transcript
Speaker 1:
[00:03] Jessie's album, Super Bloom, is out now. It's got the amazing singles, I could get used to this, ride, automatic. My favorite, which you might not have heard yet, Super Bloom. If you go to Jessie's store, jessieware.com, and put in the code table manners, you'll get 10% off.
Speaker 2:
[00:45] Hello and welcome to Table Manners, I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with mum in Clapham, who's done all the cooking today.
Speaker 1:
[00:50] Thank you, mum.
Speaker 2:
[00:52] How are you?
Speaker 1:
[00:53] Well.
Speaker 2:
[00:53] I haven't seen you for ages.
Speaker 1:
[00:55] No, we haven't seen each other for ages. I'm just back from Sri Lanka and I've got to shout out Jane Howell.
Speaker 2:
[01:01] Who's Jane Howell?
Speaker 1:
[01:02] My new best friend, the American ambassador to Sri Lanka, darling. And Theresa Moss Mahoney, who is the British High Commissioner. Oh my goodness. Both Table Manners' devotees.
Speaker 2:
[01:14] Oh, there you go.
Speaker 1:
[01:15] There you go.
Speaker 2:
[01:16] Stopping for pics in Colombo.
Speaker 1:
[01:18] Stopping for pics in Colombo. We're global, darling. Love it.
Speaker 2:
[01:22] What are we eating today?
Speaker 1:
[01:23] I've made a Vietnamese chicken salad. So it's called Crispy Butter Chicken Salad, but it's got a Vietnamese edge to it. I've done some jasmine rice, and then I've made just a little apple cake with some nice creme fraiche, the expensive sort.
Speaker 2:
[01:43] Lovely. Well, only the best for a dame.
Speaker 1:
[01:46] A dame.
Speaker 2:
[01:46] We have dame Kristin Scott Thomas coming on today to talk about her new film that she directed and wrote and starred in.
Speaker 1:
[01:54] Which we've been lucky enough to see.
Speaker 2:
[01:55] Yes, My Mother's Wedding.
Speaker 1:
[01:56] It's wonderful.
Speaker 2:
[01:57] Starring Kristin Scott Thomas, Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller, got so many other people. It's fantastic. I'd say she's coming over for lunch. Kristin Scott Thomas, you will know from whether you've seen her on stage winning Olivier's for the Seagull.
Speaker 1:
[02:12] I saw in the Seagull at the Royal Court. Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Speaker 2:
[02:16] Horse Whisperer, English Patient.
Speaker 1:
[02:19] Now her best role ever, Slow Horses.
Speaker 2:
[02:22] Dame Kristin Scott Thomas coming up on Table Manners. Welcome.
Speaker 3:
[02:34] Thank you very much. You look fantastic. I do feel very welcome.
Speaker 2:
[02:36] Do you? Yes, it's very nice. Good, and that's good. You walked in, you're very happy that you smelt food.
Speaker 3:
[02:42] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[02:42] Are you hungry?
Speaker 3:
[02:43] I am, well, it's a tragic fact of my life is that I'm mostly hungry all the time.
Speaker 2:
[02:49] Why is that tragic?
Speaker 1:
[02:51] It's fabulous.
Speaker 3:
[02:52] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[02:52] What have you had for breakfast? Omelette.
Speaker 3:
[02:55] Boiled egg.
Speaker 2:
[02:55] Oh yeah, me too.
Speaker 3:
[02:56] Boiled egg and toast.
Speaker 2:
[02:57] Okay. Any marmite on there?
Speaker 3:
[03:00] No, just plain, plain toast. Not even any butter on it today.
Speaker 1:
[03:03] Oh God.
Speaker 2:
[03:03] This is very, this isn't sounding very fun.
Speaker 3:
[03:05] No, no, no. It usually is much more fun than that. But I've got to refrain.
Speaker 1:
[03:11] Oh.
Speaker 3:
[03:11] Yeah. Acting.
Speaker 1:
[03:14] I think you're French really.
Speaker 2:
[03:16] So you should be having a big slab of butter.
Speaker 3:
[03:19] I don't always have a big lunch, but I do think lunch is an important thing. And I like, it's a bit of a myth that people, French people go off and have huge lunches. They often have just a salad or something.
Speaker 1:
[03:30] But they often have wine with it, don't they?
Speaker 3:
[03:32] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then, you know, when I first went to France, I think it was in the, only like in the 70s, that they stopped giving wine to children in canteens, school canteens.
Speaker 1:
[03:44] You're kidding.
Speaker 3:
[03:44] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[03:45] What do you think they were giving them?
Speaker 3:
[03:47] Well, they would have a little, you know, there would be a carafe of wine on the table for lunch, for over 16s or whatever it was. But in those days, wine was a very different product. And for instance, now, I don't know what the alcohol content on that is.
Speaker 1:
[04:06] Do you know, Jess, have you got glasses on?
Speaker 2:
[04:08] Oh my God, all of us squinting.
Speaker 3:
[04:10] Yeah, 13%. Oh, sorry, that's quite high. It would be much lower alcohol content. So maybe an 11 or a 12 max probably.
Speaker 1:
[04:21] And they all behave very well in the afternoon.
Speaker 3:
[04:22] And they would cut it with water. But I think, but I'm not saying it's a good idea and we should bring back wine at lunch for school children. But you know, the world's changed, you know.
Speaker 2:
[04:34] Did you bring your children up in France?
Speaker 1:
[04:36] Yes.
Speaker 3:
[04:38] My children are all very, very French. I'm half French.
Speaker 2:
[04:41] Right.
Speaker 3:
[04:42] And yeah, there we are. We're sort of caught mid-channel, really.
Speaker 2:
[04:49] I'm really jealous of that, because I think it's, I listened to you talking about how you, did you not make it in drama school? Did somebody tell you not to be an actor?
Speaker 3:
[05:01] Oh, here we go.
Speaker 2:
[05:02] Okay. Is this okay?
Speaker 3:
[05:04] This is fine.
Speaker 2:
[05:05] Fine.
Speaker 3:
[05:05] So basically, I was very young and quite, now looking back, I realized quite sort of, I think one would say, traumatized. But I went to drama school and couldn't really handle it, and didn't really know what I was doing, and I was very young, and I was all over the place, and was far from home, and I had absolutely no boundaries. I was just sort of doing any old thing, and I wasn't going to lessons. Anyway, I didn't really want to be there. Oh, important point. I had gone to that drama school to be pretending that I wanted to be a teacher, when I really wanted to be an actor, but I was too scared to say I wanted to be an actor. And so I kind of got in there under false pretenses, and they spotted those false pretenses pretty quickly, and then I got sent off.
Speaker 1:
[06:03] Their mistake.
Speaker 3:
[06:05] Well, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[06:06] But you got sent off, and wasn't it a family friend that told you to go to France?
Speaker 3:
[06:11] Yes, yes, yes. My godfather said, no, this isn't going to do. You can't be, because I was working, I did all these jobs, you know, sort of one minute I was a waitress, then I worked in Harvey Nicks, then I was just sort of doing things, and I really wasn't a happy person at all. And he sort of scooped me up and said, right, you're going here. There's your ticket. You're going to there. You're going to look after those children for a bit. So he sent me off as an au pair. And that was the beginning of my life in France.
Speaker 2:
[06:41] How old were you?
Speaker 3:
[06:42] 18.
Speaker 2:
[06:44] I can't imagine how-
Speaker 3:
[06:45] No, I was a bit older than that. I must have been older than that. I must have been almost 20, I think.
Speaker 2:
[06:51] But when you just talked about, and we're getting into it straight away, but you were pretending that you wanted to be a drama teacher and you got found out and then you kind of got rejected. That must have been incredibly brutal for a young girl.
Speaker 3:
[07:06] Yeah, it was really brutal. It was extremely brutal. I did not take it well. I was chucked out. Not chucked out, but I was told if I put one, I wanted to transfer to go to another department, to the acting department. I'd managed to organize an audition with that acting department. But then the non-acting department, the teaching department I was in, said if you put one foot in what's his name's office, then you'll be out. And so I just sort of gave up at that point. I remember going in and I'd made this model of the Globe Theatre, because that was part of what we were doing at the time. We're making little models of theatre. It was a really interesting course, to be fair. Where was it? Central School. The teaching department was really, really interesting. Learning how to be a teacher was really interesting. You did all sorts of things. It was really, you learned how to be a stage manager, you learned how to child psychology, which really did not interest me at all. I was basically a child myself, and the teaching bit I was a disaster at. But I really liked this modeling and making this model. I went into that room and I was in floods of tears, and I just smashed the whole model. I just took a thing to it and just smashed it to bits and then left. Very upset. I'm very childish as a kid.
Speaker 2:
[08:29] But like, wasn't there one kind of like the devil on your shoulder? You were doing the right thing by, well, they told you if you went into the drama school, then, you know.
Speaker 3:
[08:40] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[08:41] But weren't you tempted because you had this opportunity? Did you want to do the right thing or not?
Speaker 3:
[08:47] No, I was just very, very confused and just all over the place. And luckily, there was my godfather who noticed this and took me away from that and put me somewhere else. And the place I ended up au pairing was actually really, really, really helpful and wonderful.
Speaker 2:
[09:07] They were really supportive.
Speaker 3:
[09:07] Because they were really supportive. And well, I didn't really know what I wanted to do because I thought it was impossible to be an actress. I just thought it was impossible. I don't know why I thought it was impossible.
Speaker 2:
[09:19] But you got into Central.
Speaker 3:
[09:22] Well, I got into Central as a trainee teacher. So everything under false pretenses. So this awful feeling of, and I mean, we all get it, don't we? We all get that feeling of when am I going to get found out? When are people going to find out that I'm a fraud? I shouldn't be here. I'm sure we all get that feeling. But that was sort of confirmed, really, when I went to drama school, that I was a fraud because I wasn't any good at being a teacher. I wouldn't be able to be an actress because I wasn't allowed to. It was kind of confirmation of my worst fears.
Speaker 1:
[09:55] Was it quite mixed then, drama school? Or was it mostly middle class girls?
Speaker 3:
[09:59] I mean, you've been to a child and a lady's college. Oh, my God. No, I got such grief for that. I can't even begin to tell you. Such grief for that. I was like, of course, you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, etc. Which, of course, was not the case. The fact that I spoke like someone from the 1950s was what put them on to that. Yeah. But anyway, those days have gone. Well, and yeah, and when I found this wonderful family in France, she had been a concert pianist and had a car accident and ruined her hand. So she'd converted into helping TV shows, because there was an awful lot of cultural television in those days back in France. She was a link between the camera and the orchestra, so she'd know when you'd have to zoom into the violin. She managed to recreate something musical with what she was able to do at the now. She had lots of friends who were singers, musicians and actors and directors and really encouraged me. In fact, when I was about to chicken out of going to my audition for drama school in France, she came to the kitchen, she said, what are you doing here? I said, well, I'm just washing up and she goes, well, I thought you had your audition this afternoon. I said, yeah, but I'm not going to go because there's no point, like this. She said, absolute nonsense, grabbed me by the wrist. I still remember her little hand, her claw around my wrist and dragged me downstairs, held a cab, gave the man 50 francs and said, take her to the theater and I got in. So I have everything to thank her for.
Speaker 2:
[11:38] Was it more freeing acting in French? Like being in your, English is your mother tongue.
Speaker 3:
[11:44] Yeah, English is my mother tongue. It was, and at the same time it was terrifying. The first year, I didn't really say very much. I did a lot of mime. But I discovered a passion for this writer called Marguerite Duras. I'm ashamed to say that one of the reasons I enjoyed reading her writing so much, and she wrote plays and she wrote novels, and she was a very famous figure in the 70s and 80s. One of the reasons I really enjoyed it, because her sentences are really short, and the publisher, the books they were published in were very large writing. So it was incredibly accessible, but the thoughts were quite profound, and sometimes very complicated. So that's where I got this reputation for being incredibly brainy. So it was really Marguerite Duras, but it was simply because the print was big and the sentences were short.
Speaker 1:
[12:43] But I've heard that when you act in France or in French, you've no accent, they can't detect.
Speaker 3:
[12:49] It's not quite true. I do have a bit of an accent, but it doesn't really matter. I think the difference between, in England, we have an obsession with regional accents, and who belongs where, and where do they come from, and it bleeds over into foreign. So where do they come from? It's all very mysterious. In Europe, it's much more fluid because people arrive from Spain or they arrive from Portugal or they arrive from Germany, they arrive from Northern Europe. There's much more of a mixture. So people aren't so hung up on the way people speak there. So I know that when I was making films a lot in France, we took the film on to a regional place to do press conferences, and somebody said, was I from the next door town? Because they couldn't tell.
Speaker 1:
[13:48] Where did you audition for Cherry Moon? In France?
Speaker 3:
[13:51] In France, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[13:52] Oh, wow. Was Prince over there?
Speaker 3:
[13:53] Yeah, he was there. Because they were making the film in the Victorian studios down in Nice.
Speaker 1:
[13:59] Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:
[14:00] So for people that don't know, you were in Prince's film Under the Cherry Moon. It was called Under the Cherry Moon. You thought you were going just as like for one of the girl parts, but you got the lead.
Speaker 3:
[14:12] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[14:12] And you had to snog Prince.
Speaker 3:
[14:14] I had to snog Prince.
Speaker 2:
[14:15] A lot.
Speaker 3:
[14:16] Quite a lot, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[14:17] And be in sexy cars with him.
Speaker 3:
[14:19] Yeah. I had to do all of that.
Speaker 2:
[14:21] And that was kind of like your first acting job, right?
Speaker 3:
[14:23] That was my first acting job. Talk about baptism of fire. I mean, it was amazing.
Speaker 1:
[14:27] But what's he singing then? What was his album out then?
Speaker 3:
[14:29] The album that went, that accompanied the film was called Parade. So it was just after Around the World in a Day. Is that the one? Around the World in a Day? I think the one with Raspberry Beret on it.
Speaker 1:
[14:42] Oh, right.
Speaker 3:
[14:44] And that's what I had been listening to over and over again on my little Walkman that somebody brought me back from Japan because you can't buy them in France yet. And that's what I've been listening to all summer when I was camping in a school because we were performing a Marguerite Duras play in a field in Burgundy. And suddenly I get this call to go to Paris, to go and audition for this man I had been listening to all summer. I mean, it was all spooky. And I go along.
Speaker 2:
[15:16] Was he in the audition?
Speaker 3:
[15:18] No. But there were lots of people around the camera, a bit like that. And then suddenly there's a huddle. Somebody pokes his head up and says, would you be interested in auditioning for the lead?
Speaker 2:
[15:30] And when did you? Yeah. Did you? You batted that imposter syndrome away at that point.
Speaker 3:
[15:35] You were like, no, I just thought, no, no, no. The imposter syndrome was very much lurking at all times. But I thought, well, I suppose I did. I pushed it to one side and I stepped forward and I said, yes, I would. And there we go. That was a wild moment. Totally wild.
Speaker 2:
[15:59] Was there real chemistry there?
Speaker 3:
[16:02] It was, I mean, we were both really young. I mean, he was, I think he was 24. I was 23. All I could think about was this play that I was doing at the time, which was super intense and great and was a big success. And then suddenly to be in this complete other world of luxury hotels. I had never even been to a hotel before that.
Speaker 1:
[16:27] Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:
[16:28] And luxury hotels and everything was sort of gold and sparkly. And there was Prince who was actually a real person, not somebody that had just been listening to and somebody in this incredible outfit with these three manager people around him. And it was all a bit sort of, it was very, very peculiar.
Speaker 1:
[16:48] Was he quite small?
Speaker 3:
[16:49] He's tiny.
Speaker 1:
[16:50] Tiny.
Speaker 3:
[16:50] Tiny, tiny, tiny.
Speaker 2:
[16:52] Was he kind?
Speaker 3:
[16:53] Super kind. Okay. No, really a generous spirited person. Did you keep in touch? Yes, we did. Yes, we did. But the problem with people like that who are so talented and so extraordinary is there are a lot of people who are protecting that. And so to try to get through this wall of people who, for various reasons, some of them good reasons, some of them less good reasons, want to kind of keep you away, that was quite, that was a learning curve. I mean, the whole thing was just a mad, mad, mad moment. And but we did keep in touch because many years later, I was doing publicity for a film. I think it was Richard the Third. And I went on a TV show, morning TV, breakfast TV, and you have to get up at the crack of dawn and go along and they're all being very chirpy and everything. So sort of, hey, and it was in New York and had a very big press schedule. And I go on the thing and they get asked the question, what was your first film? It was with Prince and I hadn't heard anything from him. And then a bit later on in the day, I got a call in the studio where I was having my photograph taken saying, and there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the studio. Prince wants to talk to you. Oh, I'll just take that.
Speaker 1:
[18:21] I love that.
Speaker 3:
[18:22] And then we stayed in touch since then. But I loved the idea that he was watching Regis and Kathie Lee at 7 o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 2:
[18:29] It's like he was like omnipresent, like he was kind of watching over everyone that he admired. Like he was, it seems from what I know, he always had like a knowledge of the people that he admired.
Speaker 3:
[18:41] Yeah, he kept tabs on the people that he'd kind of nurtured, I think.
Speaker 2:
[18:47] Did you ever go to Paisley Park?
Speaker 3:
[18:48] No, I never went there, no, sorry.
Speaker 2:
[18:51] No, it's OK.
Speaker 3:
[18:51] It's disappointing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
[18:52] Was he a good kisser?
Speaker 3:
[18:54] Very.
Speaker 1:
[18:55] You had some good leading men, didn't you?
Speaker 3:
[18:57] I have, haven't I?
Speaker 1:
[18:58] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[18:59] I've been very lucky on that one.
Speaker 2:
[19:01] We need to take it back to the beginning, though, and very much what your film, your new film that you've directed and written. Yeah, I called My Mother's Wedding, yeah. Is inspired by, and can you paint a picture of a scene around the dinner table when you were younger? Who was there and what were you eating?
Speaker 3:
[19:22] Well, first of all, there were quite a lot of us. So there were five children, and most of the time, my mum, because there weren't very many, but because my father died when I was five, and then my stepfather, my mother married again, and my stepfather was killed when I was 12, 11.
Speaker 2:
[19:41] And they were both in...
Speaker 3:
[19:42] They were both pilots in the Navy. So they were both either on a ship, the other side of the world, or they were in an aeroplane flying on and off ships.
Speaker 1:
[19:51] Fleet air arm.
Speaker 3:
[19:52] Fleet air arm, yeah, exactly. And so it was mostly my mum and then the five of us, and I was thinking about this this morning, I was thinking, I know exactly where I used to sit, and we had an octagonal table on a pub table base, and I would sit here, my littlest brother would sit to my right, my sister to my left, my mum on the corner there, and I can just still feel that thing. And she was, she did a lot of macrobiotic stuff at one point, which is dreadful.
Speaker 1:
[20:22] But she was a good cook.
Speaker 3:
[20:23] She was a really good cook.
Speaker 1:
[20:24] Because you got her, your sister did her recipes.
Speaker 3:
[20:27] Yes, yes, she did. And which was the most wonderful present.
Speaker 1:
[20:31] It is a great present.
Speaker 3:
[20:32] It's such a great present. So basically, my mother died four years ago. But when we were clearing out the house, my sister was adamant that we kept the recipes. And so she collated these recipes and made it into a book. You know, it's very easy to do nowadays, that she gave us all for Christmas. So we've got all our favorite things. So tell us your favourite. The Granny Finden secret cake and things like this.
Speaker 2:
[20:55] Tell us about this.
Speaker 3:
[20:55] I know I can't.
Speaker 1:
[20:56] Oh, it's secret.
Speaker 2:
[20:59] Okay, can you tell us about one other one that isn't a secret, please?
Speaker 3:
[21:02] Well, she used to make this thing called Egyptian Chicken, which was all very good. Yeah, with lemon rind and olive oil. What else did you do? Carrots. Delicious way of doing carrots. Because she traveled a lot, because she'd lived in the Far East and she'd lived in Africa. She'd lived in, and she spent a lot of time in Greece on holidays and things. She was really interested in different flavors and tastes and everything. She was, yeah, she was a really good cook. And her mother before that had been a very good cook. So and my mother had been her, I think my granny was a domestic science teacher or something like that back in the day. So yeah, we've always been, we've always been quite greedy. We've always liked sort of things that were really sort of.
Speaker 2:
[21:48] Oh, can you cook?
Speaker 3:
[21:50] I used to be able to cook quite well. And I'm afraid I've gone slightly off the boil because I just don't do it enough now.
Speaker 2:
[21:56] Do you eat out a lot?
Speaker 3:
[21:58] Tends to eat out. At the moment, we seem to be doing that quite a lot, yeah.
Speaker 1:
[22:02] That's all right.
Speaker 2:
[22:04] In France or London?
Speaker 3:
[22:06] No, in London, I, in London, we eat out quite a lot. And in France, I tend to cook a lot because that's where I like to cook.
Speaker 2:
[22:15] Okay.
Speaker 3:
[22:16] Because I really love, I really love going just to the market or the supermarket and being able to buy one pair if I want one pair, and that one doesn't look very nice, and I'll have that one. And to be able to, it's just we do, we have, I'm going to be brutal about it, but the produce is better in France than it is here for stock.
Speaker 2:
[22:39] So if we were coming around to yours in France, what would I do? What would you be making us?
Speaker 3:
[22:43] Well, I'd have to ask you whether we eat red meat or not. Yes, we do. I would go to my butcher and I would buy a really simple piece of beef and I'd cook it. I'm really good at just the right amount of juice inside.
Speaker 2:
[22:58] What's the secret?
Speaker 3:
[22:59] I think the secret is now, is not getting the pan too hot. I've changed to these metal pans now. I don't use any of those non-stick ones. I used to, but not getting it too hot. I mean, getting it hot, but not too quickly. And then you get a really, then you seize it. And it has to be the same. You have to press through your thumb here.
Speaker 2:
[23:26] On the meat?
Speaker 3:
[23:27] Yeah, on, no. Well, no, but it's the same consistency as the meaty bit of your thumb.
Speaker 2:
[23:32] Oh, that's a good trick.
Speaker 3:
[23:33] It's brilliant. That works really, really well.
Speaker 2:
[23:35] Okay, and that would be a medium rare?
Speaker 3:
[23:37] That would be a medium, yeah, rare to medium rare.
Speaker 2:
[23:40] Okay, and how long would you let it rest?
Speaker 3:
[23:42] A good 20 minutes. Oh. Yeah, wrap it up.
Speaker 2:
[23:45] Okay.
Speaker 3:
[23:46] So good. And then I would do you green beans, but really nice green beans. Yeah. With a tiny little tiny little bit of garlic and a bit of grated lemon.
Speaker 2:
[23:55] Shallot, are you putting in there or not?
Speaker 3:
[23:56] I love a bit of shallot. Me too. And then I would, we always have a green salad, but not one of those, I don't like roquette in a bag, drives me mad. That's fine. I like a nice lettuce or a coz lettuce or a batavia or something like that, which has been freshly washed and that tastes really fresh.
Speaker 2:
[24:17] Okay.
Speaker 3:
[24:17] Because things that sit around in supermarkets, just don't taste the same.
Speaker 2:
[24:22] And can you tell me what your vinaigrette is?
Speaker 3:
[24:24] Oh, so I put a spoonful of Dijon in a jar.
Speaker 2:
[24:30] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[24:30] And then I put about that much.
Speaker 2:
[24:34] Oil, vinegar?
Speaker 3:
[24:35] Vinegar.
Speaker 2:
[24:35] Okay. Which one?
Speaker 3:
[24:36] Well, it depends on what I feel like. Cider vinegar is really good. Really good red wine vinegar. Sherry vinegar is great. And then I use my oil. And either I'm going to use a sort of simple vegetable oil with a bit of walnut or noisette or something like that. That's really good. Or some really good olive oil.
Speaker 2:
[24:59] Okay.
Speaker 3:
[24:59] And sometimes I put a tiny little bit of honey in. Tiny little bit of honey in.
Speaker 2:
[25:02] No lemon?
Speaker 3:
[25:03] Sometimes, no, I don't put lemon in. And sometimes I crush a bit of garlic and leave that in the bottom. But I wouldn't chop it up, but I just squeeze it and leave it in the bottom. Salt and pepper.
Speaker 2:
[25:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Quite a lot of salt?
Speaker 3:
[25:15] Well, it depends on the mustard. Because the mustard is quite salty sometimes.
Speaker 2:
[25:20] Do you ever change your mustard to whole grain?
Speaker 3:
[25:23] I quite like that, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[25:24] There's nothing better than a French vinaigrette, is there?
Speaker 3:
[25:28] I think the thing is, some people like it really thick and kind of creamy. I don't, I quite like it thin. And I don't want it all over my leaves. I want it to enhance the leaves, not just sort of completely smother them in dressing. I don't like that.
Speaker 2:
[25:46] What's your kid's favorite dish that you make for them?
Speaker 3:
[25:50] Gosh, I don't know. You'd have to ask them, I suppose. I think they like it when I make like a bourguignon or something like that, which I love to do. And I like, I cook chicken and also I really love roast veal. I know some people feel very sensitive towards that, but in France we don't. And I think the secret to all that is not to eat all those things too often and keep them for special occasions. And then, you know, this weekend, I've been, this week rather, I made a big lentil salad.
Speaker 2:
[26:26] Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[26:26] I love that.
Speaker 2:
[26:27] Cuisine lentils or green or brown?
Speaker 3:
[26:28] Cuisine lentils, which are green.
Speaker 2:
[26:31] Okay.
Speaker 3:
[26:33] So you cook those, but I like using a little bit of bacon, but you can't, it's quite difficult to find bacon in a slab here. You have to buy pancetta.
Speaker 2:
[26:41] Yeah, or lardons. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:
[26:43] I don't want to, I don't like the ones that are already chopped up.
Speaker 2:
[26:46] No, you're quite purist. Yeah, oh.
Speaker 3:
[26:48] It's always too much water. And it comes out and it's sort of foamy. Don't like that.
Speaker 2:
[26:53] Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:
[26:54] I am quite, I'm, I can be, you know what you like. I can be remarkably un-purist, by the way, but if I can.
Speaker 2:
[27:02] No, I like this.
Speaker 3:
[27:03] I like that.
Speaker 2:
[27:04] So puy lentils with like pancetta or bacon.
Speaker 3:
[27:07] Yeah, a carrot, a little bit of celery, tiny little bit of celery, that much celery chopped up. And an echelon with the cloves stuck in it.
Speaker 2:
[27:16] Yep.
Speaker 3:
[27:16] And then some herbs if you want.
Speaker 2:
[27:18] I love that, my mum makes one like that.
Speaker 3:
[27:20] And then when it's warm, still warm, put a really good, this time a thick, vinaigrette over the top. Mmm, so good.
Speaker 2:
[27:28] Oh my god, that's delicious.
Speaker 3:
[27:30] It's very good.
Speaker 2:
[27:32] So, back to your film.
Speaker 3:
[27:34] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[27:35] It was really, yes, starving. Congratulations.
Speaker 3:
[27:39] Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:
[27:41] All-star cast.
Speaker 3:
[27:43] All-star cast.
Speaker 2:
[27:44] You must, you know, make a good impression on set, because.
Speaker 3:
[27:48] Well, you know what? I had these three, well, I'm talking about the women who play the daughters in the film. I play the mother.
Speaker 2:
[27:56] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[27:57] They play the daughters. And the film in the beginning was going to be called Who Art in Heaven, as sort of reference to the missing father.
Speaker 2:
[28:05] Right.
Speaker 3:
[28:06] And then for various reasons, it was changed to My Mother's Wedding. So the three women who agreed to play my daughters are Scarlett Johansson, Sienna Miller and Emily Beecham. They're completely different types of actresses.
Speaker 2:
[28:22] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[28:22] And utterly brilliant, all three of them.
Speaker 2:
[28:24] They had real chemistry together.
Speaker 3:
[28:25] Incredible chemistry.
Speaker 2:
[28:27] It was really beautiful.
Speaker 3:
[28:28] It's like, it's like an instant sort of sisterhood. It was extraordinary. Scarlett is one of the most generous and reliable and fabulous actresses, who I've known actually since she was 11.
Speaker 2:
[28:45] Yes, Halls-Masher.
Speaker 3:
[28:46] Yeah. Yes. I love the calls from that.
Speaker 2:
[28:50] I remember reading that when we were on holiday in Wales, Mum. It was like, it must have been in the 90s. When was it written?
Speaker 3:
[28:57] I think it was written in, yeah, in 92, 93, something like that.
Speaker 2:
[29:00] And I think I was reading it by like when I was maybe 11 or 12, probably 10, 11. And when did the film come out?
Speaker 3:
[29:06] I think, oh God, I don't know.
Speaker 2:
[29:09] It was such a hit, wasn't it?
Speaker 3:
[29:10] 98, 99, something like that.
Speaker 2:
[29:12] You were with Robert Redford as well. Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[29:15] Yeah. Lovely man.
Speaker 2:
[29:17] Yeah, I bet.
Speaker 3:
[29:18] So beautiful.
Speaker 2:
[29:20] So beautiful.
Speaker 3:
[29:21] That whenever he kind of walked into the room, everyone would just go. And when he went in front of the camera, you know, by accident, he'd walk, wander across to go and move a prop or something. Suddenly you'd like be at the movies. He was such a good actor as well. I mean, he was great and a really great, a really great director. I loved working with him. That was amazing.
Speaker 2:
[29:48] But back to Scarlett, she was back. You worked together three times, haven't you?
Speaker 3:
[29:52] Yeah, that was the third time. So, yes, Scarlett was, the moment Scarlett agreed and she agreed so quickly, she read it and said, yep, I want to do this. And from then on, it was just we, everything kind of fell into place. So I will be eternally grateful for her fast reaction. But the problem was we had a very short window because she was going off to do something else.
Speaker 2:
[30:15] She was going off to the Jurassic Park.
Speaker 3:
[30:16] And I was going off to do more Slow Horses. So we had this very short window in which we would be able to make the film. And so, and I'd really written that role for Sienna because I'd always thought of Sienna for that role.
Speaker 2:
[30:30] For the movie star.
Speaker 3:
[30:30] For the Victoria.
Speaker 2:
[30:31] Yeah, and she is fantastic in it.
Speaker 3:
[30:34] She's so funny.
Speaker 2:
[30:35] She's really fun. She's sexy. She's brilliant, isn't it? It was really fun.
Speaker 3:
[30:41] And then Emily is an actress that I'd admired for a few years because she has such an amazingly sort of, she's got this sort of face that you can see through, in that you can see all the emotions just like clouds over her face. And I just love that and was very happy when she accepted to play the youngest of the sisters.
Speaker 2:
[31:06] Georgina.
Speaker 3:
[31:06] Who's called Georgina.
Speaker 2:
[31:08] But I, you know, this is based on your childhood of losing two fathers.
Speaker 3:
[31:16] The nub of it is, it is autobiographical in that sense, is that what Catherine and Georgina and Victoria went through is something, what is exactly what I went through. Sorry.
Speaker 2:
[31:30] Wow.
Speaker 3:
[31:30] Wow.
Speaker 2:
[31:31] That looks amazing. No, that looks amazing, mom.
Speaker 3:
[31:34] That looks delicious. It smells so good.
Speaker 2:
[31:36] I hope so.
Speaker 3:
[31:37] Herbs are lovely.
Speaker 2:
[31:38] Oh, mom, it looks beautiful. We should try this thing that Alice, so Alice has just been in Vietnam and this is kind of a Vietnamese, pardon? Yeah. And it's kind of, this is a kind of crunchy Vietnamese salad. Coriander.
Speaker 3:
[31:53] Exactly what I love.
Speaker 2:
[31:55] And then Alice has brought this thing back for us. Crispy rice cake. Oh, how delicious. I feel like we should try it with it because it's straight from Vietnam and I can't do anything with these stupid nails.
Speaker 3:
[32:07] I'll do it.
Speaker 2:
[32:07] Honestly.
Speaker 3:
[32:08] I think this is going to be particularly good for a podcast.
Speaker 2:
[32:12] What, the crunch? Yeah. Really good.
Speaker 3:
[32:16] But what do you do with this?
Speaker 2:
[32:17] You just eat it.
Speaker 3:
[32:18] You just eat it?
Speaker 2:
[32:19] Yeah. It's quite yummy.
Speaker 3:
[32:22] This is really good with that little peppery thing at the end.
Speaker 1:
[32:34] I've made crispy butter chicken salad, but it's kind of basically Vietnamese, I think.
Speaker 3:
[32:40] Oh, how lovely. There's a lot of Vietnamese cooking in Paris.
Speaker 1:
[32:44] Yeah, I'm probably not as good as them. But all the ingredients seem quite nice.
Speaker 3:
[32:50] This is so good.
Speaker 1:
[32:51] Oh, please help yourself to a lot.
Speaker 2:
[32:52] Can I give you some rice? Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[32:55] Masses of chicken there.
Speaker 3:
[32:57] Lovely.
Speaker 1:
[32:58] Is there enough dressing on it?
Speaker 3:
[32:59] It's so good.
Speaker 1:
[33:00] Is it?
Speaker 2:
[33:02] Thanks, mom.
Speaker 3:
[33:02] God, this is the best podcast. Thank you.
Speaker 2:
[33:09] But back to the film.
Speaker 3:
[33:10] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[33:11] These three sisters I've heard you talk about, they represent you in different. You've got the movie star, you have the daughter Katie Frost, who is honoring her father's legacy.
Speaker 3:
[33:26] Obsessed with keeping everybody together.
Speaker 1:
[33:27] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[33:28] Then you have Georgie, who is the caring kind of.
Speaker 3:
[33:32] Perfect mom.
Speaker 2:
[33:33] Perfect mom having a bit of a shitty time.
Speaker 1:
[33:36] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[33:36] But which bits of the sisters are you? I mean, obviously the film star I can see.
Speaker 3:
[33:43] Well, it's difficult to talk about that because obviously, every single thing that you ever do as a creative person, your own sort of soul filters through, that's the point.
Speaker 2:
[33:57] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[33:58] So it's very difficult for me to say which bits, but I mean, basically, what I've just said is that I for a very long time was the, because I was the eldest daughter and because we were facing quite a lot of emotional difficulty, I felt that I had my job was to sort of keep everyone happy, keep the thing moving along, terribly bossy, apparently. I didn't know that, but you ask any of my siblings and they will tell you that. There are lots of us, we as a family, we were five. So I felt that sort of slightly overachieving. I've got to get it right and I've got to do this. I think that Catherine sort of represents that part, if you like.
Speaker 2:
[34:41] That's Scarlett Johansson.
Speaker 3:
[34:42] That's Scarlett Johansson. Then the role played by Sienna Miller, who's the flighty actress is also part of me and part of the wanting to please, wanting to be loved by everybody. So the Catherine Clifton part doesn't give a damn what anyone else thinks about her. She's just forging ahead, making sure everything. The Sienna Miller role, the Victoria, she is the opposite. She wants everybody to love her and the rest of it. And Victoria and Georgina just is trying to have a normal life with these very extravagant sisters.
Speaker 2:
[35:21] I think my favorite scene in your movie was when your husband that you're marrying sings a song to you. It felt so much like European cinema. That part, it felt like kind of like an Almodovar film. Oh, it felt more European. Do you know what I mean? I really loved the, it was incredibly tender and beautiful.
Speaker 3:
[35:44] Really sweet, isn't it?
Speaker 2:
[35:45] It was a beautiful moment.
Speaker 1:
[35:46] Is he based on your husband now?
Speaker 3:
[35:49] No, no. James Fleet played my brother in Four Weddings and a Funeral.
Speaker 2:
[35:54] Yeah, in a bumbling.
Speaker 3:
[35:56] And then he played my husband in The Three Sisters. Then he played my husband again. So anyway, no, it wasn't nothing. They're not based there. It's all fantasy. People say, is this really your mother? No, I wish I'd had her. I wish my mother had been like that.
Speaker 1:
[36:12] Was she glamorous, your mother?
Speaker 3:
[36:14] My mother was incredibly beautiful. I wouldn't say she was glamorous. She was incredibly beautiful. I mean, sort of extraordinarily beautiful. But she didn't really have any money. She didn't have, she had a certain style, I suppose, but she didn't have any money to be glamorous. Do you know?
Speaker 2:
[36:30] And we've talked about boarding school.
Speaker 3:
[36:32] Oh, if you want.
Speaker 2:
[36:33] Well, it's...
Speaker 3:
[36:33] I better have a drink.
Speaker 2:
[36:34] Yeah. Well, you've talked about, you know, you get this horrendous news that your father has passed away. And you're kind of sent back to boarding school because that's just how it was. And you know, your mum was keen for you to remain in boarding school because it was a great school. But there was maybe a fear about being allowed because your father was no, I mean, he was no longer with you. And I don't know whether it was subsidized or the fees and stuff like that. So she went to desperate attempts for you to get a great education. But how was boarding school for you?
Speaker 3:
[37:09] It was really tough. It was tough because it was just bad timing basically. So when I first went, it was just after my mother's second wedding. We'd been bridesmaids at this wedding. Then my stepfather was sent away to see, so he was going to see. My mother moved with him down to wherever he was posted. It was deemed that it was a good idea to put us into boarding school. So daddy dies, mommy gets married to someone else, and then you're plonked in a boarding school, which is perhaps not the best idea. How old were you? I was eight. My sister was seven. Okay, right, okay. So, and you know, thinking about them, the nuns were completely adorable. And I think about these nuns and my sort of heart swells because they were so, so sweet. They weren't wicked, nasty nuns at all.
Speaker 1:
[38:00] So you had the Nattis House type, the good ones.
Speaker 3:
[38:03] They were really, really lovely. Sister Marceline was my favorite. I mean, Sister Marceline, I have a memory of Sister Marceline. I got measles or something and I had a terrible fever and I was put into sick bay and my mother was miles and miles and miles away, couldn't come, and she was sent for, but it took a few days for her to get there. This was a long time ago. Yeah. We're talking like 60, nine, 70, and I woke up in the middle of the night and there, lying on the floor was the nun who'd taken off her veil. But she was fully dressed, but she'd taken off her little bonnet underneath. But she was lying on the floor making sure I was all right.
Speaker 1:
[38:45] That's very clear.
Speaker 3:
[38:46] I can never forget that. Then on Thursdays, we'd have our hair washed. Anyway, it was what it was. Then when I went to my secondary school, I was very proud to be able to go there because my mother had been there. I was very excited about it all. But then at the end of my first term, my stepfather was killed. So that was tough. There was no pastoral care, so to speak, of in those days. I mean, boarding schools are not the same thing as they were in the 70s.
Speaker 1:
[39:21] They go home most weekends, don't they?
Speaker 3:
[39:23] We didn't. It was every six weeks.
Speaker 1:
[39:25] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[39:26] Yeah. I mean, I was little and it was tough.
Speaker 1:
[39:30] But she thought she was doing the best for you?
Speaker 3:
[39:32] Well, actually, I think the second time around, she didn't have any thoughts. It was just like she could not, I don't think she could really compute what was going on. Because there she was with five children, two dead husbands. How did this happen? She's 33. How does this happen? It just seems so unfair. Life isn't fair. You keep hearing that. No, life isn't fair. Get on with it. But that was a really bad thing.
Speaker 1:
[39:56] Was he your dad's best friend?
Speaker 3:
[39:58] He was a great friend of my father's.
Speaker 1:
[40:00] Okay.
Speaker 3:
[40:00] He was going to be my sister's godfather, but they changed their minds at the last minute. He gave the job to someone else.
Speaker 1:
[40:07] Okay. So he was very close. Your mum has always known him.
Speaker 3:
[40:11] I've known him for a long time, yeah. He was a lovely person. He was a really lovely person. Could you imagine taking on four kids that aren't yours? So that is the true bit in the film.
Speaker 1:
[40:22] When is it coming out? Here, is it?
Speaker 3:
[40:24] At the end of May.
Speaker 1:
[40:25] Are you writing anything else? Oh, good.
Speaker 3:
[40:29] Trying to.
Speaker 2:
[40:31] I'm absolutely loving. This is my heaven.
Speaker 1:
[40:33] Is it?
Speaker 2:
[40:34] It's not very good for the old herb and tea. It's quite spicy. So we'll have to all check with each other, but we don't have a bit of mint.
Speaker 3:
[40:42] Is that fennel in there as well?
Speaker 1:
[40:44] No.
Speaker 3:
[40:45] What's this?
Speaker 1:
[40:45] It's white cabbage. There's white cabbage, red onion, julienne, carrots and cucumber, and then there's coriander and mint. And then you make a ginger and chive oil.
Speaker 2:
[40:59] Ginger and chive?
Speaker 1:
[41:00] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[41:01] How do you do ginger and chive oil?
Speaker 1:
[41:03] You heat the oil quite high, and then you put in chopped ginger and chives, and that's the chive oil, and then you let it go cold.
Speaker 2:
[41:13] You cool it?
Speaker 1:
[41:13] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[41:15] So it's infused?
Speaker 1:
[41:16] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[41:17] So good.
Speaker 2:
[41:18] Really nice.
Speaker 1:
[41:19] Good.
Speaker 3:
[41:21] Yeah. You see, if I'd fed you, you'd all be asleep under the table because it would be so heavy.
Speaker 1:
[41:26] Well, I thought, yeah, I just thought you won't eat heavy food.
Speaker 3:
[41:29] You know what I really love as well? What? Is ondive. Do you know what I mean by ondive?
Speaker 1:
[41:34] I love ondive.
Speaker 3:
[41:34] The white vegetable thing. Baked, you know, I don't know what those are.
Speaker 1:
[41:39] Braised?
Speaker 3:
[41:40] Braised. Braised, yeah. Yeah, I like braised ondive.
Speaker 2:
[41:44] That's a good idea. We've never done braised ondive.
Speaker 1:
[41:46] Who would like some apple cake? Me. Good. And I bought this fancy pants stuff because I thought you'd like it.
Speaker 2:
[41:52] That looks very French. Let's talk about France and you as an au pair.
Speaker 3:
[41:57] Yes.
Speaker 2:
[41:58] Were you having to cook for your kids?
Speaker 3:
[42:00] Yes, I had to cook for the kids. And they were very worried because I was English.
Speaker 1:
[42:03] Oh, how rude.
Speaker 3:
[42:06] I know. Yeah, no, I learned a lot about that. And I was quite big on... I was quite big on kind of giving them... These children had to have soup in the evenings, so I had to make all these different soups.
Speaker 1:
[42:22] So you're good at soup? Why did they have to have soup?
Speaker 3:
[42:26] I don't know. It was a French rule. I don't know. That French rule in that family.
Speaker 2:
[42:30] And did you have...
Speaker 3:
[42:30] They weren't entirely French, actually. They were half German.
Speaker 2:
[42:33] Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:
[42:33] So they might have had a bit...
Speaker 2:
[42:34] Maybe the soup came in the German side.
Speaker 3:
[42:36] It might have done. Potage.
Speaker 2:
[42:38] Potage. Did you have gouté as well?
Speaker 3:
[42:41] A gouté, yes. Definitely have a gouté.
Speaker 2:
[42:42] Was it always Nutella?
Speaker 3:
[42:44] No, it's always... In that family, it was a... This is what they... Because you can buy a pain au raisin like you can in the bakers here.
Speaker 2:
[42:51] A what?
Speaker 3:
[42:53] A pain au raisin, a pain au chocolat.
Speaker 2:
[42:55] Oh, pain au rizan.
Speaker 3:
[42:55] A pain au raisin or a pain au chocolat.
Speaker 2:
[42:57] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[42:58] So the other day, I went into one of those places and I said, can I have a pain au raisin, please? And she goes, a what? I go, a pain au raisins. Oh, yes, she got that. Anyway, so what they do in France is they get a baguette because the bakeries in France cook very early in the morning and then they shut after lunch until four o'clock. And then they do a new batch for the evening because baguettes, as you will have found out, don't last more than about a blink.
Speaker 2:
[43:30] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[43:31] And what you do when you're a mummy in France is you go to a baker, you buy a baguette, you chop it into pieces about that long, and you shove a bit of chocolate in the middle. And that's what French kids have. Fab. It's sort of deconstructed power chocolate.
Speaker 2:
[43:47] So do you think living in...
Speaker 3:
[43:48] Oh, this is really good.
Speaker 2:
[43:48] Yeah, it does look good. Do you think being in France from such a kind of young age informed your taste buds hugely? Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[43:56] Definitely, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[43:58] Did you pine for anything from the UK?
Speaker 3:
[44:00] Yeah, I did. I used to pine for marmite. But then, you know, I'm mostly in France in the good old days of the EU, so I could get most things. And they used to have a certain department store.
Speaker 1:
[44:15] Which passport do you have?
Speaker 3:
[44:16] I have both. I'm not quite sure. This does look good, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[44:20] It's got a saltiness to it. It's a really good one.
Speaker 3:
[44:22] Oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[44:23] Whose recipe is this?
Speaker 1:
[44:25] Melissa Clarke.
Speaker 3:
[44:26] Oh, I like Melissa Clarke. New York Times.
Speaker 1:
[44:28] Do you have the-
Speaker 3:
[44:29] It's a good app.
Speaker 2:
[44:29] It's a good app.
Speaker 3:
[44:30] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[44:30] My best.
Speaker 3:
[44:31] Very good. And there's an old fashioned American food critic called Patricia Wells, who wrote about bistro cooking in the 80s or 90s. And that book is my Bible. It's fantastic.
Speaker 2:
[44:45] Oh, really?
Speaker 3:
[44:46] It's great.
Speaker 2:
[44:48] I feel like it's time for the last supper. You're going to a desert island. What would be your last supper before you go to that desert island for a very long time? Starter, main, purd, drink of choice.
Speaker 3:
[45:01] My starter would be, it's a very difficult toss up actually because it would have to be either those delicious Spanish anchovies on brown bread.
Speaker 2:
[45:15] The otos. Oh, yum.
Speaker 3:
[45:16] No, no, no. I can't really tell you the name of them. They come in a blue tin.
Speaker 2:
[45:19] Is that a secret? Oh, no, it's not a secret. It's just you don't know.
Speaker 3:
[45:22] They come in a blue tin and they're very difficult to find. And they're salted. I thought that was otis, but no, no, it's something else. Otis is very good, but it's not.
Speaker 1:
[45:32] I know exactly the ones you mean.
Speaker 3:
[45:34] A dark blue jar.
Speaker 2:
[45:35] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[45:35] They either come in a sort of kilner type jar or a tin. Anyway, those are brilliant. Just on a piece of brown bread.
Speaker 2:
[45:41] With butter?
Speaker 3:
[45:41] Brown rye bread.
Speaker 1:
[45:43] Oh, lovely.
Speaker 3:
[45:44] Oh, it's so good.
Speaker 2:
[45:46] So that's your starter. Drink of choice?
Speaker 3:
[45:49] Um, I think I would have, um, what would I have? I think as my main course, I'd probably have a veal chop with some lovely mushrooms and, um, and then I would have a nice glass of burgundy, but I don't really mind as long as it's nice.
Speaker 2:
[46:13] Okay. Any greens on the side?
Speaker 3:
[46:16] Oh, yeah, lots of greens. Love broccoli, obsessed with broccoli. Love, um, cavolo nero. I also really like plain old Savoy cabbage. Me too. I like sweet. Just sweated with a, with a, with a stock cube and a bit of butter.
Speaker 2:
[46:32] Yeah. Yeah, caraway seeds.
Speaker 3:
[46:33] Lovely.
Speaker 1:
[46:34] I like sweet heart cabbage better because it's sweeter, isn't it? Oh, yeah. And which, what is hispy cabbage? Is that sweet?
Speaker 3:
[46:40] It's quite the same thing, isn't it?
Speaker 1:
[46:42] I thought it was.
Speaker 3:
[46:43] Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:
[46:44] Okay.
Speaker 3:
[46:45] And then I want cheese.
Speaker 1:
[46:47] Which is your best cheese?
Speaker 3:
[46:49] Stilton. Really good dry piece of cheddar. You know, the really crumbly kind.
Speaker 2:
[46:56] A bit crunchy? Is it vintage or not?
Speaker 3:
[46:59] Is it crunchy?
Speaker 2:
[47:00] I don't know. It's got the crystals.
Speaker 3:
[47:02] Yeah, that's really good. Really like that. And I would have a, what are they called? The French, it's called a French, we had it at our wedding. Gosh, I can't remember. It comes in a box and it's only, amandar. And they, amandar. There's only a very short season for them. It starts on the 15th of September. That I know.
Speaker 2:
[47:23] Are you going to have a sweet thing after your cheese board?
Speaker 3:
[47:27] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[47:27] What are you going to have? Chocolate.
Speaker 3:
[47:30] I have just discovered, no, I've gone off chocolate.
Speaker 1:
[47:33] Have you?
Speaker 3:
[47:33] Don't know why. No, I have just, oh, actually, I don't know. Either a lemon, sort of a really good lemon, thick, eggy, yokey, yellow, strong yellow tart, with a nice flaky base. Or I have just discovered the most amazing Basque cheesecake shop.
Speaker 1:
[47:56] Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:
[47:57] Where? Is anyone allowed to know?
Speaker 3:
[47:59] It's called, it's got one of those funny, Maric Sioux or something.
Speaker 2:
[48:03] Where is it?
Speaker 3:
[48:03] There's one in Soho, there's one in sort of Paddington, and there's one somewhere else.
Speaker 2:
[48:10] And you'd have a big slab of bread.
Speaker 1:
[48:12] Do you know Nigella makes it with licorice sauce? Oh, that's cheesecake.
Speaker 2:
[48:16] Oh, no thank you.
Speaker 1:
[48:18] Oh, I love licorice.
Speaker 2:
[48:18] I love Nigella, but no thank you.
Speaker 1:
[48:19] Yeah, I, yeah.
Speaker 2:
[48:21] Okay, that's a strong last supper.
Speaker 3:
[48:23] It's very greedy, basically.
Speaker 2:
[48:25] Why is it greedy? It's not greedy, it's kind of, it's quite heavy.
Speaker 3:
[48:29] Yeah. And then we go and have a sleep. Yeah. Then you go and have a walk, because it's always good to walk after you've eaten, and then you go and have a little snooze in front of the football.
Speaker 1:
[48:39] You can walk home.
Speaker 3:
[48:41] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[48:41] Before we let you go, Yeah. can you give us a nostalgic taste that can transport you back somewhere?
Speaker 3:
[48:49] My, when we cleared out my mum's house, we bought, we found jam that was positively museum worthy. It was so- Vintage. Vintage, like 2004 or something. Anyway, we, and she had made the most amazing marmalade with using apples. Because you know, I always put marmalade, I always put apples in jams and things like that because it's great for setting them. But she used more apple than technically necessary. And it was so good. A mixture of apple and marmalade, orange, bitter oranges. It was absolutely delicious. And that, if she could be here to make me some more of that, I would be so happy.
Speaker 2:
[49:34] Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Speaker 1:
[49:36] It's been such fun. Thank you.
Speaker 3:
[49:38] Oh, wish you could come back just to be able to.
Speaker 2:
[49:42] You can always come back. And thank you so much for being so open and telling us such fantastic stories.
Speaker 3:
[49:47] I'm so glad you enjoyed the film.
Speaker 2:
[49:49] I really, we really did. And congratulations on that.
Speaker 3:
[49:51] Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:
[50:08] Kristin Scott Thomas, a very classy lady.
Speaker 1:
[50:11] They say, don't meet your idols, but I have now, and she was gorgeous.
Speaker 2:
[50:15] Off the mic, she was talking about being the proudest grandmother, and showed us pictures of her grandchild.
Speaker 1:
[50:22] I know, gorgeous.
Speaker 2:
[50:23] Very proud. Thank you so much for coming on, and being really open, and she loved the food. The food was banging today, Mum. Oh my God, that is my, that could be on my last supper, that kind of meal.
Speaker 1:
[50:36] Really? I overcatered, though.
Speaker 2:
[50:40] Yeah, but we love that. Thank you, Kristin Scott Thomas, for coming on. Thank you for quite a heavy fab last supper. Veal Chop, I don't think we've ever had.
Speaker 1:
[50:50] No, but she's French, you see.
Speaker 2:
[50:52] Yeah.
Speaker 1:
[50:53] Yeah.
Speaker 2:
[50:54] And well done, Mum, because I know your hip's still not great, is it?
Speaker 1:
[50:57] Not great.
Speaker 2:
[50:57] But you just do it, don't you?
Speaker 1:
[50:59] Because I'm a trooper, darling.
Speaker 2:
[51:00] Yeah, you are. We'll see you next week for more Table Manners.
Speaker 1:
[51:03] Jessie, I need to say something. I'm never going back to an ordinary creme fraiche. It's changed my life.
Speaker 2:
[51:09] Okay. Public service announcement.
Speaker 1:
[51:11] Okay. Sure.
Speaker 2:
[51:11] That was really good. We'll see you next week for more Table Manners.