Ep 211: Steve Coogan

James, huge news from the world of off-menu and indeed the world of the world.

Yes.

Ever heard of the Royal Albert Hall?

I have.

We've done live shows there.

And guess what?

We're doing more live shows there next year.

Sure, a lot of them are sold out already.

But we thought, hey, throw these guys a bone.

Let's put on one final Royal Albert Hall show in that run.

The show will be on Monday, the 16th of March.

It's going to be a tasting menu, a returning guest coming back, receiving the menu of another previous guest.

Those shows have been a lot of fun.

We cannot wait to do them live.

Who will we pull out of our little magic bag?

You'll have to come along on the 16th of March to find out.

If I'm correct in thinking, presale tickets go on pre-sale on the 10th of September.

Pre-sale tickets are 10th of September at 10 a.m.

And then the general sale is 12th of September at 10 a.m.

So if you miss out on the pre-sale, don't forget general sale is only two days later.

The day in between is for reflecting.

Get your tickets from royalalberthall.com or offmenupodcast.co.uk.

Life's messy.

We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.

But with Anibay, you never have to stress about messes again.

At washablesofas.com, discover Anibay Sofas, the only fully machine-washable sofas inside and out, starting at just $699.

Made with liquid and stain-resistant fabrics, that means fewer stains and more peace of mind.

Designed for real life, our sofas feature changeable fabric covers, allowing you to refresh your style anytime.

Need flexibility?

Our modular design lets you rearrange your sofa effortlessly.

Perfect for cozy apartments or spacious homes.

Plus, they're earth-friendly and built to last.

That's why over 200,000 happy customers have made the switch.

Upgrade your space today.

Visit washable sofas.com now and bring home a sofa made for life.

That's sofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Welcome to the Off-Menu podcast, taking the champagne of conversation, adding the mango puree of humor.

letting it stir in the glass, James.

Just letting it stir in the glass and creating the Bellini of podcasts.

That is their gamble.

Mango Bellini.

That is their gamble.

My name is James A.

Caster.

Together, we own a dream restaurant, and every single week we invite in a guest and we ask them their favorite ever starters.

Main cost.

Dessert, side dish, and drink.

Not in that order.

Let things stir.

And this week, our guest is

Steve Coogan.

Steve Coogan.

Yep.

Just Steve Coogan, mate.

Yep.

Everyone knows Steve Coogan.

Yes.

Alan Partridge.

The Trip.

Treasure.

Philomena.

Treas.

Yes, he is a treas.

Yeah, absolutely.

National.

Yeah.

National thereof.

International, really.

Yeah, yeah.

Really an international treasure, although I'm sure he would refute that.

Yes, I'm sure he would.

We won't ask him if he thinks he's an international treasure.

We should probably start doing that with the national treasures, though.

Yeah.

To say to them, will you admit?

Yeah.

You're a national treasure.

Now, Steve Coogan, obviously comedy icon.

Yes.

We're very excited to have him on.

Very much so.

And he's got a new book out.

Yes, there's a new partridge book out.

I think the partridge books and the partridge podcast, Alan Partridge has been around for so long creating amazing stuff and somehow still hitting heights.

And this new book, I'm about halfway through the audio book, and it is absolutely fantastic.

Again, it's called Big Beacon.

It's about Alan renovating an old lighthouse.

Yes.

And it is absolutely fantastic.

It's It's available in hardback, e-book, and audiobook.

And it's available now, published by 7 Dial.

So do go and get that.

That is a genuine recommendation from me.

Oh, he's in Doctor Strange Love as well, James.

The stage production of Doctor Strange Love written by Amanu Nucci.

Very exciting.

Pretty cool.

Yeah, one of my favorite films.

So that's so exciting that they've teamed up and they're doing that.

I'd very much like to go and see that head.

Yes, me too.

And you've got a while until that starts, James, because it's October 2024 at the Noel Coward Theatre.

So we'll set a date now that's a date baby meet you and Benito I'll put it in the diary yes very much looking forward to seeing that um it would be awful if we had to kick Steve out of the dream restaurant though yeah well every single week Ed there's a secret ingredient and if the guest says it we do have to kick him out and we can't make an exception even though it's it's coogs yes Danish coog the Danish coog yes did Nish text you that yep yeah Nish texted me Danish coog and sent and say to Ed Danish coog yeah because Ed's got a joke where he says Danish boog yeah I know Nish said it because he's also texted me and sent a voice note of himself saying it.

So yeah.

It would be a real shame if we had to kick the Danish Coug out.

But there is a secret ingredient that if he says it, we will remove him from the dream restaurant.

And today the secret ingredient is Toblerone.

Toblerone,

a very famous food associated with Alan Partridge because he eats loads of Toblerones and drives to Dundee in his bare feet.

Yeah, so you would think that...

or Partridge would definitely be steering away from the Toblerones.

Yes.

But, you know, just Steve Coogan.

Did that part of the show come from his love of Toblerone?

Is he going to pick Toblerone for his dessert, perhaps?

Yeah, it's tense times, but

hopefully we'll be in the clear.

Fingers crossed, we're in the clear.

This is the off-menu menu.

Steve Coogan.

Welcome, Steve, to the Dream Restaurant.

Thank you very much.

Wow.

Welcome, Steve Coogan, to the Dream Restaurant.

We've been expecting you for some time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I love the decor.

It's very atmospheric.

I especially love the cables on the floor.

Nice postmodern industrial touch there.

Yeah.

Well done.

That feels nice seeing all the cables on the floor.

Have you seen what they lead to, or would you rather not know?

Well, it's a small

sort of mini lectern with some sort of digital control box

which has levels.

I mean, I don't know if your listeners know, well, can they see that on camera?

No, they won't be able to camera.

Okay, well, there's some technical stuff that you'll never see.

You're just going to have to imagine.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But we do need it.

Yeah.

So

we need that.

Yeah.

Steve.

Okay.

We often ask people to describe what their dream restaurant looks like.

Are you taking this actual room to be your dream restaurant?

No, I'm not going to do that because

I think it's going to be less fruitful comically.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was gently guiding you.

Okay, I see.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you want to know what I've not thought about the interior decor?

I tell you what, I don't like, I mean, I'm just not keen on tablecloths.

No.

Yeah.

No.

It makes me feel like I've got to behave or

you're supposed to.

I mean,

my assistant booked me

a snack between meetings, and it was in a very posh restaurant with tablecloths.

And I think there's something weird about sitting in a restaurant with a tablecloth on your own.

Yeah, especially for a snack.

Yeah, just a snack.

Yeah, so I went around the corner to one of the high street boutiques that dispatch

quick food, but I'm not going to help them and help their share dividends by mentioning them.

But there you go.

You would rather not.

So you don't want to say what your snack was?

Well, I just...

Because there might be some people listening.

No, do you know what I did?

Okay, well, if I'm look, if I'm traveling on the motorway and I need a quick snack and I want a lot of protein, I just get, you know, a free-range egg mayonnaise sandwich and I remove two of the slices.

So I have one big triangle fat with egg rather than four slices with the egg.

So So you get more protein and less and

less bread, more substance.

That's a great hack.

So you do one slice.

What you do is you take you get the two triangles in parallel in the triangular box that we're all familiar with now and you just take two of the slices out and put the two lead and fat because what they do is they sort of they gather the food in the middle so when you slice it down the center it looks really full but actually if you pull the triangle off the bread off yeah it's sort of centered around

you know it's a bit dishonest a bit disingenuous but but anyway,

that's my quick snack thing.

And I try to be veggie-ish, but it doesn't always work out.

You know, if there's a roast dinner on the menu, I can fall to pieces quite quickly.

But yeah, so that's my snack tip.

I think I'm actually going to do that.

Yeah.

And I'm not even just saying that just for to make you feel good.

Thank you.

Although you do feel good, don't you?

Knowing that I'm going to do it?

Yeah, you know, I'm all about practical tips and practical advice.

And, you know, I mean, and if, by the way, people listen to this and they think, because I'm sure they will, and I'm going to bring it up now, because I guess you're going to be, you know, is I do this character called Alan Partridge.

Yeah.

That was my segue into that

subject.

That some of the things I say might sound a bit like him.

And that's okay.

Yeah.

Yeah, that is okay.

I mean, as you were saying it, I was thinking, oh, yeah, I remember.

I read once that Amando and Uchi would just write down things you actually did and put it into the camera.

Yeah, that still happens.

Definitely that egg sandwich thing.

Yeah, yeah, well I do.

Sometimes I say stuff as Partridge that I mean,

I personally have no problem with.

And then sometimes I say things that I find objectionable.

Yeah, so sometimes...

Sometimes Alan's right and sometimes Alan's wrong.

Yes.

I think that's the simplest way.

It's okay for your personality to bleed into Partridge.

It's when it starts happening the other way around with the things you don't agree that Partridge says, that they start bleeding into your personality, that it might be the issue.

Yeah, but

it just wouldn't.

I mean sometimes you know look it's quite enjoyable because he's like a Trojan horse when I want to get things on my chest.

See a lot of people go on social media don't they?

They sort of like bang on about stuff and they get stuck in a vortex of an argument with someone they don't know or care about and it's completely debilitating a waste of their creativity.

They should just shove it into their material.

That's what I do.

I mean if I've got something to get off my chest I just put it into the mouth of Partridge and knowing that if people go, that's that's not a very nice thing to say.

I go, well, it's just the character.

So

what are you going to do?

It's not me.

It's him.

And Alan's written a what is first foray into fiction now.

Is that right?

Yes.

Well, we did.

I say we, I say me and the Gibbons.

And I always make the joke that the Gibbons aren't an infinite number of monkeys.

They're two brothers called Rob and Neil Gibbons who helped me write Partridge.

But

we did,

yeah, we did

a biography, and then we did a thing thing called nomads that was sort of

Sort of an account of a of a journey that he made and this one is yes a foray into

It's it's semi-fictional even in Alan's world.

So it's a one level on from yeah because because because I hate to make this that Alan doesn't actually exist

What?

He doesn't exist.

He's not real

Yeah, I know the judge of that fiction

exclusive for the pod.

Yeah.

Or maybe I don't exist.

I'm Posh does exist.

That's that's an interesting thing to ponder twist so we're last few minutes right now yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah it's it what is it it's uh it's called uh i did the talking book that's like a talking book audio book i'm sorry i'm sure my age it's a talking book

but anyway i did that i did my version of that uh a couple of months ago and um i did laugh um which uh sometimes happens when when um i revisit material i've forgotten about but um it's an alan alan basically moves to kent to renovate a lighthouse yeah

because uh when we when me and rob and neil try and think of you know an idea for the book what we have to do is try and do something which we think is interesting and funny and not the same old stuff and also not something that's just that's jumping the shark comically and then ruining all the the funny stuff we've done before and you think well if we do if we do this idea that no no critics can say oh no they've run out of ideas um it's another one of those alan moves to the Kent coast to renovate a lighthouse stories.

And also, it's a dual narrative as well, isn't it?

Which Alan's very proud of.

Yes,

it is.

Yeah, Alan, obviously, he's obviously discovered that you can do a dual narrative where one chapter is about one thing and the next chapter's about another thing, and the third chapter's about the thing that the first chapter is about, and so on to the end.

Yeah.

And just explains it all for

people who are like himself.

So,

yeah,

it's an account of that.

He thought there's a very good sex scene.

I'll get to something that I'm particularly proud of.

Yeah.

Alan describes, you know, the sexual congress between him and a red-haired

member of the opposite sex.

Red.

A woman.

He calls her red.

She's called red.

She has red hair.

And he said he's always wanted to call a woman red.

He gets that opportunity in a novel, yeah.

Yeah, the sex scene is absolutely horrific.

I heard that on the audiobook the other day.

It's amazing.

Yeah, you just have to sort of go for it, really, with all this stuff you know just hold your nose and jump yeah

well we were both at a wedding once where the uh in the evening there was like uh djs or whatever and people could like do the silent disco thing with the headphones and i noticed that some some of them had a green light on it and some of them had a red light on it and it turned out there was a switch you could flick and it was um the first partridge audiobook And people just listened to that at the wedding.

At the wedding.

Really?

Yeah, there was one like music channel.

And then you'd look around the dance floor and some people were just stood there laughing and they were listening to to the partridge audio wow dancing to

that's uh wow even needs to get out more

uh would you consider yourself a foodie steve um well i um i was talking to my daughter about this last night because she i sort of have to she can she's my counselor

so i i don't think i did i think i probably am yes but i'm not um

I've eaten in lots of different kinds of restaurants.

That sounds really bland, doesn't it?

But I have eaten, I mean, in the very best, poshest restaurants and the lowliest.

But I think I am a foodie.

I didn't grow up as a foodie, but I think I am.

But I'm not a food snob, though.

And people who describe themselves as foodies almost annoy me because they've used that word to describe themselves.

But

I like food.

I can certainly say that.

Yeah.

And you've eaten at loads of great restaurants.

I mean, we've got a whole TV series.

Have you eaten in great restaurants?

Yeah, I mean, when Rob and I, you know, we did four of those things, two on the BBC that everyone saw, two on Sky that hardly anyone saw, and they were equally enjoyable, all of them.

But yeah, we went around Europe, we did Spain, Greece and Italy and the UK.

I really enjoyed going on the north of England, the lakes and Yorkshire and that sort of thing.

And Italy is probably the best.

But yeah, we had some very posh restaurants.

I remember in Italy.

They're not quite caught up with the woke thing, I don't think, as much as the UK and other European.

I mean, on the menu,

all the men's menus had the prices on, all the women's menus didn't have the prices on them.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

That's pretty

unreconstructed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I was, I was appalled on behalf of the opposite sex.

Well, really, neither yours or Rob's menu should have had the price on, just the production menu.

Yeah, I know.

I know that's that's that is true.

And some of the women were offended, uh, quite rightly, but they also didn't have to pay the bill.

Yes, it's kind of win-win,

lose-win for them.

Lose-win, lose-win, yeah, lose-win.

Let's perfrase, yeah, win.

Lose win.

But

my abiding memory of those series is that because you're shooting a scene, you have to eat sort of three Michelin-style dinners three times, more or less.

I mean, you have to pace yourself because you spend eight hours slowly eating the same meal three times.

So you have to really, it's very hard to pace yourself when what's been put in front of you tastes amazing.

Yeah.

And you just want to snaffle it all down, but you can't because you're going to make work for yourself later on.

And the hardest thing of all is when they put the dinner down at the because Michael Winterbostum, the director, would do things in reverse order.

So when he shot all the funny stuff, he just said, Okay, I just want a shot of you now, the dinner being put down in front of you as if it's the first time.

And you've already eaten it three times.

And you have to look at it and go,

I can't wait to eat this.

And that's the hardest kind of action of all.

Because it's like when you're shopping around,

don't shop on a full stomach or an empty stomach.

Well, an empty stomach, we all know that, because then you buy rubbish, don't you?

Because you've got this, you're salivating.

The worst is to shop in a full stomach, then you sort of just put a stick of celery in your basket, and then you go home, you're hungry again, you haven't got what you need.

But with the

trip, Rob and I were just eating so much rich food.

So rich and interesting and all the rest of it.

But after a while, you start to crave really simple food because you sort of had this assault

of

Romanesque kind of orgy-esque

kind of indulgence in food.

And I remember when I was there, having this craving for just a fried egg sandwich, you know, with just brown sauce on white bread and butter, just something really simple because you'd have this assault of all these flavours.

Yeah, I completely agree.

I've had that.

Yeah, I've had that one and go to a fancy restaurant.

It's a very special meal.

And then halfway through, I start thinking, I wonder.

Halfway through the meal.

Yeah, halfway through the meal, I'm thinking, I wonder if after this,

I could get a burger from somewhere.

Like I just go to McDonald's or something.

Yeah, I do like comfort food in front of the telly, but good, good quality comfort food.

Yes.

So foodie-wise.

i was there so my daughter did help me with go through this with um a pen and paper because she said you're going to be all over the place and you won't be able to focus properly so you've got to hone in on on stuff do you think she was right yeah yeah she is right she's i mean i i'm not you know i'll be honest i'm sort of uh i frequently buy posh ready meals i mean posh ones but they're still ready meals yeah i buy them for two even if it's just me just so i feel like i'm not alone yeah

and just leave half of it one for you one for alan yeah yeah yes that's right yeah so yeah

Imagine if I did that.

If I ate one half as me and then at the other half as Alan.

Just because I'm such a method comic actor.

I mean, as we go through the menu, we can try and establish what Alan would have as well.

We can't.

Yeah, well, I think any of your characters.

Well, there's a Venn diagram of me and Alan,

which looks like a sort of figure eight.

But some days that almost turns into just a single circle.

And then other times it's like

a bottom.

It's two circles next to each other but but but but there is there is definitely a

uh an overlap that i'm quite comfortable with i mean the old days i used to say i'm not like i'm the opposite of him but i'm not really uh and also it's like you know he used to be that he was like very right wing and sort of daily mail reading sort of xenophobic blah blah blah blah blah and that feels feels really boring now what's far more interesting is him trying to be um you know uh socially liberal but economically conservative like a sort of a trendy like like the fusion of tony blair and david cameron the idea that they're kind of like call me dave kind of um and and you know liking like david cameron likes the smiths but you know isn't very keen on welfare or height or wants low taxation so we it's a weird marriage of

oh yeah like a typical smiths fan they're into low taxation

anyway uh so there is that alan struggling to be host modern and enlightened and um

uh woke or as woke as he thinks he needs to appear to be to sustain a career is far more enjoyable because

it's almost like it's a career decision because of because of like culture wars you can sort of you make a career decision you can go it's been sort of becoming this atricious warfare and and sort of the daily mail and the toys at last conference really were trying to pick a fight about culture wars but most people sort of in the street just aren't aren't asked about i mean one way or the other, to be honest with you.

But they really want to pick a fight to try and say, look,

the left is really ruining everything.

But you can make a choice, can't you?

So I think Alan's made the choice that it's better to, on balance, there's not that many kind of daily mail

anti-woke kind of xenophobes in showbiz.

There aren't.

There just aren't.

You know, there's some, but not that many.

And so I think he's made the decision to go,

I'm going to go with the woke brigade.

As a career decision?

Yes.

I'm gonna try and sort of get on message with all that.

So that's quite quite good fun.

There's a bit in the book, not to give anything away, but where Alan's talking about Me Too, and he's absolutely delighted about Me Too.

He thinks it's a great thing, but mainly because he sees that as a gap has been left open for him as a sort of non-offending white middle-aged presenter.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I think he also says that he says there's no skeletons in his comment.

And for full disclosure, he said he once touched Sue Cook's hair.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

We always start the meal with still sparkling water, Steve.

Well, I have, if it's summer, I'll have very chilled sparkling water, but the rest of the time, I'll have room temp tap water.

I prefer northern tap water to the sort of lime scaly southern tap water, which is because you've got lime scale.

I grew up in manchester i never had to descale a kettle till i was 20 something and came down south yeah um i've got very many happy memories about not having to descale the kettle in my younger days yeah did you take it for granted at the time i did i did no i did i did it and uh you know i come down and i and i sometimes when i look in the kettle and see the lime scale i think well you know what what what did i make the right choices in life yeah yeah sure anyway so so uh

yeah so still and still in room temperature because if you want to warm your vocal cords up and you're sort of performing live, and I'm sure as comics, you might poo-poo

the idea of technical warm-ups.

Seeing them as a bit sort of dandy-ish.

Pathetic.

Yeah, pathetic.

All right, okay, yeah.

But they actually are, I did go to drama school, so I'm sort of half actor, half sort of comic, I suppose.

they really do work.

And anyway, I'm going around the circle, but basically, cold water doesn't help you, your vocal cords room temperature, normal temperature is very good to keep everything working.

The start of this dream meal, you're having room temperature water to warm up your vocal cords.

Well, no, but I'm just

giving you some deep background.

I'm trying to pad it out.

Yeah, you can decide what you keep in later.

I mean, I'm just,

yeah.

So, um, this is going out live, Steve.

Ah,

okay.

So, yeah, so that's that.

Okay, what's that?

What's that?

Come next.

Come on.

Come on.

I want to to get really get into this now.

Pop dumbs or bread.

Pop dumps or bread, Steve Coogan.

Pop dumps or bread.

Poppadums or bread.

Well, not

poppadums.

If I'm in a curry house, I'll have poppadums.

But generally, no, I love good bread.

When I love good bread, another controversial state from left-wing firebrand, Steve Coogan.

But

yeah, I wonder what social media are going to say about that.

I was in Spain in sort of the Catalan area of Spain with Rob Bryden, I don't know, five years, six years ago.

And I remember we had this bread in this, I think it was one of these restaurants that

was like number one in the world and some list somewhere.

And the bread and the butter, the butter was from the cows.

You could see the cows through the window in the field that the butter came from.

And it was this sweet fresh bread.

And this

I've never forgotten how good that bread and butter was.

But that's very interesting, diverting.

But really, I like Irish soda bread

with butter.

Simple,

slightly, you know, warm straight from the oven.

You can make you make it with sour milk.

In fact, growing up, my mum would have bottles of milk and leave them on the shelf till they went off.

Right.

So much so that the build-up of sour milk would push the s foil top off the top of the milk bottle.

So there'd be a column of sour milk almost solidified, pushing the the lid off yeah and the rest of it was sort of like watery vinegary it looked disgusting yeah and she just put all that into the mixing bowl with the flat and make soda bread and it tastes fantastic um so so that's my that's my breadcrust uh yeah so would you like it made by your mum uh yes or my sister is quite good or brilliant to pretty much any working class irish woman yeah would probably do yeah

we can sort that out you know

but you don't want to see the cows out the window for this one.

No, no, no.

I mean, that's just a kind of novelty, isn't it?

It's when a lot of these posh restaurants are, they sort of try to make things

try to make it a visceral, authentic experience, don't they?

And it's just, it's...

And if it does have a kind of a peasant flavour, it's normally sort of packaged peasant experience for rich people.

Sure.

Do you think it helps seeing the cow?

It's nice to know where it comes from.

It's nice to know where it comes from.

I mean, I'm trying to be a vegetarian but i do eat a bit of meat uh

if i know where it's come from i won't order a curry i won't order a curry with meat in it because i don't want to i don't want to eat you know battery chicken that's i mean when i was growing up we had a butcher that lived next door and our christmas turkey it must have i mean it was like we almost had a 48 pound christmas turkey i swear to god that turkey must have been walking around saying please somebody shoot me and we had to push it we shoved she had to kick it into the oven it almost came out square shaped because because it wouldn't quite fit in the oven aperture.

In those days, no one cared about hormones or chemicals.

It was just quantity in those days.

This is the biggest turkey that anyone's had this Christmas.

Therefore, it's good.

Therefore, it's better.

More is better, and less is worse.

And that was

the only real criteria.

Because have you had enough to eat?

I used to read the Bino at the back of the Bino.

If the main character wasn't being sort of slippered or beaten by an adult for for some sort of misdemeanor he'd been given a reward of a fiver and it was a now for a feast it was the end of every comic strip because the other those are the best thing a child could have is just enough to eat yeah yeah a big plate of mash and sausages incredible incredible yeah yeah yeah yeah all those sausages it's funny isn't it what do they get rewarded in with in the bino now yeah i don't i've not read it for ages but i mean it was all so i don't

it really was uh i think they tried to i mean what's it's it's like a curiosity now isn't it's all like i mean they had like the Walter and the Softies, they got rid of it, you know, someone basically sort of, I mean, clearly, it was clearly a slightly effeminate young boy

turned into the softie,

which is really not on message with current ways of thinking.

No,

so I think we've moved on.

I think, I like to think we've all moved on from the be no.

We haven't.

We haven't.

We were in the beano?

Are you?

We were.

Were you really?

The one on the panel.

The joints of and the panel of many of the minks.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

I'm slightly jealous of them.

Yeah, yeah.

That's why

I thought you were jealous.

Your dream starter.

So

I was trying to...

Have we got in your head now about the Beano thing?

Yeah, you have a bit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I, what did she say?

She made, help me make notes here.

I mean, I said some sort of soup to go with the bread.

It sounds really boring, doesn't it?

But that, but I do, I don't, you know, having, like I say, eaten at all the best restaurants in the Western Hemisphere,

I would quite like a pea soup, but not peace soup.

I don't like soups that are made when people blitz everything in a blender.

So it's all just one consistency.

I like lumps of stuff.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

And I like pea soup that's got little bits of pea still in it.

Whole peas or just bits?

Yeah, just like broken down peas, like it's half broken down in the greenness of the soup.

And of course white pepper I'm a big white pepper person there's certain things that really bug me Claire said my daughter said don't get angry don't get too angry about stuff you can get angry

okay well basically I'm fed up of restaurants that don't have white pepper yeah they've all got this grinder the big sort of grinder with the sort of black pepper yeah and black pepper is great for pasta and stuff like that it's great but years ago in this country we used to have white pepper in every cafe there'd be a little plastic thing of white pepper and now you can't get any white pepper.

Oh, no, we don't have white pepper.

We only have black pepper.

Why?

Why don't you have white pepper?

Yeah.

You know, on eggs, black peppers shit.

Yeah.

You have to have white pepper on eggs, on mashed potato, on shepherd's pie,

or on macaroni cheese, white pepper.

White pepper is the only thing that will do.

You're mainly putting it on quite pale stuff.

So I imagine the white pepper you don't know how much you've put on.

Well,

you give it a bit of a shake.

It's a bit like a sort of, it's like talcum powder, but it's not.

But people need to rediscover it.

I think it's associated with sort of lo-fi, old-fashioned, old ladies, whatever,

that people who are trendy restaurant establishments think that don't don't really put it out there.

But I predict that there'll be a bit of a resurgence in white pepper within the next five years.

Partly because of this podcast.

Yeah, I think so.

I think it'll probably help.

So I'm a big, big white pepper person.

Why did we get onto that?

Pea soup.

Yeah, so I was.

I put white pepper on the pea soup.

There you go.

Yes.

So that was why I mentioned that.

What else?

Just something else that bugs me while we're on things that bug me.

When it comes to, because I can't really cook, but I can do a sort of a

like a

breakfast.

I'll do that quite well.

I think of you every time I have a fried breakfast.

Yeah, so do I.

Okay, so

partridge did it.

We did that.

There was a partridge thing about fried breakfast.

And I don't, I try to be vegetarian, but I reserve the right to not be vegetarian when there's like an amazingly good like roast dinner in a in a proper like gastro pub that really views drug you know aged beef and it's really really yeah um so i will do that if only if i know the provenance of where the meats come from so otherwise it's you know we've been over that it's not nice it's not nice thinking about hot and i don't like you know and also i don't want animals to be badly treated with the breakfast the partridge bit about the breakfast oh yes using the sausage as a break water yeah to keep the beans away from the egg i'm still pretty that i mean that is me i mean i don't i don't mind being i don't mind beans beans on sausage and i don't mind sausage and egg and i don't mind you know in in the old days when i ate more meat you know bacon and egg um and uh and and beans and bacon but but beans just beans and egg

it doesn't quite work for me so but these days i still do a black fried breakfast but i'll do um I use veg good good.

I mean, look, the veggie meat options now are so good.

You know, like the sausage.

In the old days, meat substitutes were like, if you, if you got a veggie sausage, it was just vegetables put into a sausage shape yeah

now it's um now they're they seem a lot more tasty and so uh i have those uh but i don't like people who put beans in the microwave it really makes me angry yes um not as angry as you know uh human rights violations but but pretty angry somewhere somewhere between

yeah yeah human rights violations and um uh a paper cut yes yeah yeah yeah

um so he's got what microwave beans because they come when your microwave beans they come out hot and hard hot mini bullets yeah in some watery tomato sauce what you need to do is put when you're doing a breakfast you the first thing you put on is the beans

and really let them break down it's almost like almost to the level of mushy peas but not quite so sort of mushy beans then they're much nicer to put on your your breakfast so um don't anyone puts beans in the microwave it's kind of

i think this i think it's i know they're probably maybe they're busy and they probably don't like me for saying that but i just think it's about quality of life at the end of the the day.

Because they even sell them in little microwavable pots, don't they?

Yeah.

Yeah, I know.

That's just, it's just, that's just awful.

Porridge, you know, people, I mean,

you can microwave porridge.

It's fine.

But I mean, some things, actually, I'm not anti-microwave.

You know,

I know some people are snobs who don't have microwaves.

Ooh, they give you cancer.

No, they don't.

Don't give you cancer.

It's just bad science, bad science by people who make science up.

Yeah.

Okay.

Anyway.

So is the soup just starter?

Yeah.

Sorry.

That's what I'm trying to say.

Yeah.

Yeah.

it sounds very boring, but you know, I like simple things while done good and good.

Okay, so are you saving a bit of bread from the bread course, the dip in?

Yeah, I mean, but soda bread's quite heavy.

So, I mean, I'm

now backtracking on soda bread because I love soda bread.

It's great with cheese.

But I mean, you know, soda bread and cheese and soup, that's a meal, really.

And also,

my daughter, Claire, said,

I said, look, none of this, she said, she should plan it and think of what your perfect meal is.

I said, well, there's loads of things I like individually, but they might might not work all together yeah but I'm still gonna say this is what I'm gonna have my meal not because not because it's it works together harmoniously because it actually doesn't really but I love them all in their own different ways so I'm gonna put them together on the table that's fine that's what we that's what we like people to do it doesn't have to have to go together okay good good oh good this is your dream oh great okay yeah

so your dream main course is this going to be something out of left field after the soup then?

Well, now this is interesting because I think I've gone through a bit of a transition because

I'm not a baby boomer.

And I think I'm Jen, I think I call it X.

Well, after, I'm sort of right after boomers.

Boomers stopped,

very interesting, all this stuff, in about 1963 or 4.

And what they stopped with the arrival of the pill.

Right.

Basically.

There was loads and loads of babies and then there weren't as many, surprise, surprise.

And I'm just on the cusp of

that new lot right yeah so i i grew up with um

very old i mean i grew up eating really nice food because my mother who's uh half irish would cook uh really fresh food not not because she was really keen on giving us the freshest food it was just economically the best thing to do is you make a stew use fresh vegetables and some meat or whatever and it all tastes great and um she would do that for for for as a sort of an economic choice not not because she thought it was healthy but i was jealous of all the kids at school who had finders crispy pancakes and i wanted all the processed food.

So

that was sort of what I wanted.

And my mother, I mean, when I go home now, I see my mum makes vegetable soup.

It's the only, and I'm going to go, oh, this vegetable soup tastes great.

Yeah, because it's had a big bone marinating in it for like a month.

It's the only vegetable soup that vegetarians can't eat.

But

so I would have had.

very

things like in the old days cheese and onion pie or a roast a roast dinner or something but but having but now i've got i have my daughter is very is a chef yeah and uh you know i'm i'm i'm i'm I'm only blowing her own trumpet because during lockdown she and used me and her boyfriend as guinea pigs for her

food and I just sort of opened up my mind to the possibilities of really good vegetarian food with incredible ingredients.

So I wouldn't have you know

My daughter's written down grandma food,

meaning the food my mum makes, my mother, her grandmother.

Hamis, your daughter made these notes for you.

Well, I was stood next to her and she was scribbling.

Yeah, this is her handwriting.

Yeah, broccoli, garlic, chili, pasta.

That's the thing that she does for me.

She does this thing where she just like blitzes anchovy and puts it in with like broccoli and garlic and chili and pasta.

And it just tastes amazing.

It's like it's not really expensive food, but it's that whole new thing, I think, because she, it's like, where's it?

You know, the east, you know, the east of London where the trendy people live, right?

Okay.

Sorry, I thought you were throwing up that.

Yeah, not that much.

I mean, I know they're annoying, I mean,

but and it sort of starts to make me feel like a lot of this sort of posh, very posh, over-presented, over, like Michelin-style restaurants, fine dining, where it's like that.

Some of the joys, I mean, I love, they're very impressed with a lot of these chefs, but sometimes they take the joy out of food, don't they?

It's so perfected, it becomes almost fetishized and elitist.

And I call them the dot, dot, dot people, because instead of putting the sauce on the plate, they go dot dot dot with the sauce on it, like sort of punctuation points.

And it's like there's something just really anally retentive about it.

It really irritates me.

And it's like,

you feel like it's a masterpiece, but you don't feel there's any love in it.

This is really impressive food.

I don't, you know, and that sort of love cliché is really actually important because I like the idea of food, people coming together and you break bread with people and you, it's a celebratory thing.

And it's, and it's, um, and so what I like, I suppose, is good peasant food, right?

Really good.

And Rob Briden always took the piss out of me on the trip saying, oh, he goes, I know, I know what Steve says, you know,

simple ingredients you know best ingredients simply made and all that which is is true and that is what he told when we had him on he said if you ever have Steve on this he'll say he likes simple ingredients simply made yeah that's true it's true

and because in because peasant slash working class people in Europe in Spain France Italy, even working class people eat really well.

They don't in England and they don't in America.

They eat stuff in cardboard boxes given to them by multinational companies that go don't worry about your food we'll give you this for three quid right so they eat rubbish uh and i'm generalizing generalizing obviously but but that is definitely a an issue and um the food i like is a food like like i just described which is actually not the ingredients aren't that expensive

but they taste really great and they're accessible there's no meat in them but it's just really really good food so i'd have some sort of pasta dish that my daughter would make and um for a side so in italy I love good tomatoes, really hard to come by, aren't they?

Really good ones.

The best ones are the ones you grow yourself.

And even partial, organic, sort of overpriced supermarkets still never quite get tomatoes the way they are if you take them out of a greenhouse.

And so, I'd have those chopped up with a bit of salt and pepper, a bit of olive oil.

That's it, some white bread, fresh white bread.

That's you can't beat that.

Maybe some mozzarella if you've if you're feeling particularly indulgent, but that is a really good that's that's what Rob's talking about when he when he mocks my um

that's the sort of stuff I like.

It's like really

simple, fresh.

This menu is fitting together, by the way.

I know you're worried about it not, but you know, lovely pea soup and broccoli pasta.

Yeah,

I suppose it doesn't.

You like broccoli pasta, do you?

I like broccoli pasta.

Yeah.

I have too much of a germ knock down there.

Yeah, it's I like, yeah, all chopped and blitzed and just, I don't know.

And she, anyway, she does things that are very, I can't quite replicate, but it's, um, yeah.

I mean, when, when, for example, if my daughter does me boiled eggs, soldiers, she'll put tiny blitzed anchovy and whisk it up with the butter.

So it's just exactly the same as boiled eggs and soldiers, but just that little twist she'll put in it will make you, suddenly you'll go, the toast tastes amazing just because there's tiny bits of anchovy in the butter.

It's amazing.

Little things like that.

So I'm kind of into that new discovery of

that food that...

that looks appetizing and nice, but isn't over-arranged and over-preened, over-fetishized.

And this over, you know, a lot of these TV shows at the moment are about this kind of this perfection of presentation and everything.

And I just think people are over it.

And it's like, you can have food that looks appetizing and honest and not Ponce,

frankly.

Yes.

Poncy, non-see food.

I don't want to eat it anymore.

So

I remember, I think, is your, would you say like your approach to comedy is similar?

Because I remember seeing you being interviewed once, I think it was at the Edinburgh Comedy Awards, and you'd seen a lot of shows that month.

And you said that you like to see like some rough and ready show.

You prefer those shows.

Well, I do.

A polished mediocrity.

I don't, I'm, I'm, I'm less interested in, I mean, I can see why people quite like it.

It's like an easy read, isn't it?

It's like sort of an airport novel of comedy.

But

I like things that are.

Well, as a kind of a journeyman, you know, I mean, as a, as a sort of a, that busman's holiday that people go, he's really good, isn't he?

And I go, he's all right.

I mean, that's my response to most of it but but when I what I like is when I see someone I go I don't quite I go I don't know why why I can't quite figure out why they're why they're funny I mean Tim Key for example I mean when I I met him it must be 15 16 years ago and I work I work he auditioned for me when he was in his his early days and I remember watching him and he was making me laugh and I couldn't figure out why he was funny.

And that's always much more interesting to me because I go, because I think, oh, yeah, I know how to do that.

And oh, yeah, oh, I see, he did that.

And then you you go oh yeah well you can do that you can say that really quickly and say it really loudly or you can say it really quietly and they're both funny and you look you sort of learn that stuff don't you you're you're old enough to know that you sort of you you start to learn those little patterns and structures about how you do comedy and they're and they're great and it's great fun and it's great also when you discover things where you go oh actually you know

I'm gonna say this I'm gonna say that five times instead of three and it'll still be funny or play around with things and you know uh when we did parties once we remember we did the original tv series but he's having a sex scene in the dark it's a sex scene we thought how long can we keep the people watching tv when it's literally a black screen almost as a challenge just in and of itself and that can help you find weird things things that are weirdly funny for so that all that's wonderful being able to sort of explore that but tim key

i couldn't i couldn't see what he was doing i didn't understand what what was going on what why i was laughing or why what he was doing was funny it was like uh

i was sort of a bit lost and that's weirdly exciting because i don't understand it i can't deconstruct it yeah and uh so that's the sort of thing i like that's that's so but things that are interesting and different and and not

not perfect yeah are more interesting to me or things almost like because a lot of people you know i was always very interested in doing stuff and i was quite challenged when i started working with armanduianucci and patrick marbron people but um I had to learn to go down that avenue of

experimenting and potentially failing to discover, you know,

different, more interesting ways of being funny.

It's quite learnt, because a lot of preferred,

if you're very, very professional in this business, very professional, and you consistently deliver stuff which is just above average, you can have a very long career and

have a nice mortgage and a nice house and all that.

I mean, and good luck to those people.

But I just like seeing things where you, you know, Vic and Bob, they were one of the first people to do it.

You think, why are they, how the hell is that funny?

I don't know what's going on.

I can't figure it out, but it's making me laugh, you know.

And let's try and fold that back into the food thing.

Yeah.

Well, Tim Key is

the broccoli pasta is like Tim is like Tim Key.

It is a bit, yeah, yeah, because, yeah.

And sometimes that stuff looks odd, but it's sort of going back to basics.

Because you look at like, you know, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton and Stan Laurel.

That's huge.

So, oh, yes, I did play.

Oh, yes, I played him.

But, but, but they, they sort of um, they did stuff where you couldn't quite know.

Yeah, so it sounds like it's not what you have on guard, it's just sort of trying to just shake things up a bit.

I think it's good in the box of Lego that is comedy is to shake it up a bit sometimes and then start building stuff again.

Yeah, yeah, build build something that looks like this game.

Yeah, yeah, this is going really well, yeah.

You're a drink, drink, I'll say you.

Dream, drink.

Okay, so yeah, I talked to my daughter about this.

I said, what's the problem?

I don't know what my drink.

I don't drink anymore.

I used to drink a lot, maybe a bit too much, sometimes.

But

if I was still drinking, it would be, and this is really the church I was made, is I don't like lags.

They're all right, but the best drink of all, by far, the one that I miss.

uh because i don't drink is bitter a pan is and that's i think alan's actually might have said that but anyway bitter room temperature bitter hand pumped in a from a pub not chilled so it's just a room temperature not that fizzy a bit flat yeah uh that to me is a perfect

i just love the taste of that do you have a particular a particular bitter well the weaker the bitter the better and that's not because of not wanting to have as much alcohol it just tastes better so you get like 3.8 percent is that's a good or 3.6 or 3.8 that's a really good because it's a better it.

And the reason they're not that popular in public is they don't keep, they don't keep as well.

So, unless someone drinks them quite quickly, they're gonna lose the bit, it goes off.

So, they're always on 4.8 and 5, and you think, oh, great, loads of alcohol in that.

It's actually not a better drink, it's an inferior drink because the lower alcohol content is a better hydro bitcher

in one of the mugs, the sort of mug.

No, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a dick about it.

No, I just like in a normal glass.

I'm not like a real ale,

Sure.

But so, no, just so that would be, oh,

but the thing is, because I don't do that now, I go through fads,

as my daughter knows, where I go, I get into a certain kind of thing, like a kombucha.

I was buying loads of kombucha, trying different kind of kombuchas.

That's what he goes with.

You love that as well.

I love kombucha, yeah.

Yeah, the sort of sour, the sourness combined with the sweets.

Don't like things that are too sugary.

And then the CBD drinks, I start getting into all those.

And I go to that phase, and then I go back to the kombucha, and then I just like,

you know, I I quite like those Duchy of Cornwall orange jiggers.

Well, I've not had Jiggers.

Okay.

It's like sort of just, well, jigger, it's like a posh person's name for orange jigger for just orange juice, which I think this might be fizzy.

So, yeah, I do like Prince Charles, Dutch, King Charles, King Charles, Duchy of Cornwall produce, even though I am an anti-monarchist.

It's interesting because when I buy that stuff, I go,

I don't like having a royal family, but I do like his produce.

And so I feel a bit tall, but

I think you can be anti-monarchist but also admit they've done some things right uh yes

i haven't yeah i do i suppose it's because just because most of the people who are into it all those flag waving plastic boater people are just i i think are kind of idiots because they support a power structure that keeps a foot on the throat of working class people

and um I just not very keen on that kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, agreed.

But

having said that,

you know, the Queen worked very hard and yeah, so she's all right she was all right yeah the rest of them

are problematic for me okay i guess they're also like pouring like while they've got their foot on the throat they're pouring juice in them yeah when the foot the foot's on

at least king charles if he uh if he as the head of a power structure even unwittingly and and maybe subconsciously has his foot collectively on the throats of working class people by being party to a power structure that rewards the blah blah blah you You can fill in the rest yourself.

While he's doing that, well, he's got his foot on the phone, so you're right, he's he's

putting orange jigger in

mouths, mouths, mouths, mouths.

AI is transforming customer service.

It's real and it works.

And with Finn, we've built the number one AI agent for customer service.

We're seeing lots of cases where it's solving up to 90% of real queries for real businesses.

This includes the real world, complex stuff like issuing a refund or canceling an order.

And we also see it when Finn goes up against competitors.

It's top of all the performance benchmarks, top of the G2 leaderboard.

And if you're not happy, we'll refund you up to a million dollars, which I think says it all.

Check it out for yourself at Finn.ai.

Tired of spills and stains on your sofa?

WashableSofas.com has your back, featuring the Anime Collection, the only designer sofa that's machine washable inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.

That's right, sofas sofas started just $699.

Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabrics.

Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.

Check out washable sofas.com and get up to 60% off your Anibay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund.

No return shipping or restocking fees.

Every penny back.

Upgrade now at washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Your dream dessert.

Okay, so this is interesting to me.

Whether it's interesting to other people will remains to be seen.

But I do like

I'm a big rhubarb person.

Yes.

If I see, if I scan a menu, what I do is I do like a fast word search for the word rhubarb.

Yes.

I'm in my head, like a computer.

Pretend to be a computer.

You pretend to

pretend to be a computer.

Whose owner programming is

on the menu.

When I say to the word rhubarb, I just go, I'll have that.

I don't care what it is.

It's got rhubarb.

I'll have it.

Forced rhubarb, which is in the 1970s, would have been a hilarious thing for someone like John Inman to to talk about on how you're being served um but but um that we've moved on from them but it is it does sound like it's uh sort of funny in some way but it's not forced rhubarb which is pink which is pink pink rhubarb yeah again still sounds a bit rude um it it it is rhubarb which is grown in dark sheds yeah uh with no light so that the rhubarb is forced to sort of it's almost like the sort of the the equivalent of the the veal equivalent of vegetables yeah and uh fruit is it a fruit or a vegetable it's sort of a vegetable isn't it's a weird one isn't it?

Yeah, I think it's a veg, rhubarb, is it?

I'm not sure.

It's a vegetable

seeds.

That's what I'm saying.

So it's, um, and forced rhubarb is naturally pink.

So, so, most rhubarb when you grow, growing, if you like me, you get rhubarb crumble, you get like a bit of green rhubarb, a little bit pink, a little bit green.

That yes, but a lot of sugar in it.

Yeah, the pink rhubarb, you don't have to put much sugar.

It's naturally sweet, that's why it's called forced because it's pink.

So, there you go.

Very interesting.

So, I can hear it creaking, can't you, when it's growing?

You can,

Yeah, yeah, I love that.

Very interesting, Force Drew.

They have candles in the sheds.

Really, really weird.

It looks like a sort of Wicker man dessert.

Anyway, so yeah, I'd have root.

Now, I do remember a dessert I had about 2010, I think it was, on the trip to the, it was called The Trip, Rob Ryden, we were in England, and it was at Hipping Hall in

which is sort of between Lancashire and Yorkshire.

No, no, no, I slept with a woman at the place called the Inn at Whitewell.

Because it's semi-fictional, I slept with the woman on front desk of the hotel, consensually, even within the fiction.

But when we, and these are real establishments, but we mix up the actors.

So some people are played by real people, some people are played by actors.

Happy to say that the woman I simulated, having slept with in the drama, was an actor playing someone who worked on front desk.

She showed me to my room.

We had a conversation.

It went from there but uh but um uh and developed in a in a in a in a in a way that was so respectful it was staggering um

but uh anyway so but someone but when we finished that episode went out some people would go to the hotel because i went but i went i do go to that hotel to eat the food it's a place in at white well it's a nice sort of country pub and it it's it's lovely i i went it's some of these places i went to before we made the trip went oh i know that place great but some people go to the hotel and ask for the

character was called Magda.

Is Magda here behind front desk?

Can we see Magda?

Like, like, I really slept with someone who worked behind the counter.

Can Magda show me to my room?

The weird thing is, it's like, because it's semi-fictional, there's like a cam, I wake up in bed with a woman.

Do people think that there's a camera crew waiting for me to wake up?

It's like, it's, it's, I don't know, people get a bit confused, but uh, well, Rob had people consoling his wife

during the school run because he'd cheated on her.

Yeah, because on one episode he sleeps with, yeah, I mean we changed it up a bit because I have in reality I have a daughter and in the trip I have a son and so we always mixed it up a bit just to just to confuse our enemies.

They can't do anything like that.

They go, I don't know what's real and what's not.

So anyway,

so the hipping hall had this rhubarb

dessert that had rhubarb done about four different ways, all within the same thing, like rhubarb jelly, rhubarb, mitzvah, like blitzed rhubarb, like sliced rhubarb all stacked up on this this layered thing and uh i and i've not had it since and i've not forgotten it and i sometimes think i'm gonna go back there one day and see if they still do that

it's uh it stayed with me as a dessert as a dessert i love that

having said that i'm gonna have another one which is um that uh that generally speaking uh when it comes i mean now i'm a huge because there's a tour between that and trifle trifle i'm a huge trifle fan trifle never heard of it in america yeah you can't know most gen

z's are a bit stare at you and you say say i like trifle on about think it's awful or something

do they stare at you because you're just saying saying that completely out the brain yeah because i say it's people uh in um i was saying it's people at london bridge stations that go through the turnstiles and um yeah and they get so weird and like chill i'm just telling you which i'm just telling telling you that i like trifle it's your problem

yeah uh anyway so

Yes,

trifle is, it just gets,

it's not really made a big comeback.

You know, like bread and butter pudding.

And those are like i say working class peasant desserts that get reinvented by posh restaurants they go look look look remember this here's here's a posh version of the working class thing and it's quite nice but trifle never got that got reinvented like that and i think it's one of those desserts where they use

it's like a way of using up stale cake or something like that because it's got it's like bread and butter pudding was like we're using stale bread yeah because you've got cake jelly custard cream and sometimes sprinkly bits yeah yeah yeah sprinkly bits all the time i mean it it that and it really, that's a, it tastes great.

I mean, I don't know why, why it fell out of fashion.

I'm sure it's due to come back at some point.

Someone or, I mean, even Mark.

Marks and Spencer still do one.

And I do, when I, you know, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm, you know, when I'm going,

I, um, I go up to Lake Districts a lot.

Yeah.

I've got a cottage there that my family use.

Uh, it's not like a second home.

Loads of people use it.

I'm really generous with it.

Get off my back.

Uh, so, and um, when we, when I go there, we, I, when you stop off and get sort of, you know, I get them bread and coffee and tea in case I'm not,

so I've got essentials for the morning and milk and all that.

I will sometimes also go, well, I think I'll have that trifle as well.

And so I'll put a trifle in the carry bag.

And

so there you go.

And that's kind of the end of my story

about trifle and dessert.

We had one of your friends and colleagues on the podcast and they chose trifle as their dessert.

Do you think you could guess which one?

Someone that, you know, I mean, definitely you've worked with a lot.

Chose the trifle as their dream desert.

Was it our man doing it?

Yes.

Yes.

Wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

There's something.

Do you know what that,

yeah?

I'm pleased I got that.

You are very pleased.

I can see that you're pleased.

I was thinking, yeah, that makes sense to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I'm working with him again, which I haven't done for years.

But

it's funny when you work with a group of people so intensely,

you also go off in different directions and then you come back and

it's quite nice to to do it you go uh because it's only when you're years later i mean it's 30 years ago nearly that i worked with our man well it's over that was since we worked on radio but we did the first tv thing we did was called the day-to-day

and uh amongst comic circles it's sort of revered as a sort of a standard they only did six episodes on on on tv but but but that was you know that was really exciting so exciting at that time when i was like 20 something working on a show and thinking which

for when you're in this business it happens occasionally you go there's no one else i'd swap places with right now and that was one of those moments can we hear a few more of those moments before we wrap up i'd like to know the points in your career where you've felt that because sometimes like the character you play on the trip is always looking at what other people are doing yeah yeah well that's that is quite nice to i think people would love to hear the points in your career okay all right well i'll tell you what but part of the comic conceit of the trip is that i'm on the back foot and a bit irritated by other people's success and there's some truth in that but not so much it's all consuming but Rob does obviously like to pick at that and go oh did you see they're doing well aren't they and just just needling me you know

but I had a really it was really great when I got the film that I produced wrote and acted in a Judy Danish got four Oscar nominations Philomina

and Rob was saying

we were

I think we were improvising on one of the trip the trip to Spain or something I can't remember what it was it was after this I got all this

adulation.

And he tried to go with me because of my sort of contemporary time like Sash Man Cohen, Simon Pegg, Ricky Gervais, who all sort of had made this had this impact in America, which I didn't quite have.

And also,

he said,

Lake Bell is

an American comic actress who I'm a huge fan of.

And also, she's very beautiful and she's very funny.

And so she's sort of somebody you think, wow, she's uh she'd be a great person to act with in a movie because she'd like

glamorous and smart and funny, all those things.

Um, anyway, and I remember Robert saying, Oh, I see uh your mate Simon Pig doing a film with uh late bell, you like her, don't you?

Just to wind me up, you know, and I go, Well, anyway, this is the time he's saying, and uh, so-and-so, and I just, and they would, he would do stuff like that.

But this time, he was doing it, and I and I just went, Rob, yeah,

four Oscar nominations.

And he'd go, Yes, and what about that?

I just go, Rob, four, four,

four, like that.

And it would stop.

It would sort of trounce anything he tried to throw at me.

And he got really frustrated.

And he went, oh, this is not going to work anymore.

But

it does still work with circuses like that.

Because then, because then

you don't repeat that success for quite a while.

And then he goes, oh, that was ages ago.

Remember when you were really good.

So you do get moments like that.

I think there was a moment when we did I am Alan Partridge's first series that really landed.

I got amazing.

It did get amazing reviews.

And then you do stuff you think you're equally proud of and it just sort of doesn't quite land.

But generally speaking, I've had more hits than misses.

And I'm really, and I love what I do.

I love working hard.

you know so but i i've i've you know i've made a few a couple of bum steers but generally you know doing

which is,

you know, I like taking risks

because

it's very hard to get someone, sometimes it's a summon enthusiasm because I'm naturally quite lazy.

But if you're doing something where you go, if I get this wrong, it's not like if this goes well, it'd be really great.

But if I get this wrong, this will be really bad and you'll look shit.

And everyone will think you're, it's going to really, it's not, then that makes you think, I want a better, I will like better concentrate and they better try and do the best job I can.

So I like, I like to, you know, i'm i'm lucky enough that i'm secure enough that i can go let's um let's play for high stakes and see if we win yeah and uh

you know most of the time

uh

i do but it's because because if it does fail it's not i'm not going to be penniless i'm just going to be very unfashionable

but i'll still be able to put roof over my head so so also i've always stayed off social media which has really really really is bad in some ways because people don't someone goes i didn't know you had a new thing out

yeah well i do um

but it's it's good that i don't get sucked into it but it's very that i don't get sucked into things and i can't publicize things but i do put everything into creative process so any junks going in your head and you just throw it's so cathartic you throw it all into whatever you do whether it's a drama or writing a drama which i do a bit that now and or comedy just throw it all in and um it's all it's all uh what's that nora efferon thing everything is copy you know uh any bad personal experiences any bad things that anything people you're angry with in real life, things that bother you on the news, whatever, just chuck it all in there, stir it up, put it in the oven.

Kick it in the oven.

Yeah.

And yeah, so, but yeah, anyway, that was a long-winded answer to your.

No, but you folded it back into food, you put it in the oven at the end.

I'm trying to think what I'm just looking to see if there's any bits that I've missed

food-wise.

I find it quite suspicious that your daughter wrote that down for you.

And the dream main course is something that she cooks.

I said, I want to say that.

She said,

no, you don't need to do that.

And I said, yeah, but it really does.

I really do.

It's like a window into a new way of eating.

That's like...

I mean, some people, younger people who've got disposable income and are not mainstream.

You know, those people, the people who live in those areas.

those areas in like Manchester and every city's got that area now, haven't they?

The way you go and it's all and I do like things that are like repurposed and you know, that kind of lived in, beaten up kind of, I don't like things that show off, I like food that shows off, I don't like interiors that show off, I don't like cars that show off, I don't like anything that shows off.

I like things that are comfortable and feel like they've got integrity even when you look at them and taste it.

And

yeah, stuff like that.

I'm going to read your menu back to you now, Steve.

See how you feel about it.

You would like room temperature northern tap water.

You would like warm Irish soda bread with butter made by any working class Irish woman.

Starter, you would like chunky pea soup with white pepper.

Main course, broccoli pasta made by your daughter.

Side dish, fresh tomatoes with olive oil, salt and pepper, fresh white bread, maybe some mozzarella if you're feeling like it.

Yeah.

Drink a pint of room temperature bitter

and dessert.

Well, to be settled on the trifle or the rhubarb four ways from Hippen Hall.

Yeah, yeah, I mean,

I'd be happy with that.

I'll stand by that.

Yeah.

yeah, yeah.

This is the first time as well we've ever had a guest listen to their own menu bag and check it off against the one they've got in front of them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I want to get it right.

Yeah, I'm really happy with that.

Yeah, that's a lovely menu.

Yeah, it sounds delicious.

It sounds absolutely

pretentious, but it also doesn't sound like I'm trying to go, oh, I'm really working class for me.

I like fish and chips and

chip butty.

And I'm really,

you know, which is equally annoying as the posh people who say, oh, I like a, who go on about the, yeah, I've had those, if anyone had those 24 course menus, I mean, I that sounds like me complaining about something that most people don't get to experience because they're astronomically expensive.

And, you know, they get, they get, it takes longer to describe the food.

I mean, basically, for those who haven't experienced it, you get 24 courses.

That's the most you probably ever have.

It's like a little thing.

And they come along and describe it.

This is a bit of foam and a bit of zoom.

This looks like soil.

And it's made from freeze-dried mushrooms.

So it looks like you're eating soil.

I don't know why people want to do that.

And then they talk about it and describe it.

And it literally takes longer to describe the food than it does to eat it because they describe it.

And then you just take it and you go, oh, and you go, wow, that's really interesting.

And then that goes on.

And after about two and a half hours,

then you're like, I just want to, I just want to go home and watch telly with a sandwich, with some toast, cheese on toast.

So I'm not mad keen on those.

I do like a posh restaurant, but I'm not mad.

There's a guy called Simon Rogan, who's a really

long clump.

Okay, so I asked at Long Clume.

I've been there a few times and they have quite a bit of...

Was that episode one of the trip?

It was.

Was it?

Yes.

Yeah, it was.

No, it wasn't.

It was in at Whitewell.

It was.

It was Long Clum.

Do you know what's a great lesson there?

Is that if you just insist you're

you stand by what you say, even when all the facts are crumbling.

Do you see what I did?

I went, I mean, it was, was that episode one?

You know, I was asking you, yeah, and uh, James just went straight in.

But it was, yeah, it wasn't.

No, it wasn't in at Whitewell, but um, it was in at Whitewell, yeah, yeah, it's good, yeah, shifting your position, yeah.

Sometimes when you argue with someone, you go, hang on, you've changed your position, and they go, no, I haven't.

But

you're just now you're disagreeing with me.

That's what you want, yeah, because Benito's googled it now and found out that for Steve, surprisingly, you, the person in the program, are right.

Anyway, I want to say to but Simon Rogan is good because he also does do like a like a browser.

Like he does do, I once had smashed potatoes, lentils and black pudding.

And it was done brilliantly.

So he can do yeah, he can do the simple stuff and the complex fancy stuff.

But on balance, I prefer the simple stuff.

He very nicely sent a box to us during lockdown.

Oh, yeah.

I had a ribbon on it that said his name on it over and over again, Simon Rogan, Simon Rogan, all over it.

And when I got cats we were trying to like make some toys for them to keep them entertained one day and there was a little furry monkey that one of them liked playing with so we tied the simon rogan ribbon around it and we'd use that to like throw it out and they'd get it and then we started just casually referring to the monkey as simon rogan

and now that's a thing that just just um just normally

like yeah like yesterday and also the cat is now taken to If one of the other cats is feeling a bit sad or ill, she brings them Simon Rogan to cheer it up.

and uh

we we've started just i was saying oh yes she he's been a bit quiet today but she bought him simon rogan and realizing in my head this has become a very normal thing that i now say yeah even though it's not simon rogan because he's a man you actually shouldn't give cats ribbon is it nice no that's uh no because they swallow it and then it comes if it comes out their anus and it's still out their mouth if you either way you pull it you're gonna cause more damage yeah and you can't floss your intestines yeah and that's a fact.

Steve, thank you for coming in.

Thank you to the Dream Lester.

Well, there we are, James.

What a fun chat with Steve Coogan.

Fantastic.

Ever think?

Fantastic.

I hoped it would be.

Yes, it was very, very good.

Lovely menu as well.

He'd really thought about it.

Shout out to his daughter.

Shout out to his daughter who really helped him with it as well, wrote it all down for him, which was lovely.

I thought that was a nice sort of personal heartwarming touch yeah yeah very nice and uh most importantly tobloon did not feature on there so we didn't have to kick steve coogan out of the dream restaurant thank the lord do go and buy alan partridge big beacon the new partridge book it's fantastic you can get it on uh on ebook and audio if you want or you can get it in more traditional hardback uh lovely to speak to steve and do go and see doctor strange love which is october 2024 at the Noel Coward Theatre, but it is on sale now.

Even though it's a while off, you can get tickets now.

It's exciting.

Yeah.

I'm so excited.

and look it can't all be about the partridge book james yes yes because i've got a book coming out

tomorrow if you're if you're listening to this on the day it comes out 26th of october glutton the multi-course life of a very greedy boy is out officially it's publication day baby ed gave me my copy today i was very excited and I cannot say this about, I can't really think about a book I can, well, I can say this about, I laughed at the inside jacket.

Yes, it's because it's pictures of me as a baby and James finds that funny.

Immediately made me laugh.

Yeah.

With some, I won't spoil it, but with some things that Ed wrote as a child as well for school.

Yes.

I mean, how many books do you say that about?

They make you laugh before you've even started reading them.

Yeah, that's true.

I suppose the hope is then you continue to laugh as you read the book.

And I'm sure I will.

Yes, I'm sure you will as well.

Anyway, that's out tomorrow.

Thank you.

Let's do some food shout outs, James.

Yeah.

First of all, I'd like to say thank you to The Windmill in Brighton when I was there recently recently in Brighton, George Egg, a very funny comedian and the snack hacker, if you want to look him up on YouTube and myself, we went to the windmill and they were doing a photo shoot for their new menu

and said, well, you can just eat the food, we'll photograph it and then you can eat it.

So we've got a free meal

of

this whole menu.

It's absolutely delicious.

I highly recommend it.

So yeah, if anyone's in Brighton, they should go.

And I would recommend getting the ham sandwich.

That was my favorite ham and egg sandwich.

We're going to Brighton soon.

Yeah.

Let's go and get the sandwiches.

Yes, please.

Now, recently on the podcast, James

shamefully just asked for some chocolate.

Yeah.

Just said, send me some chocolate.

And you know what?

At the time, I thought, oh, dear me, it's a dirty sellout.

But then all this chocolate arrived and I'm quite excited about it.

So

Land chocolate sent us some chocolate.

Yeah, delicious.

Delicious.

Pump Street.

Pump Street.

chocolate sent us some chocolate thank you and flour and white uh sent us these bars that are sort of meringue flavoured meringue bars very good and some little bites as well and i've been popping those in my mouth every time i go have been popping them in your mouth walking around um yeah thank you for all of those we've been great we've been yeah i i especially have enjoyed the um white chocolate with cacao nibs oh hello from um land lovely uh so there's probably some people who work for chocolate companies out there pretty jealous now yeah going i can't believe we didn't send them any chocolate i guess there's a way of rectifying that you know balls in in your court, I guess.

Chocolate balls in your chocolate court.

Yeah.

Serve it over the net.

Serve it over the net.

Open mouths.

We also got sent some drinks, James.

And I think this is down to me as well.

These are things that I shouted out.

Causton Press have got a new flavour.

The little beggar boy.

Pineapple flavour, a tropical Caulston press.

Loved it.

Yeah.

Drank it the other day.

Also, green cola.

I mentioned them on the

sour cherry episode.

So they sent us some sour cherry, some lemonade.

lemonade tried that yet some orange some cola yeah so they've sent those over very excited and la brewery sent their kombucha over yeah you know i'm a fan of the booch i said that to coogs yeah booch

is a fan of the coogs yeah yeah so uh danish boo danish booch sometimes you just say things the wrong way around you just got to run with them you know yep and so very excited all of those drinks i mean we've got a lovely fridge here off menu and it's great to open it and see so many nice drinks in there yeah thanks very much for listening We'll see you next week.

Bye-bye.

See ya.

And we're back live during a flex alert.

Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.

And that's the end of the third.

Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

What a performance by Team California.

The power is ours.

Hello, I'm Carrie Add.

I'm Sarah.

And we are the Weirdos Book Club Podcast.

We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival.

The date is Thursday, 11th of September.

The time is 7pm.

And our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies.

Tickets from kingsplace.co.uk.

Single ladies is coming to London.

True on Saturday, the 13th of September.

At the London Podcast Festival.

The rumours are true.

Saturday, the 13th of September.

at King's Place.

Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet.