'm talking now about domestic kitchens a real control freak?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall4:46

I'm really ashamed to say that it's true. Yes, it's it's awful. It's not just at home, it's at my

Presenter4:48

It's

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall4:51

Friends House. It's an awful habit. And but the problem is you get you only need a tiny bit of encouragement and then you just go to the next step. At at home it's been a genuine problem, but recently resolved brilliantly as

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall5:05

My wife has started making bread.

Presenter5:07

Right.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall5:07

Right. And cheese from our goats. And I just leave all that to her now.

Presenter5:13

And how honest is your opinion if if she makes something that you don't think one of her cheeses doesn't quite hit the mark or the bread's a bit doughy or wet? Do do you say that or you you steer clear of of that?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall5:23

No, I I would mention it, yes. No, I I I I think, you know, that it her bread is generally so good, so fantastic, that if ever it doesn't come up to her usual high standards, it's clear for us all to see and it can be discussed.

Presenter5:36

Right. Um I won't delve any further for f for fear of treading on too many toes. What what about the children? Are you one of those parents who actually manages to successfully cook with their children? I mean, actually eat the things that the children

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall5:47

Okay.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall5:47

Yes, pretty much. I mean, they they all enjoy getting involved to some degree. The problem is somehow we often tend to knock that enthusiasm out of them. But the raw material, kids, food, you know, what's not to get involved, what's not to love about that?

Presenter6:02

What was the very, very first thing that you can remember cooking? Peppermint creams.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall6:06

Will that

Presenter6:06

Of

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall6:08

standing on a chair in the kitchen with icing sugar, egg whites, peppermint essence, and some green colouring.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall6:15

In fact, by the age of eight or nine I did most of the puddings for for my mum's dinner parties in the early seventies, so you can imagine the kind of thing it was sort of rum gato covered in thick layers of cream or lemon mousse, chocolate mousse. And did they look like

Presenter6:29

And did they look very did they look very Robert Carrie? Were they all beautifully piped and

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall6:33

No, I think they looked quite Hugh Fernie Whittingstone actually. They were not necessarily very elegantly presented. I've always been a a bit mucky round the edges when I've been cooking. I went through a stage in, I suppose, the late 80s and early 90s of trying to make my food look very pretty, and it was always a disaster. So now it's just if the ingredients are right and the recipe's going reasonably well, you fling it all on a plate and it tends to look pretty appetizing. Let's take a break for some music. What's track number two?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall7:01

My second track is The Who. The Who have been a huge thing in my family for as long as I can remember. One of my dad's best friends from university was Kit Lambert, the manager of The Who, and he got sort of loosely involved in promoting them on some of their tours. So Who records and in fact Who badges and Who paraphernalia were always around at home and for a brief period my mum was secretary of the Who fan club and she went by the name of Jane Who. It could have been any of a dozen Who tracks. I love The Who so much. The one I've chosen is the last track on Quadrophenia. It's Love Rain Ermie.

Speaker 47:38

Only love can make it ring like the sweat of lovers

Speaker 47:47

Laying in the field

Speaker 47:56

Yeah.

Presenter8:06

Beru and La Raina or me. Uh your parents must have been among the very first people to downshift their lives. People do it a lot more often these days, but your family life moved from the centre of London to Gloucestershire.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall8:17

That's right. How old were you when that happened? I was just about six, I think.

Presenter8:21

And your father was working in advertising?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall8:24

Yes, and and he went on working in advertising. He was a a copywriter and he went freelance. And it yes, it was a kind of downshifting. It was a definite choice that they made to to get out of the London rat race and and live a country life.

Presenter8:37

Did they take time to explain it to you?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall8:40

Uh not really. I was pretty pretty young at the time. I mean I think if I'd been a couple of years older it might have been a tricky transition because I might have been a hardened urban urchin by then. But I was delighted to arrive in the country, this enormous wooded playground. And I fell in with the kids in the village pretty quickly and had to camp in the woods for a few years and race snails and and do un P C things like collect birds' eggs.

Presenter9:07

And how did your parents deal with the change? I mean, it sounds with with the who and everything, and a dad in advertising. They must have been fairly sophisticated urbanites.

Presenter9:14

Uh

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall9:14

Yes, and I don't think they stopped being that, because they had some of their groovy friends from London to stay quite a lot, and that was all all good fun. They were sort of at the sort of bohemian end. They didn't suddenly start wearing smocks and chewing straw. They were kind of cool, th were they?

Presenter9:32

Yeah.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall9:33

They still are, do you know do you know that? My parents are still pretty cool.

Presenter9:36

I don't dissect. Um, given that it it sounds as though you had such a happy time, w was there always somewhere an intention for you as an adult to return to that country life?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall9:46

Not consciously, but I lived in London for most of my twenties, but I was

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall9:51

constantly escaping mainly back to my mum and dad's at weekends and and then I found River Cottage which really was initially was a place I rented Marie and I rented with a another couple as a a weekend cottage and I used to go there to to do a bit of writing and I just found it harder and harder to leave and I'd started getting involved with television and had done the the series A Cook on the Wildside and Channel 4 were looking for another project so I one day thought well I I wonder if I could just not go back after this weekend just stay at River Cottage and that's how I got into it.

Presenter10:30

Let's have a

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall10:30

Uh

Presenter10:30

Uh

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall10:30

Some work.

Presenter10:31

Amus

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall10:31

Look, what's number three?

Presenter10:31

Yeah. Yeah.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall10:33

We've got some classical music. This is Beethoven, the Choral Symphony, The Last Movement. Again, this goes way back. In fact, to my prep school days. It was a great privilege and a sort of necessary comfort, I think, when you're sent away from school to be able to have your own music. And I remember lying in bed at night with my little tape recorder and one of those funny little wires plugged in one ear. You know, they didn't have headphones and all that sort of thing. And I'd listen to The Who and the Beatles. But one day on the way to school, I pinched a tape from my parents' car, which was called Beethoven's Greatest Hits, and started to listen to that tape over and over again. And the one thing I always come back to is that final movement of the Ninth Symphony, The Ode to Joy.

Presenter12:09

The Ode to Joy, part of the final movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. nine in D minor, the Choral Symphony. Um you said that that music formed a a necessary comfort, I think you called it, during your your years at Prep School. When were you sent to Prep School?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall12:20

Conglines

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall12:24

I was eight years old, and only just eight years old.

Presenter12:25

Mm-hmm.

Presenter12:28

And your parents don't sound to me to be.

Presenter12:31

Conventional. I mean, they were suiting themselves, they were living a life out of London, they were fashioning things that they felt comfortable with, and yet that seems.

Presenter12:40

A rather a conventional thing to do.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall12:42

Yes, I think that's right. I know it was tricky for them. It was a genuine dilemma. It wasn't necessarily the the obvious thing to do. And I was quite homesick, and that definitely affected my mum. There was a lot of tearfulness at the end of school holidays and half terms and weekends at home. And I know from talking to them more recently that they they thought it wasn't working at one point. And then I think just when they might have said, you know, let's let's get Hugh back home, I fell in with that kind of life and once you're into it, it's quite good fun really, so.

Presenter13:14

And after prep school it was on to Eton and then Oxford. Yeah. How how did you manage at Eton with all I'm thinking mainly of the smart clothes?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall13:17

Yeah.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall13:22

Oh, I was all right with the I mean, I I I

Presenter13:24

I mean I

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall13:25

I wasn't the scruffiest boy in the school, if that's what you're wondering, Kirsty. I can't imagine why you're taking away. Look at me today, I'm looking quite snappy, aren't I? Yes.

Presenter13:31

I'm looking

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall13:34

Again, Eaton for me was great. I had a fantastic time, made some lifelong friends. I played the Rebel a certain amount of the time, but I still fell in with the system and got a very good education out of it.

Presenter13:47

I don't know about the food at Eton, of course, but by repute the food at boarding school is usually pretty ropey. How was it?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall13:53

Grim. Yeah.

Presenter13:54

Yeah.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall13:57

Bacon that really smelt like wet dog, nursery puddings of the most appalling kind, but some some absolute horrors, and the worst of the lot was the school trifle, and I was

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall14:08

fairly systematically forced to eat a bowl of it, and it it would make me wretch. But I did learn to get an awful lot of trifle onto a spoon and flick it under the table.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall14:19

Quite a skill.

Presenter14:21

And your Oxford days then. I'm thinking, of course, m for most students it's baked beans out of a cold can and uh something that they buy at the corner shop that's three weeks out of date. What what were you eating and what were you cooking when you were a student?

Presenter14:33

I was eating bed of

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall14:34

than that. And cooking was quite a big thing. Was it? Yeah, uh for me and for quite a few of my friends. We got quite into cooking and we had, I suppose, what were rather pretentious little dinner parties in each other's houses and and colleges and vied with each other to make the food better. It was like a kind of Oxford version of that T V show, Come Dine With Me, I think we used to go round each other's houses and criticize each other.

Presenter14:54

Yeah.

Presenter14:56

criticize each other's food. And but did you develop a bit of a following? Did everyone know that you was a better cook than whoever else?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall15:03

I wouldn't say I developed a following, but I wrote a recipe column for the University magazine. One of the early recipes was called Mean Beans, I think, and it was about customizing a tin of baked beans with a little bit of curry powder, chopped bacon, a bit of apple, maybe some raisins and spices not just to make it go further, but to make it more delicious.

Presenter15:21

Did you know you wanted to make your life food when you were a student?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall15:25

No, I didn't actually,'cause I I had a a a very clear ambition in a slightly different direction, which was to do with wildlife and and conservation. And for a big part of my life I basically wanted to be David Attenborough. In fact, I still want to be David Attenborough, and that led me to travel to Africa when I left university, and I thought that's the direction I was heading in.

Presenter15:45

And you were in Africa for how long and what were you doing?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall15:47

I was travelling around Africa for about eight months with my friend Lyndon, who was also passionately interested in wildlife. And then we kind of run out of money and time and came back to England, but we were all set to go back.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall16:00

And that's when I went to work at the River Cafe, and I never did go back.

Presenter16:03

More of the River Cafe in a second, but for now tell me about your force track.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall16:08

This is David Bowie. I love David Bowie. I think my sister more or less got me interested. So many tracks I love, but top of the list, five years.

Speaker 416:17

I never thought I'd need so many people.

Speaker 416:26

Girl my age went off ahead

Speaker 416:30

Get some dinner children.

Speaker 416:35

If the black had no puller off.

Speaker 416:39

I think she would have killed them.

Presenter16:45

David Bowie and five years. Let's talk then about. I was going to say the River Cafe years, but they weren't years when you would install, they were six months.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall16:50

Give me one moment.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall16:52

Uh

Presenter16:52

Uh

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall16:52

Yeah, that

Presenter16:53

And just to put the River Cafe in context, it's a very well established restaurant now in London, but at the time it changed everything. It was a way of doing things that nobody had really seen certainly in this country before. It was all about the purity of the ingredients. It was a very simple regional way of presenting what was essentially, of course, Italian food. And it has been the birthing ground for so many of the chefs, not just people working in kitchens all around Britain and the world, but actually also working on television, because Jamie Oliver was one of its most famous little babies launched out into the T V world. Why did you only last for six months?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall17:30

Well, why did I only last for six months? I certainly would have stayed a lot longer. The answer, Kirsty, is that I was fired.

Presenter17:35

Wasak

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall17:41

How did you get the job in the first place? Well, I I had a friend who was waitressing there. I was waiting to go back to Africa, but she said, Look, if you're to loose end, you know, you love cooking, come and get a shift here, you know, maybe as a waiter, maybe you can get something in the kitchen. And I turned up one morning

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall17:57

And they were short of a chef, and they put me straight on of to the lunch service to help put together a few salads.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall18:04

That went just about okay enough.

Presenter18:05

But that was something of a risk. I mean, did they know that you were good in a kitchen? I mean, this is a very posh, well-regarded restaurant.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall18:11

You know it wasn't at the time. I mean it really was the early days. It w it was just happening at the River Cafe at that point. But it was an incredibly relaxed kitchen and that was why I enjoyed it.

Presenter18:13

Members

Presenter18:14

Right.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall18:22

and why I thought I'd fit in and probably why ultimately I didn't,'cause I I was too relaxed for the relaxed kitchen. Uh I was I was a messy cook and I'd I'd had no formal training and I went into the River Cafe cooking like I cooked at home, making a big mess and sometimes forgetting to clean it up.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall18:39

As the restaurant became more acclaimed and the pressure mounted in the kitchen and I wasn't quite delivering. I was having a lovely time, slightly at their expense.

Presenter18:50

And this young man with a fabulous, privileged, indeed, education behind him, it sounds as if you hadn't quite found your anchor in life, you hadn't quite found your direction.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall18:59

I think that's right. I drifted into the River Cafe and sort of drifted out again, had to make a decision about what to do. And I think I made in some ways a slightly lazy decision, which was to start writing about food. I enjoyed writing. I had quite a few friends who'd got a foot in the door as journalists, and I started bothering them a bit and seeing if I could get some pieces published. And I have to say that that all came together fairly quickly, and before I knew it, I was a food writer. Let's take a break for some music. What's next?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall19:31

Well, I love to dance, as any of my friends will testify with possibly slightly raised eyebrows, and it's anything from air guitar to the who, which is a great favourite, to really getting up for some serious disco.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall19:45

The dance floor filler has been a hard one to choose, but I've gone for Donna Summer, I Feel Love.

Presenter20:20

Donna Summer and I feel love and I can report to listeners that you did manage to stay in your seat throughout the entirety of that, you Fanny Whittingstall. So much of what you do is trying to reconcile all of us with what we eat and where it's come from, saying that if you make the decision, and you see it, I think, as quite a big decision to eat meat and to choose to enjoy meat, then you need to take responsibility for the process that that meat has gone through.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall20:45

That's absolutely right. It's not a God given right. It's not a evolutionary assumption that we have to eat meat. But what I think is essential that is if we're going to eat meat, we have to look after the animals who provide us with that meat, and we have to treat them with respect.

Presenter20:59

And of course it's an argument you'll have heard many times, but I feel it's one worth making. People will say you are somebody who is in an entirely privileged position. It's all right for you. You can afford to pay fourteen, fifteen pounds for an organically reared uh chicken that, of course, yes, tastes delicious and you can make four meals out of it because you'll boil up the stock and you've got time to do that. That's not the way most people live. Most people can afford to buy a chicken at two ninety nine and they're in a rush and they've got three kids to feed and they've got a job they don't like and their husband's got a job he doesn't really like either and it sort of fits in, so they get on with it.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall21:31

Sure. I mean I can't do anything about the fact that I have come from a privileged background and that I'm a hyanna. You know, I'm in the media business and I get well paid for what I do. And let's not say any different, because that's clearly the case. But I also think it's a little bit patronising to people who are on a tighter budget to assume that they're not interested in these issues or that they can't afford to care. And I've had a whole bunch of mail from people saying, I'm a single mum, I'm a student. Don't let anyone tell you that we don't care simply because we're on a tight budget. You've got to separate ethical issues from economic issues. You can't simply override the ethics of meat production on the grounds of economics.

Presenter22:09

Let's move away then from the supermarket shelves and out into our fields and rivers. I I mentioned I think I mentioned crocodile and you've eaten and cooked on screen squirrels. I remember myself very clearly seeing you

Presenter22:21

Fry up a placenta. I think there were onions in there, maybe a little bit of butter.

Presenter22:26

You showed it on screen in one of your programmes. There was an enormous fuss. I can't remember if you ate any of it yourself.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall22:33

I did, yes. Several helpings. It was served as a canopy at an alternative christening.

Presenter22:37

Yeah.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall22:40

And the family who were involved got a lot of stick. I got a lot of stick. But the really interesting thing is people were getting hot under the collar, but they found it very hard to put their finger on what they were getting cross about. Nobody was hurt. Nobody was harmed. In fact, one of the fascinating things that happened at the party was one of the vegetarians who were there, and this was quite an alternative group of people, so you can imagine there were quite a few vegetarians, piped up and suddenly said, I've just realised this is meat that I can eat with a clean conscience, because nothing has died. In fact, it's the by-product of a new life. So, yes, I can tuck into this.

Presenter23:17

Are you surprised when you excite so much uh press comment and interest with not just the placenta, but you know, the baby rooks and the indeed the squirrels? I remember that was one that got a lot of coverage.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall23:27

Yes, Fury as T V chef Cooks Tuftie. Um the point I made, for example, when we when we took the young rooks from the trees were these birds were slightly older than your average supermarket chicken. We were taking them at eight to nine weeks, whereas most supermarket chickens are slaughtered sort of five or six weeks. And these birds had lived free and wild up to that point. So I personally felt that they were

Presenter23:30

Uh

Speaker 423:30

Yeah.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall23:53

Food I could eat with a much cleaner conscience than an intensively farmed chicken.

Presenter23:56

Let's have some music, what's next?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall23:59

Well, this was the first song at our wedding when Marie and I got married. When I first met Marie, about the only thing in her C D collection was Nick Cave, and that was a a bit of a stumbling block, because I hadn't really heard of this Australian. Slowly she made me a convert, and this was a very lovely song to play at the beginning of our wedding. The first dance.

Speaker 324:24

I don't believe in an interventionist God.

Speaker 324:35

But I know, darling, that you do.

Speaker 324:45

But if I did, I would kneel down and ask him.

Presenter24:52

Nick Cave and Into My Arms, and you say, Hugh Franny Whittingstall, that that was the first uh first dance you had at your wedding with Marie. How did you meet Marie?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall25:01

I met Marie in a strange and circuitous way. A bunch of friends went on holiday to Monavasia in Greece, and we ran into a couple of French guys in in a bar. One of them in particular I stayed in touch with. A year or so later he called me up, said he was in London. Could he stay on my floor? And the only other person he knew in London was Marie. She was a student at at the time, studying in London. And he took me to where she was staying one evening, and she was in her little tiny flat studying, cigarette in one hand, glass of whiskey on the table, Nick Cave C D collection.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall25:40

It all felt a little bit intimidating and very French to me. And I made sushi for her and that was definitely a turning point.

Presenter25:42

Very French to me.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall25:48

Yeah, what a turning point.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall25:50

Yeah.

Presenter25:50

So this life that you've carved out for yourself, you it it sounds idyllic. You you now you recently moved to East Devon, you farm around about forty acres, you have all of this live stock, you grow your own vegetables. I mean, is it still a one man band as it was when you started it on television?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall26:04

Well, since we've moved, we've we've re downshifted a bit. We've got a a little less livestock than than I had before. We have a little bit of help. We have someone who comes and helps a couple of days a week. But we do a lot of it ourselves. And at the moment

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall26:18

We have a a goat in milk and Marie and Oscar are doing most of the milking and I get my hand in uh once in a while. It's it's great.

Presenter26:27

Oscar and Freddie as part of the family, and also Chloe. Tell me about Chloe.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall26:32

Well, Chloe is living with us. We haven't formally adopted her, but we are her special guardians. She used to live in the Congo, and it was a very unforeseen sequence of events. But we already knew Chloe, we knew her family. And her adoptive mother died very suddenly. And she came to stay with us for a bit, without any real plan as to where we were going to go from there. And it worked well for us, and it worked well for her. And four years later, she's still with us and is going to be with us for a long time. She's family.

Presenter27:07

I mean, as we were we were talking about, obviously far different situations, a different time, but you were used to upheaval yourself as a sort of little eight-year-old boy. There you were, having to deal with a new set of circumstances. Do do you think that sort of helped you appreciate how it was for a young a young girl coming into your house and making her feel at home?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall27:24

Oh, I think there's no comparison really between the kind of thing I've experienced just moving house and shifting school from the extraordinary upheavals that Chloe's had to deal with in in her life.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall27:36

Um but it's been an amazing thing for us, uh for m for Marie and I and and for the the whole family. And she has transformed extraordinarily from a rather frightened but fun eight-year-old girl, uh who spoke very little English into, I have to say, a young woman. She's twelve now and is blossoming and playing the guitar.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall28:00

riding her pony and is a joy to have around. And your little boys, Oscar and Freddie, do they make peppermint creams at at a kitchen table? Uh they make a lot of pancakes. They they have made in fact Chloe's made some superb peppermint creams. Oscar's a pancake fiend. Chloe loves making omelets. Freddie likes making strange brews. Not strictly edible, but you know we give him a bit of leeway. As long as nothing too precious ends up in the pot we don't mind.

Presenter28:27

And are you the sort of parents that bridle at the idea that uh little Oscar might have a Pop Tart round at his friend's house? I mean, do you try and regulate and control and make sure that they only have the best of stuff?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall28:40

No, there's no policing what they might eat when they go round to their friend's house. I I think that would be ridiculous.

Presenter28:46

But are there cocoa pops in your house, I wonder?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall28:50

I think they're organic chocolate oat clusters. I'm sure they cost a fortune.

Presenter28:57

Let's take a break for some music, what's next?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall28:59

The Clash. This goes back to my very fleeting attempts to be a little bit of a punk. Again, my friend Charlie was just ahead of the curve. He was sneaking out of school to see The Clash play live in West London and coming back with these incredible stories about how many punks gobbed on him and how fantastic that was. I never got to see them live, but I listened to them a lot and listened to Charlie's stories and love The Clash. And I've chosen Police and Thieves.

Speaker 429:28

Police empty is in the street.

Speaker 429:33

Oh yeah.

Speaker 429:35

Gare and the nation were there.

Speaker 429:38

Gun the ammunition.

Speaker 429:41

Please have the

Speaker 429:43

He's in the street

Speaker 429:45

Oh yeah.

Speaker 429:47

Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition.

Speaker 429:54

Genesis.

Presenter29:55

Uh

Presenter29:56

That was the clash, and police and thieves. I don't imagine an island holds many fears for you. Somebody who has run his own small holdings, somebody who will happily snarf down a a baby rook if that's what is to be eaten on any occasion, w will it?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall30:11

Not physically. I'm up for it. In fact, quite a lot of the holidays we choose to go on as a family are aimed at that kind of life. Not always in tropical locations, but on the west coast of Scotland, for example, we spend a lot of our holiday time gathering the food that we're going to eat in the evening, whether it's mussels from the shore or going out to catch mackerel or putting a few pots out and hoping to catch some crabs.

Presenter30:33

And although you'll be foraging, and as you say, nature's larder is there and you can enjoy the mussels on the shore or the herbs that are growing wild, will there be a particular food that you would not be able to get on the island that you would miss?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall30:45

Yes. Chocolate bars. I'm still a sucker for a toffee crisp or a crunchy. I mean, I wouldn't go quite so far as to make a chocolate dispensing machine my luxury, but it would be something I'd miss. We'll talk about that in a moment, but what a relief that you like cheap chocolate. Doesn't have to be cheap.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall31:00

Like expensive chocolate too.

Presenter31:02

Yeah.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall31:03

Last track.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall31:04

My last track is

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall31:06

Something very special. It's a friend of mine, Hattie Longfield, singing a song that she wrote herself. Hattie was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, has come through it and is now very well. She started to write songs and she'd always played the guitar a bit, but she'd really moved up another notch. And I believe she wrote this song when there was still some uncertainty as to the outcome, and that's something you can feel in the lyrics. And I suppose there's one thing in my life that certainly feels charmed, and of course it can't last forever, but I haven't yet had to deal with major or difficult bereavements or problems. And of course, there are tricky times ahead. And this is a very beautiful song that is kind of about the inevitability of uncertainty.

Speaker 431:51

From to day.

Speaker 431:53

We'll never say nay, never say no.

Speaker 431:59

Okay, so let's just say We should live in the day, Cause you never know

Speaker 432:08

You never know.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall32:09

Uh

Speaker 432:12

Open your heart.

Speaker 432:15

Open it now.

Presenter32:19

Hattie Longfield and You Never Know

Presenter32:22

I'm going to give you uh the Bible, Hugh, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you're allowed to take a book to the island.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall32:28

I'll take Moby Dick a great yarn. Also a beautiful book, full of lovely things and very re readable. Haven't read it for a while, so I'll be looking forward to that.

Presenter32:37

Right, that's fine. And a luxury, it's not going to be a chocolate dispensing machine. Look, what is it going to be?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall32:42

I'd really like a full set of scuba gear, so I can properly explore the water around the island. I promise not to shoot any fish while wearing the scuba gear. I might have a gopher them once I've taken it off, but if if I don't make that part of my survival, but just part of my pleasure, is that allowed?

Presenter32:55

What if

Presenter33:00

Paul

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall33:00

Right.

Presenter33:00

It's yours. And if the waves were to crash the shore and wash away the disks, which one would you run to save?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall33:06

I'd go straight for the Who. No hesitation.

Presenter33:08

Hugh Friendly Wittingstall, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall33:12

It's been a great pleasure, thank you.

Presenter33:21

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

Speaker 434:12

Uh