Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Head of the Michelin Guide's inspectors, an Englishman who presides over the awarding of the world's most coveted restaurant stars.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92: II. AllegrettoFavourite
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carlos Kleiber
I think you can't go anywhere without some Beethoven. I'm going to ask to hear the the second movement of the seventh symphony, purely simply because it's one of the a beautiful lyrical piece of music and it builds up and slows down and builds up again. And I could listen to it forever, and so it'll be something that'll be played an awful lot on my desert island.
Choir of New College, Oxford, and the King's Consort, conducted by Robert King
Well, this is a piece of music which takes me back to when I was quite young and sang in a big church choir. It's called Zadok the Priest, and it was always a great treat for the choir to be allowed to sing this.
Well, this is a piece of I suppose it shows my age. This is very much at the time when I was just leaving school, just going to hotel school after A levels, and it's a piece of The Beatles. It's their first hit.
Violin Concerto in G minor, Op. 26: III. Finale: Allegro energico
Igor Oistrakh and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by David Oistrakh
Well, can't be without a violin concerto, and Brooks is probably the most famous and the most beautiful piece of a violin concerto that I've ever listened to.
I've Got the World on a String
Bing Crosby with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra
Well, can't be away without some singers. So an early piece of Bing Crosby when he was singing with the Tommy Dorsey band and I've Got the World on a String is one of many that I've enjoyed.
Well, we we can't have one without the other. Frank Sinatra, again part of the period that I grew up in, a wonderful performer, a wonderful singer. His interpretation of music is is is unique, I think, and and the way he sings is unique.
Well, this is again uh another uh wonderful voice, Andrea Bocelli, who is such a marvellous tenor, singing a piece of a wonderful piece of of of music, not from not one of the great arias, but just simple but but at the same time beautifully, beautifully figured and beautifully sung
Well, this is a this is a sea shanty, and it's a wonderful piece of music, rich and very evocative. And since I'm going to be sitting on with this with the sea, presumably lapping up my feet on my design, and this is a sea shanty, it'll go together with it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:56What's the best [foie gras] you've ever eaten?
I think it was probably the first time that I had foie gras hot, and it was absolutely delicious. I had never had anything like that before. It was I was very young as an inspector, and foie gras wasn't something that you found in England, or hardly at all, and I'd certainly never eaten it. Crisp on the outside and melting on the inside, and it was just quite extraordinary, and and and revelatory, really.
Presenter asks
6:21What are you looking for [in a good inspector]?
Apart from the obvious criteria which we look for in that they've got experience in the hotel industry, they've been at hotel school. But they need to have all sorts of other elements. They need to be curious. They need to really enjoy travelling inevitably. To be prepared to be alone quite a lot. So desert islands m will hold less fears, I guess, for people who like me who've worked alone for a lot of our life.
Presenter asks
10:53What kinds of meals informed you as a child?
I can always remember being quite interested to see my mother cook and she as a treat and we're talking about in the late forties and early fifties as a treat I I used to be allowed to make peanut biscuits and they were my first culinary efforts and I was probably I don't know seven or eight or that sort of age
The keepsakes
The book
Charles Dickens
'Cause I've read it and reread it and reread it and every time I read it they read something else in it. So I'd I'd love that.
The luxury
my wife mocks me every time we ever go near a beach when I saying that I make such a fuss about sitting on the sand. So I thought that what I would like to have is a steamer chair. So that I didn't have to sit on the sand and I could lie in this chair and remembering all all the meals that I've had and all the meals that I'm going to have when I get off the island eventually, if that ever happens, and I can listen to my music in some sort of comfort.
Presenter asks
11:51What made you suddenly think you wanted to change [from studying law to hotel management]?
Well, I worked in a in a in a hotel as a summer job, waiting in the bar and washing up and hoovering the restaurant and all all sorts of jobs and you know, well, take this into the restaurant, go and put a a white shirt on and you can wait tonight'cause the waiters haven't all turned up or whatever. So I did lots of I was the dog's body and did lots of lots of little jobs and enjoyed it.
Presenter asks
24:04How do you answer that charge that you're demanding unnecessary complexity and perfection [at the high end of the market]?
It really doesn't have any basis in fact and and any basis in the way we work. We have never, ever. Said to anybody what they've got to do. All we are is observers of what people do. We have never ever given them any advice. That's not our job. We are not consultants to the industry.
“Eating the wrong things, I think, makes you fat.”
“Well eating twice a day is hard work. It's physically hard work. You need to really that's part of the training, is to train them help them to train themselves to be able to do that.”
“British people are much more reluctant to spend money on food, and that's why there aren't as many good restaurants, which is why, because there aren't as many, they're more expensive than they probably need to be if they had more customers.”