Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Food writer and cook who founded River Cottage; known for an unsentimental, adventurous approach to eating wild and foraged foods.
On the island
Eight records
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. Best friend still is my best friend, and he made quite a convincing punk. I didn't. But when the whole scar two-tone thing came along, I thought this is something I can do.
Love, Reign o'er MeFavourite
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.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 "Choral": IV. Ode to Joy
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.
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.
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. The dance floor filler has been a hard one to choose, but I've gone for Donna Summer, I Feel Love.
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.
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.
My last track is 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.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:40Is it true that in the kitchen you are a complete [domestic] control freak?
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 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.
Presenter asks
6:02What was the very, very first thing that you can remember cooking?
Peppermint creams. … standing on a chair in the kitchen with icing sugar, egg whites, peppermint essence, and some green colouring. 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
Presenter asks
8:06How old were you when [your family moved from London to Gloucestershire]?
I was just about six, I think.
Presenter asks
12:09When were you sent to Prep School?
The keepsakes
The book
Herman Melville
I'll take Moby Dick a great yarn. Also a beautiful book, full of lovely things and very re readable.
The luxury
I'd really like a full set of scuba gear, so I can properly explore the water around the island.
I was eight years old, and only just eight years old.
Presenter asks
16:53Why did you only last for six months [at the River Cafe]?
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.
Presenter asks
24:52How did you meet Marie?
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.
“I've raised my own ducks and slaughtered them at home along with chickens, sheep, pigs, and other animals, I tend to have known the meat that I eat.”
“I 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. … 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.”
“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.”