Ep 160: Sir Lenny Henry

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 Hall.com or offmenupodcast.co.uk.

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Welcome to the Off-Menu Podcast, taking the steak of good chat, sprinkling with the salt of amazing humor, heating up the pan of the internet until it's smoking, dropping in that great podcast steak, and having ourselves a lovely meal.

That was a gamble.

My name is James A.

Caster.

We own a dream restaurant, and we welcome a guest in every single week.

I'm asking,

I was doing so well.

You did so well.

And we asked them their favourite ever start a main course dessert, side dish, and drink, not in that order.

And this week, our guest is

Henry.

Seleni Henry.

Ed, this is a big one.

It's a big one, baby.

I feel like we're really hitting our stride with the national treasures now.

Yeah, we're getting a lot of national treasures under our belt.

This is, for me, the original national treasure.

Is this the crown jewel of the national treasure?

This is, you know,

maybe the first person I remember thinking was really funny on TV.

Yeah.

Huge.

Huge.

This is.

Huge in my life.

This is too much.

This is when I'm really glad it's a podcast and people can't see us during it because I think I'll just look very in awe of Sir Lenny.

Well, I'll be taking photos of you throughout then.

Yes, I can't wait to see your little face all in awe.

I'm going to be all in awe.

It's going to be this is a big deal.

Big deal stuff, big deal territory.

Big deal stuff.

We are very excited that Sir Lenny Henry is coming in our first night of the realm in the dream restaurant.

And he's written two books, James.

Two fantastic books.

We're going to be chatting about the books, I'm sure.

He's written Rising to the Surface, which is a memoir, and The Book of Legends, which is his hilarious new kids book I mean pretty good going pretty good going

and be next to us I guess book of legends publishing on 13th of October 2022 and rising to the surface 1st of September 2022 so exciting also he's going to be in the new Lord of the Rings series so you know he's a busy guy yeah it's going to absolutely break my heart if we have to kick Seleni Henry out of the dream restaurant for saying a secret ingredient but we do have to decide on a secret ingredient

yeah you've just got to go with him yeah but today there is a secret ingredient, and the secret ingredient is, James, plain kombucha, plain kombucha.

And I'm not saying we've picked something so specific that Seleni Henry will probably not pick it, so we don't have to kick him out of the dream restaurant, but it feels like that's what's happened.

This was James's suggestion, James.

I don't think I've had plain kombucha before.

Yep, I've had it, I've had it once before, and it was disgusting.

I love kombucha in general.

I love the ginger kombuchas, the lemony ones, the turmeric is actually my favourite, I'd say.

But I once had one that's just, I think it just said original on it,

and it was just, you know, flavourless, just as it comes.

And that, you know, people say kombuchas taste like bottled farts.

Yes.

And I disagree with that very strongly.

Yeah.

But the plain one did taste like a guff.

Does that not suggest they all taste like a guffs, but all the ones you drink are just a guffs with stuff added?

Yeah, so I guess if you mix a guff with some lemon and ginger, I think it's delicious.

Guff with stuff.

Guff in my face.

Yeah.

If that's how your guff smells.

But yeah, this one one was just pure guff.

Yeah.

I couldn't have that.

So, yes, if Sir Lady Henry chooses the liquid guff that is original plain con butcher, then we're going to have to kick him out the dream restaurant.

What if he says he wants someone to guff in his face?

That's allowed.

That's allowed.

That's allowed.

I made the joke, and then it just felt so disrespectful.

Yeah.

But listen, if we do have to kick Lenny Henry out of the dream restaurant, then that's the end of the podcast.

I'm going to make that promise to the listener now.

Fair enough.

We will stop doing the podcast.

Or at least I will quit.

Yeah.

Ed, it's up to you if you want to quit or not if you want to replace me or not.

No, no.

I'll quit.

So, Benito, I have to get two hosts.

Yeah.

Two new hosts.

Benito, are you going to quit?

Or are you going to host it?

He won't quit.

Benito's going to do it.

He would host it.

He would host it.

And he'd have to edit his voice out the whole time.

So it'd just be the guest.

Just be the guest, and that'll be it.

Some people might prefer that.

Yeah, good point, actually.

Yeah.

Certainly with this one.

Hey, I'm on tour.

Are you?

Yes.

Ed Gamble Electric.

Ed Gamble Electric.

I continue to drag it around the country.

Come and see it.

It's very exciting.

Do come and see me.

Edgamble.co.uk for tickets.

Very exciting.

Ed, let's get into this.

Let's just do it.

Let's do it.

This is the off-menu menu of Sir Lenny.

Welcome, Sir Lenny, to the Dream Restaurant.

It's very nice to be here.

Welcome, Sir Lenny Henry to the Dream Restaurant.

We've been expecting you for some time.

I love the dream restaurant.

Is that thing going to happen where people walk by with brilliant food and you go, I'm having that?

Or what are they having?

That looks great.

I love that in a restaurant.

Yeah.

I want to eat their food.

That's fine if you've not ordered yet.

But if you've already ordered and then you see something come past that you didn't order,

spectacularly gorgeous looking.

Why didn't I order that?

I'm a fool.

Do you want that in your dream restaurant?

Do you want people going past with food that you think, oh, I'd quite like that and quite like that?

I think my dream restaurant would be called I'll Have What They're Having.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it would be, you there's a parade of food of food like in a shakespearian jacobean style mask thing where the food goes by and you go that looks fantastic and then you kind of either take their plate from the so they're sitting there going hang on or or you you ask them if you can join their table or you say to the waiter can i have what they're having please i think that would be a great thing to do have you ever joined anyone's table no but somebody did join mine once when i was married to dawn um we were at this very nice restaurant that was run by marco pier white and he sat sat down at our table for the whole meal,

chatting away, talking, you ordered for us.

And we would just be really nice to celebrate our anniversary, Marcus, but you know,

it's nice for you to be here, but it's our anniversary and literally you're taking the time from our anniversary.

We didn't care at all.

And members of staff were putting their heads out the door going, Marco, and he was just going, go away.

And just

giving us his time.

No, he joined our table.

I've never joined anybody else's table.

That's rude, isn't it?

Well, I reckon, I don't know.

But I reckon you could.

Yeah, I reckon you could.

Really?

Yeah.

I think that's part of the realm.

You're making me feel bad now.

I think that's part of the deal with the Knight of the Realm stuff, isn't it?

You're allowed to join any table you want.

Out of my way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm a Knight of the Realm.

Give me that chop.

Our first Night of the Realm on the podcast.

You are our first Night of the Realm.

Am I?

Yeah.

Is it a thing?

How about do people...

Young people don't respect the whole Night of the Realm thing at all.

No.

I just get called Uncle Lynn.

Nobody calls me Sir Lenny.

Uncle Lynn.

when i have five parents i just have that all the time you take your rubbish out now uncle lynn it's your turn i have that older people seem to tug four locks and bow and scrape and you get nice seats at restaurants sometimes sometimes not at the ground show no

the girls they just kind of look at you and go what's your name again but uh elsewhere

elsewhere they're kind of uh the older people tend to kind of go oh i reckon we even without the sir you could just join someone's table these days really yeah i reckon if someone's like

having a meal and Lenny Henry just sits down with them and goes, what are we having?

I think they'd be like, we don't even care if it's our anniversary.

This is great.

Oh, that's great.

That'd be great.

I think it'd be fine.

I don't think so, but that's very kind of you to say that.

I do like dining, and I do like going unusual places, and I watch a lot of food telly.

It's a thing with me, so I do like it.

And I have a thing.

I don't know whether it's a...

I've always liked food, so never really, couldn't really afford to eat out in a posh way, but I've always liked food.

I've always liked different types of food remember going remember doing a commercial once my first ever commercial i think it was for tizer and they um quite a lot of french crew so they stopped for three hours in the middle of the day and had wine and beautifully cooked chicken and very flash-fried steaks and new potatoes and this amazing salad that went on for days and i thought what is this this three-hour lunch break and they all had a nap you know before we filmed in the afternoon what the hell are they doing you know but um i remember thinking people don't just eat to eat yeah in some cultures they eat because they want to eat and they love the idea of eating and they'll take time over it and I love that I love that what I've noticed recently is the thing people moan about when you go and make a film or you go and do tele stuff is like they the crew moan about the food if the food is not good people are really vexed yeah you know and they they you know they send out you know i've been on a couple of things recently where the makeup lady sends out for food and the food arrives on the delivery bike or something and they all eat that nobody eats what's being cut.

That's bad, I'd say.

Yeah, for morale, you've got to look after it, you've got to look after the crew's stomach.

Yeah, you don't want the crew moaning about the food.

Oh, that shepherd's part was rubbish.

Turnover, no.

Once we're good catering,

if you get booked to do like a panel show or something, and they always have good catering, you tell your mates you're doing that show, they'll say, oh, the food's good.

That's the thing in writers' rooms in America as well.

I remember talking to some friends of mine, they were saying, when you're in a writer's room on a show in America, it is established established that if the food is good, the show will be good.

Because there's 12 people in a room, and if the food is terrible, they're not going to want to work.

But if food is great, they're all going to go, I've got this great idea, can you pass that sandwich?

People want to do their best because this room and this food and this hospitality is so nice.

Food is an important thing.

I grew up in a house where there wasn't any money, but

my mum cooked great food all the time.

One of my favorite meals that I'm offering is a meal that my mum did every Saturday and it was great.

So I'll talk about that later but it was driven into us that you know hospitality is a whole thing well you've clearly been eating well Lenny and eating good stuff because you fat you know

you fat

looking here at two press releases for two books that you've you know your own writer's room at home has been uh well catered because you've you've written two books yeah i had a good lockdown i don't know about you but there was a surge of creativity you listen to the radio you play your records you you walk around and then suddenly suddenly you have an idea and you think, oh, that's a good idea.

And you write it down.

It might be a joke, it might be a TV thing idea.

But

I'd already written a book called The Boy with Wings, which is a middle grade kid's book, 9 and 12.

And then I had this other thing and it happened quite quickly.

And because I had two years of not doing very much, which for if you're in show business means a lot, I wasn't doing that much.

But I ended up writing two books.

I'm really chuffed with them.

The other one's called Rising to the Surface.

And it's about 1980 to the year 2000 in my career.

And it's, you know, I adopted a kid and I was married and I was doing chef and various things like that.

But I just talk around and it's more worky than the first book.

The first book was about being a teenager and growing up in Dudley and my birth dad not being the same as the dad that raised me and how that was a kind of weird sort of broiling shame in my body for quite a long time, which I never told anybody, never did any, never said in any press conference when I was between 16 and 22, hey, my birth dad isn't my dad, you know, I just really kept it quiet.

So every time I talked about my family on stage, I'm miming listeners, I'm miming being on stage with a mic in my hand.

But every time I was on stage, you know, good evening, great to be here.

Take my wife, please.

I never told the truth about my family because there was a kind of, and there shouldn't have been any shame about it.

Why would you be ashamed of where you come from?

And when I was doing Danny in the Human Zoo, which was the fictional representation of my teens and winning a talent competition, Destiny, the director, asked anybody in the cast if they had an unusual origin, like if they had spare parents and spare family.

And nearly everybody put their hand up and said, oh, I've got an outside brother.

You know, my dad did this.

My mom did that.

You know, I've got a sister who's from.

So we all have this experience of having extra members of family that the traditional thing from working class or Caribbean families is, you know, the mum or the dad dies and then another husband shows up at the funeral.

So there was that.

So I kind of felt like it's nothing to be ashamed of and I'm going to write about it.

So the first book's about that.

And the second book is about work and about, interestingly, craft.

You know, it's a lot about writing jokes and about what it's like to be in a writer's room and how you've got to punch your weight and have energy.

A lot of people don't like being funny in the writer's room for some reason.

They sort of like to be grumpy and then produce, my work, here's my work.

You know, they like to do that.

Whereas I prefer people being funny in the room.

Yeah.

It's about that stuff and about energy and about collaborating and stuff, as well as all the other stuff.

So Rising to the Surface is career retrospective, my mom's speech, my wedding, and things like that.

And the Book of Legends, which is the book that comes out in the autumn, is about two kids who go on a quest.

Because you never see black kids on a quest.

I don't know why.

I imagine Bill Bowton Frodo coming to your house and going, Yo, Raheem, you're coming on a quest?

Nah, man, I'm watching.

I'm playing FIFA.

Get me.

I'm listening to Stormsey and Dave in it, though.

But I kind of thought it'd be great to have two black kids going on a quest.

Why not?

Why wouldn't you?

And they go to a place where almost everybody's black.

And there's wizards and elves and murder fairies and stuff.

And they have this mad adventure.

But they're in a place where people look like them.

And it's because their mom, when she created this book of legends, always told stories about people that look like them.

So the overall meta thing is about inclusivity.

and about including everybody.

But the story is about a quest.

And I love that because those were my favorite books growing up.

The idea of, maybe it's because of the way I was raised, but the idea of going to a magical place where cool things happened really appealed.

Yeah.

Because I lived in working class Dudley where the telly didn't work and we lived on top of a sewer that used to explode every summer and drown the house and the house had a hairline crack down the middle of it and I'd be being bullied at school and shit like that.

So it kind of felt like, wouldn't it be great to go?

I'd love to be in Narnia.

You know, there's no hassle in Narnia.

Yeah, the snow print, print, the snow queen's in charge, but I don't care.

There's a talking lion and I might get to fly.

And here's the thing about stories, great stories, is Neil Gaiman says, there should always be a great meal in a story.

So I tried to,

in the memoir and in the books, the two books that I've written, I've tried to include food.

So food is a motif, guys.

So that's why it's nice to be on this show, to talk about food, because

it's a thing with me.

And of course, yeah, of course, Chef, you mentioned Chef, a legendary sitcom.

Well, it was kind of a comedy drama.

Because lots of people, Jeff Perkins kept saying, well, Jeff Perkins is legendary TV producer at Tiger and the BBC.

He used to say, why do you want to play this guy, Lenny?

He's a dickhead.

And I'd go, because it's a role.

It's not me.

And the thing,

when you're trying to be an actor, as you will, you kind of go, well, I don't want to just be me.

I want to be somebody else.

And I want to see if I can do that.

And I kept saying, well, he's not me.

He's this, you know, articulate, smart guy who has the comeback.

He doesn't think of the comeback in the car like we do.

He says the thing straight away.

And I want to be that guy.

And he's a bit mean to his staff.

And then his missus, of course, is smarter than him.

So she's often getting him to apologise or to go back on something he decided because it's a cleverer thing to do.

And I thought that was a good little character thing to have.

Plus, he thinks he's the best chef in the world.

Which meant I had to go and train at Lautalan and work with Roley Lee and John Burton Race and go to the River Cafe and talk to people and see what it was like.

And often there was no no shouting in the kitchen.

Often people were very cool.

And, you know, Roley Lee's kitchen was very calm, very cool.

People doing things because they wanted to do them and enjoying the process.

And then, of course, Gordon Ramsey and Michael Pierre White's kitchen, lots of shouting.

And John Burton, his kitchen was very

shouty.

But only when he was there.

When he wasn't there, it was kind of cool.

But they got exposed on the telly.

They had secret cameras and they got into trouble.

But it's a kind of, you know, the world of cooking is quite militaristic.

It's a bit like the army.

You know, there's kind of, there's a real sense of you've got a brigade of people and yeah and you've got to get it done and it's got to be it's got to hit the pass at the right time I think a lot of those French kitchens were actually structured in that way deliberately weren't they the

army for cooking a sausage

I don't know

it's a pie you know you don't have to beat me up because it's a pie what's it's some cake

I don't know but I do love it I like the my daughter and I when she was really little she used to have a little chair that clamped to the table and it was very funny for I know she has sense memories of this because she's 30 now.

But there was a time when I was working doing chef where my daughter would be clamped to the table and given two Michelin star food.

I'd feed her at the table this food because she liked pasta.

And this two Michelin star chef would go, oh, I'll make something.

And I know Billy has this thing in her mind of, there was a...

Wasn't there some fantastic food?

Where was that?

It was because she was at Lauterland all the time when I was doing chef.

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Well, we always start the dream menu with still or sparkling water.

Still, please, because the sparkling thing is like, I don't get sparkling, it's like lemonade, but crap.

What is that?

I like the still water.

It's council pop.

It's what I'm used to.

It's what I grew up with.

Still water.

And if you could put like two big tablespoons of sugar in it, like back in the day, then it would be all right.

We used to do a thing where we went on adventures and we'd have sugar and water.

Me and we.

Me and my mates and my family.

I've got three brothers and three sisters.

And it'd be Kay, who's four years older than me, Sharon and Paul, and sugar and water, sugar sandwiches with butter.

And then we'd wrap that in newspaper and put this.

It was all fields around here, but we'd go off and have an adventure.

So, yeah, still water, please.

You must have been absolutely buzzing off your head.

Yeah, we're off the head.

Sugar water.

Do you remember?

Do you remember playing?

Do you remember when you're going?

I'm playing.

Do you remember that?

What was that?

It went on for hours and nothing really happened.

I'm playing.

We're playing.

What were the games?

You know, if you look at books and you read American, you know, rite of passage books, when they go out and play, it's always quite structured.

They're always playing baseball or something.

In Britain, we did kick the can and hide and seek and we climbed trees and we ran around

because of all the sugar.

Yeah, you know, we used to run to our mates' house.

There's Tom playing, yes.

And then you'd just run to somebody else.

It wasn't actually playing.

Unless it was a ball or a cricket bat or something.

I love the sugar water thing.

Sugar water, sugar sandwiches.

Sugar sandwiches were dope.

Have you ever had one?

No.

It's really nice.

The butter and the sugar is a thing.

Yeah, yeah.

It used to go sort of like a nice paste, like a fondant sort of thing.

Yeah, it's delicious.

It's kind of okay.

It's delicious.

Sugar, butter, white bread.

White bread was a thing.

We had a lot of white bread.

Yeah.

Wonder bread.

Which is sugar, basically.

But you don't eat, we don't really, it's you know, sourdough now and rye bread.

We don't do that anymore.

But white bread was a thing and grew up with that.

Sourbread, tap water, lots of sugar and everything.

Yeah.

We're all diabetic and nobody cares.

Nobody cares.

I'm diabetic.

We're type two.

Nobody cares.

Get over yourself.

Have a pie.

Ed's type one, so he's looking down on the immediately.

He's eating it.

I'm the best one.

What adventures would you go on?

You're going to.

Well, we're going.

um when you had a bike did you do this we had um six bikes with your mates and you just go somewhere and uh you didn't know where you're going you try to not be on the main road because you might get killed but you'd go off the main road and go to a canal or there'd be a hill or something so we'd go all around dudley the the tipton to Netherton canal was a good place to go because it was just shopping trolleys in the water and puppies trying to swim after they've been chucked in

and rescue so rescuing nearly dead puppies from the canal eating sugar sandwiches and talking a lot and trying not to get pushed in the water by your friends that was a big thing yeah

your mates pushing you in the water because that was funny yeah

so there was a lot of that going on and then as you got older the the adventures were one of you could drive yeah and so they'd borrow a dad's car and you'd go for miles and just maybe go to a pub and drink underage or just go for lots of driving and there was that exploratory because I never had a car, never had any money.

But my mom told me, and this is in the book, to integrate.

You must hint to grate with the doddly people then.

Go out there, try not to box anybody down, eat their food and get on with people.

Otherwise, you won't fit in.

So the whole fitting in thing meant having white friends because it wasn't really a thing in my house of friendship because we had the family.

There was like seven of us, so didn't really need friends.

But going out and integrating meant meeting white people and hanging out with them and going to their houses.

So when I met Greg and Mac and Tom, who were my best friends in the world, who were brilliant, a bit older than me, went to grammar schools, suddenly I had a different perspective on life.

I listened to different types of music.

You know, Mac

introduced me to John Peel and Tyrannosaurus Rex and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

And Greg listened to Dylan and The Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel and stuff.

And some like Genesis and things like that.

So I was listening to different music.

I was eating different things, ham, egg, and chips, cayenne chips, scotch egg, and everything with chips.

And then I'd go home and have my dinner because I'd never, I was always hungry.

So

I had this weird life of trying to integrate, trying to assimilate into British culture.

And

it was an adventure.

And so our adventures were different to earlier adventures.

Our adventures were going to discos and driving everywhere and going to these pubs where people said, We don't get many darkies in here.

And we've got one now.

Oliver Shandy, please.

And Greg tells a story about us going on this big adventure to this pub, scotch egg crisps, pickled onions, scratchings, scratchings.

And Greg said we went in and I went to the jukebox and quite a lot of people walked out of the pub because I was the only black guy in the pub.

And when I turned around from the jukebox and I'd probably put Slade on or the roubettes or something,

the pub was empty.

So we had it to ourselves.

And he said that happened a lot.

And so I had to deal with that.

Once I was on the telly, it was different.

Everybody wanted to be near the kid who was on the telly.

But when I was just this black kid in ill-fitting flares and a tank top there was a real thing in the Midlands of you know what's he doing here kind of thing.

But we overcame that and because these guys were honestly they were brilliant.

They drove me everywhere.

They lent me money.

They were kind.

I suddenly had this bigger idea of who I was and what I was going to do.

And I don't know if you had mates who made,

they definitely said I was funny.

They're definitely, you're funny, you are, you should do something with that.

And made me think, like, oh, okay, I could be on stage.

I could, I could do that.

They made me go on stage.

Right.

Did you have friends like that?

No, I was too much of a

show-off in my friendship group that they were like, well, he's going to do that anyway.

That's completely like that.

That's not encouraging me.

Yeah, yeah.

They tried to get me to play it down if anybody.

Really?

You should calm down.

Yeah.

Just keep it.

You were doing impressions amongst them and stuff like that.

Yeah, you could do crap impressions too.

I'm not saying I was any good, but I did impressions of anything I saw on the telly.

Anything I heard on the radio.

So there was a lot of,

somebody called Adrian Just used to play the goons a lot.

So I was always doing, oh, hello, I was doing that voice a lot.

I was doing anything Dave Allen did, I loved.

The idea of just sitting there and telling stories was quite focused, and I quite liked that.

And Dave Allen was kind of cool.

He had that kind of black suit, white shirt, black tie thing, cigarette, glass of whiskey, telling stories and being kind of...

I don't care if you laugh or not kind of thing.

And I thought, oh, that's interesting.

And then Benny Hill.

Everybody loved benny hill at my school pythons pythons were weird because in my family we laughed at the cartoons we liked terry gilliam stuff and we kind of like global hide and seek and the spanish inquisition but my i remember my mum it was quite rude but laughing at the the terry gilliam cartoons and so i kind of had a really good sense of what visual humor was yeah and so i noticed when terry gilliam did the credits for the marty feldman show i thought oh that's terry gilliam i knew who terry gilliam was and i kind of started to recognize writing who'd written things so this was stuff I hadn't been taught or anything I hadn't been to college to learn this I just I knew that that might be a John Junkin joke or a Barry Cryer joke or something which is why you watched Kenny Everer and I started to be interested in who'd written it not just Kenny because I thought oh Kenny's just mad and funny anyway but oh yeah Barry Barry Cryer and Ray who's that and who are these people so you know

I definitely wasn't thinking what my mates were thinking.

Plus I was writing jokes down.

Oh, okay.

I don't know if you did that, but I was writing things down.

And that was.

As in your own stuff or from things that you were seeing, you were.

I was writing down things I was seeing.

I was writing comments about them.

I was writing how that might work if I did it.

Yeah.

It was a weird early attempt at craft, I think, of thinking about, thinking about why some jokes work.

So I kind of had a thing where I was thinking all the time about types of humor.

And I didn't write, never wrote.

Never, you know, when I was in a writing room eating sandwiches and people were saying, you should do this, Len, I had lots of energy, but I didn't actually write things down.

I'd kind of have energy in the room, which is writing, by the way.

But it wasn't seen as writing.

I started to get a credit near the end of Three River Kind and the Lenny Henry Show.

I started to get writing credit then because people realised that I was writing.

But it was tricky.

So writing the books has been a release, a huge release of just me in my pants with Jammy Dodgers and

full sugar coke,

just writing on my own and listening to very loud music.

Run the duels and very, and like cake and a computer is everything.

Great.

That's where I got COVID from.

Run the jewels gig?

Did you?

Really?

Yeah, I definitely got COVID at that, Run the Jewels gig.

Well, I got, yeah,

I tested positive enough days after that.

That's the incubation period, I'm pretty sure.

Was it a big gig?

Was it a lot of people in Britain Academy?

They're kind of Mad Run the Jewels.

I don't quite understand it, but they are very good.

I think their kind of sense of percussion in terms of the words and what they're talking about, particularly on the last album, which is all about gun crime and stuff.

Brilliant, really brilliant.

And Killer Mike's, when Killer Mike got up to make that speech

after George Floyd died, it reduced me to tears.

Mainly because I thought, A, I wouldn't like it if Killer Mike stood on my foot.

Have you seen how big he is?

But also because

people in his family are connected to law enforcement.

And he just talked about the idea that not all law enforcement is evil, that we've got to find some way to work together.

This should not have happened.

You know, it was so moving.

I just thought, God, you're great.

And you write funny and witty and very potent lyrics, too.

They are so funny.

Like, I was at that gig as well.

Did you get COVID?

No, I was in the seating area.

No,

I was a VIP.

I was upstairs.

I read all that of that raw flavor.

And normally I stand at gigs, but

that's the first time I've sat down and thought, actually, this is way better.

How can you dance, though, if you're stuck in that seat?

Just wiggle around and you're going to be.

You're wiggling your seats.

You're a seat wiggler.

Me too.

I like seat wiggling.

I can't be.

I saw Chris Rock and I sat quite near the front and I was a bit of people snogging and eating sandwiches around him.

I would much rather have been in VIP,

standing there and looking over people's heads and go, this is rather funny.

He's talking about Tottenham.

How does he know about Tottenham?

Poplobs or bread.

Poplobs or bread, Lenny Henry.

Poplobs or bread.

Popadoms.

Popadoms are great.

I used to over-order.

all the time because we had a curry every Friday and it was my job to order the curry and always over order.

Always have six of everything just in case but i love poppadums i like onion barges but they tend to be very oily i like piratas but they tend to be a bit dry poppadums are it's like a big crisp it's a big imagine if they had a bag of poppadums like crisps yeah like a huge like a hessian sack of poppadums that would be great wouldn't it yeah because we love poppadums but you carry it under your arm like a big bag and every software you pull out a foot a poppadum a foot across and munch on it at the pictures or on the park How many do you think you could get through?

I don't know, 12.

I could eat 12 or 15 poppadums.

I might not eat very much afterwards, but I could eat 12 or 15 poppadums in a sitting because poppadums rock.

Yeah, yeah.

And they really crunch.

When they're done well, they really crunch.

I love them.

Good curry houses in the Midlands as well, right?

Well, we've got the Bouty Triangle

in Birmingham.

The Light of Asia was in Dudley, and we used to go there.

But in Birmingham, it's the Balty Triangle and Sparkbrook and places like that.

And

I used to love to go to the Bouti houses in Bradford.

I used to do a a gig in bradford and then afterwards uh phil mcintyre used to take me to this place that was like a calf a curry calf not a restaurant so not posh but oh the food was great bowls of chicken curry and uh poppadums and a naan no knife and fork and you just ate it like that and it was so unctuous and succulent and delicious and then it was £2.50.

It wasn't very expensive at all.

Beautiful, beautifully cooked.

So I highly recommend going to Bradford and finding a curry calf rather than a posh restaurant.

You did a face there there where you're imagining eating the curry, where it's the perfect food face where you sort of screw your face up.

You like it so much you almost hate yourself for it.

Like, oh no, I don't hate myself.

But I'm kind of

trying not to eat my thing as I eat fast.

Yeah.

So I have to slow down when it's good because you kind of can't eat good food.

You've got to...

savour it.

And my girlfriend's always, just slow, what's the matter with you?

I've always finished and then everybody's kind of still eating.

Just slow down, Lynn.

But I'm hungry.

Phil McIntyre was like the big rock and roll promoter in the late 70s, early 80s.

And the reason I know him is because, and I wanted to work with him, is because

Tiz Was went on tour and Chris was the promoter with Paul Roberts.

And it was the first time I'd experienced kind of rock and roll comedy.

I come from, you know, and it took a lot of getting over, but I come from variety, light entertainment.

So I did the clubs, I did jollies in Stoke and Blazers in Windsor and the Starlight Rooms in Usk, you know, and it'd be like six or or seven hundred people dinner and you know drinks and then you'd come on at 10 o'clock and do an hour and then none of it so that was where I came from that filled me with dread just the description of the gig absolutely filled me with dread he's kind of frightening and then when I doing tiz was Terrence said oh we're doing bishops stortford do you want to come and I said yeah sure you know and I arrived and there was a queue that went from the door

all the way down the street people with tizwas t-shirts on dressed as the phantom flan flinger with their own custard pies ready throwing buckets of water over each other in the queue and then we got in and you couldn't actually get in the pub you couldn't actually get in the gig it was worse than run the duels people people were hanging through the windows they were standing on the the table that they'd set up for us to be on collapsed because they didn't have a stage they just had trestle tables and um it was one of the best nights of my life and we all nearly got killed and i thought i want to do that i want a tour like that i don't want to do the skylight rooms in workington which is thank you very much for paying me by the way but it it was not my you know people eating and then watching you do your jokes I want to do gigs like this where people are they want to be entertained and they're rabid and they're loving it and they're laughing really loud and cheery and I thought this is it this is the kind of gig you want to do so when they went on the big tour I did stockport and Phil was in charge and Stockport was legendary it was like a Beatles gig I mean it was so it was so compost corner and the whole compost corner here comes David Bellerie ah people going nuts like that and I just thought if Phil McIntyre's is in charge of this I need to be with him so I had to convince my agent who was very uh hello what bowler hat pinstripe suit Mr.

Luffy's name was had an umbrella

had an umbrella even in the summertime hello what what wore a bowler hat I had to convince him that having these two rock and roll merchants from up north doing the tours might be a good thing and Phil came along well you know mr.

Luff it'll be great you know Lenny Lenny Tiswalls, very popular, you know, you'd get a different audience, young people, you know, and Mr.

Love said, okay.

And so I did my first tour and the poster for the first time was me in a leather jacket and a t-shirt with a big smile on my face.

And it was almost like I'd been set free from doing those other kind of gigs.

And then I kind of, I never looked back really.

And I started doing these big gigs and I loved it, preferred it so much more.

Had vole back.

Comedians had vole back.

Go and see Ben Elton and two big ass speakers on front of the stage pumping your voice back at you really loud.

and so it kind of made you feel a bit more raw on stage you know i loved it it's always mad for me hearing about tiz was

because like i think that was before my time so i grew up you were like a very big part of my life growing up and watching you on were you born what you did 85.

yeah yeah so you have no idea what tiz was so tiz was i didn't know what that was but i knew who you were watched you a lot then who wants to be a millionaire whenever what whatever age it was that was massive

tarrant and then i learned that ages ago there was tiz was with and i couldn't even comprehend yeah you and chris tarrant in a show together yeah couldn't make sense because you were two complete you occupied two completely different spaces for me so every time someone says tiz was i'm like did that what's

i have i have nightmares where i think have that happened to me was i really in tiz was

it was really great tarrant was the producer he was the executive producer and he wrote most of it Usually on a Wednesday when he was fishing at four o'clock in the morning, he'd go fishing and he would just dream up the whole shape of the show, what it was, because it was kind of like assembling a radio show or a podcast, I think.

He had blocks of things that he was going to do and we had to contribute the jokes.

We have to say, so there'd be me and there'd be John Gorman and Bob Carolge's and maybe Frank Carson sometimes.

Frank would go, it'd be good if I was pretending to be a medium and reading your fortune.

And then after a while,

you unmask me and you slag me off, and that'll be the joke.

And then I would go, well, I used to do a Rastafarian character called Algernon.

He said, oogie.

And I said, it'd be good if Algernon was into high art this week and talked about going to the tape gallery and blah blah blah.

So we'd do that.

And then he would assemble it on the Friday and we'd go through it and everything.

That's crap, think of something else.

And then on Saturday, we'd just do it live.

And sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

You get a major bollocking when things didn't work.

Literally on air.

That was rubbish.

Don't do that again.

And so

we really wanted to please him.

He was one of those people, a bit like John Lloyd or Jeffrey Perkins, one of these producers where you really want to do your best work for them because they've given you this chance and you don't want to cock it up.

So every Saturday was like that for three years of working to Chris Tarrant and trying to please him.

And we did another show called OTT After Tiz Was, which is a grown-up version, kind of a bit like trying to be like Saturday Night Live, and that didn't work.

And it was because we thought that the Tizwas audience would naturally migrate to OTT, and they didn't.

Of course, it was an adult audience who expected an organized, well-thought-out thing.

It was just chaos.

Snooker and you know, pop videos, and the Human League showing up for some reason.

And it was just that, and it was not well thought out at all.

And as a result, it was a bit ramshackled, but it was a lot of fun to be had.

TV now is kind of odd.

I keep saying, why don't people have their own shows anymore?

And I think it's too expensive.

And I think, you know, if you talk to my girlfriend, she just goes, oh, well,

sketches aren't even a thing anymore, which I don't believe.

I think that

maybe in five years' time, somebody will come up with the new sketch type thing.

There's amazing sketch acts out there.

I think it must be a budgetary thing.

The thing is, sketches are expensive.

If you suddenly want to do Renaissance England, it's like, you know, it's expensive.

Costumes higher and all that.

It doesn't matter how good the idea is, they just don't want to do it.

They'd rather have you on a panel.

And I think the tyranny of panel slash game shows is tough for comics because i watch i watch them a lot i don't want to be on them because i i didn't want to i loved shooting stars but when they asked me to be on it i was slightly mute because i just i was wishing i was at home watching it yeah um but i know you guys are more i don't know how it works but you guys seem to be more able to deal with it because it's the culture now right

i grew up watching panel shows and you know enjoying it and to learn the language by watching it so then when you're on it it doesn't feel as there's a craft of it though isn't there there's a preparation I went on the have I got a news equivalent in Australia and I was shocked that it was prepared yeah I had no idea that it was prepared so I went I did all the preparation with the people that were on it and then I went on it was a great show I was surprised at it everybody thinking it through this won't be in the show but I was just shocked at the preparation that goes into it that was all yeah because the skill is making it look like you're making it up of course yes I think so there is a level level of preparation to those things which are always always surprising when you're on the email the first time you do them you're like all right oh it's this it's this kind of thing

so let's start with your dream starter then hand dive scallops at the rits so I'm watching Great British Menu.

There's this kid on, and he's great, and he works at the Ritz, and I love him.

I've fallen in love with him.

He does this, you know, he does this Jane Austen thing where he presents this meal and somehow he's got a production design budget and the whole table is flowers and this beautiful roast quail thing and he gets top marks for it.

And I'm watching this kid and I'm going, and I do this a lot when I'm watching Great British Menu.

I want to eat wherever this guy cooks.

So there's another guy called Nathan, bald guy, always uses fire.

And I love him and I want to eat at his restaurant.

But this kid, I think his name is Spencer.

Spencer.

I go, I want to eat at his, he's like 12.

And I go, I want to eat at his restaurant.

He cooks at the Ritz, really expensive.

And I go,

so on the pretext of taking my 94-year-old 94-year-old mother-in-law out for her birthday, it wasn't her birthday, we go to the Ritz.

Happy birthday.

It's not my birthday.

Shut up.

To you.

We take her into the restaurant and go through this menu.

And he's on.

He's cooking that day.

Oh, great.

And I see, I love scallops.

I don't like seafood.

I got poorly once from seafood at school.

And so row.

I got really sick.

I was off school for 10 weeks.

But I can't resist scallops.

This disc of meaty fish and that's kind of delicious.

And I kind of don't mind when the orange thingy, weirdy earlobe thing.

But I really like it when you get a big ass piece of meaty, thick fish that's not too overcooked, that just melts in the mouth with some kind of garlicky sauce on it.

Anyway, hand dive scallops at the Ritz.

It arrives and for the five minutes I was eating it, I just thought this is one of the best things I've ever had.

And great thing about Spencer, came out of Saddlo.

Yeah, he's a lovely boy.

Oh, what a nice boy.

And he stayed slightly too long.

I thought, hang on a minute, you know, Marco, Pierre, what yet, Parliament?

You can't sit down.

But he does come and join you and stand there and talk about the program and what you're all like and what it was like and the pressure of it and everything.

He was lovely.

So there's a lot of sense memory involved with the hand dive scallops.

It was delicious.

And it's always a go-to thing for me, scallops.

And I suppose scallops or ribs, I like ribs, but scallops at the Ritz, perfect.

Yeah, I took my mum there for her birthday just because I wanted to go and eat his food again.

He's a pretty special chef, I think.

That's one of your series?

Yeah, that's the last series of Great British Money.

Yeah, you're serious.

It was great.

You will have eaten Spencer's food.

So he did the partridge.

Yeah.

He did the fish dish, the Sherlock.

In the finale.

Yes.

I got to go to the banquet.

Well,

anytime you want me to come on there and

happily come on.

But it was

watching the kind of competition and seeing people fall by the wayside, it's always a shock to me.

And when the geezer with the long hair comes on, I always kind of have dread because there's a guy who's like the dark destroyer, he's got blonde hair down to it.

Michael hair.

He comes on, and he's just very like, you know,

it's like if Bonno suddenly became a food critic, he's incredibly scathing about the food.

And it's kind of like, I just get very scared for them all.

But Spencer was brilliant, and the hand-dye scallops literally rocked my world.

Wow.

So it's that, that first.

They sound amazing.

Very, very strongly.

Delicious.

I'm I'm always surprised by how little you have to cook things sometimes.

Because I like cooking, but I often leave things in for far too long.

And then my mum used to burn things.

When my mum made a cake, she was very good at making cakes.

But her methodology was to put it in the oven.

see smoke coming from the oven,

take the burnt thing out, and then debray the burnt tissue away from the cake, revealing the beautiful cake in the middle somewhere.

So there'll be this tiny cake in the middle of burn tissue and that's how she made her cakes but um i'm trying to be a better chef and the idea of not cooking things for too long whether it's meat or fish is a good thing yeah that thing when you see like a cooking show or like you know an interview of a chef and they're talking these top end chefs talking about what you know making it a steak or scallops or whatever it is and it's hardly cooked at all and you're thinking what are we all overthinking it for yeah it seems like they just like go bam there you go do you ever panic when you're watching these shows and they make a steak?

You go, well, that's not cooked.

Yeah.

I'll do that.

No, no, you need to, you need to, you need to render the fat.

You need to with pork as well, where they're like, pork can be pink.

You're like, what?

No, no, no, no, chicken can be pink.

No, no blood with chicken.

These guys are crazy.

Oh, we just show it to the grill.

No, you need to cook it.

Your dream main course.

Now, we have a a feeling this is going to be a home-cooked thing.

This is mum.

My mum was a great cook.

She cooked the same thing every day for 30 years.

She had different days of the week.

So, um, Saturday was Saturday soup, which is what I'm going to choose.

Sunday was a Jamaican roast, which is chicken and rice and peas and hard food, which is yam and chocho and sweet potato and stuff, dumplings.

Monday, as we're starting to move out to the weekend and run out of money, it might be meat and potatoes and stuff.

Tuesday, chicken.

Wednesday, no money, pilchards and white rice.

Thursday, really no money, sardines, tinned sardines and potato.

Friday, fish and chips or a fish thing.

Saturday, Saturday soup.

She did the same thing every day.

And we really look forward to Saturday because we'd only just had pilchards.

So we're still, we've got PTSD from Pilchers and Pilchards and white rice.

We don't want to eat tinned fish and rice anymore.

Please, can we have something nice?

So we'd get to Saturday.

Oh, thank God.

And she would get up in the morning and she'd put the mutton on.

The mutton has to simmer for quite a long time because it's quite tough meat.

So she'd simmer the mutton for a couple of hours until it was falling off the bone.

Mutton, thyme, garlic, onions, simmer, leave it.

Then she'd, when it was cooked, then all the vegetables go in.

This is the yam.

Yam is quite a fibrous carb, carby white vegetable.

Cut that up into blocks.

No, kind of, it's peasant food, so you don't have to kind of be nice about it.

Carrots, the dumplings can go in now, and whatever other, you know, Scotch bonnet pepper maybe can go in.

That goes in, half an hour.

Last 20 minutes, the potatoes go in.

So you've got this quite big, I mean, we're talking literally a vat of food here with liquid in it.

And so we'd all get our own tureen.

That's what I remember.

We'd all get our enormous tureen of food and it would be the liquid and then potatoes, dumplings, yam, mutton, sometimes on the bone, sometimes if you're lucky, chunks of melty meat and carrots with the thyme and the garlic and everything.

Oh my God.

Every Saturday.

So you'd eat this every Saturday and it kind of took on legendary proportions.

And when I left home to be a professional comedian, I used to dream of it because I was eating Chinese and curry and stuff and going out to Greek restaurants and exploring other cuisines.

But I did think, oh, my mum's food is up there with this.

I can, you know, my mum's food is good.

She had this thing where she would put beef in foil and put loads of vegetable aromatics around it garlic and stuff and pinch it and put it on a very low heat for hours this food this meat fell apart and it was delicious and tasty and succulent so she was a clever cook and I'd get home I'd be in like Huddersfield and I'd drive home overnight and I'd get there Saturday morning and the soup would be on and I'd be going

oh

thank God and I would just eat this soup and it rem and it would have that kind of sense feeling of home and safety and stability and you'd eat it and you'd immediately fall asleep and you'd wake up when the wrestling was on.

So you knew the soup would have been good if Mick McManus was punching somebody in the face when you woke up.

So it was always that.

And it's delicious and tasty and garlicky and the meat was always succulent and you did suck the bone.

And I know that sounds horrible, but there was stuff inside the bone, like the marrow, that was always really tasty.

And

I think it was legendary, that dish.

And I've tried to cook cook it.

Me and my brother,

we try and do mum's cake as a thing in our family, and nobody quite gets it right.

No one burns it enough, right?

We always think the burning is wrong, but actually, and we do the soup, and

we can get close.

Rust and E's got a good Saturday soup

recipe, but the Saturday soup is the thing I would choose.

It sounds phenomenal.

Oh, I went to Mr.

Jerk in Soho, it's not open anymore, and they made the Saturday soup.

Mutton soup with red peas, kidney kidney beans and hard food.

And

it was in a work day.

I was going to a writer's meeting in the afternoon in Soho at PBJ's.

PBJ's my manager.

And I just thought, I'll have some soup.

And I went in and I had it and I started to cry because my mum had passed away.

And it reminded me of my mum.

And food can do that.

You know, Marcel Prouston, remembrance of things past, food can trigger memories and you don't know why it's doing it, but it suddenly evokes.

something.

And I had this soup in the middle of Soho with the bin men going around and the bottles clanging away and smashing and people in the street and smoking fags and stuff.

And I just thought, God, my mum was great.

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your dream side dish um i like ribs i love spare ribs on the side well you mentioned possibly ribs for a starter so this might be a good place to put the ribs yeah i think this is a good place to put the ribs because salt and pepper ribs are delicious.

However, the ribs that fall off the bone are the bomb.

So whenever I have those, I always think that's very similar to the way my mum would cook them.

So when I go to a Chinese restaurant and the ribs have a sauce and they fall off the bone, there's a restaurant in Chinatown where they serve this one where it's obviously been cooking for a long time and the ribs are to die for.

So yes, that would be a side for me.

I'd have two.

Maybe I'd have two as a side.

Yeah.

Delish.

Two.

I'd have two ribs, but no, you have the two ribs, you have the and they're quite big, and there's quite a lot of meat on them.

But you don't want to spoil your mane, so you don't eat, you might share that with somebody.

I'm doing a lot of sharing of sides at the moment.

I don't know if you do that.

I kind of go, should we share one?

I never mean it, though.

So should we share that?

Yeah, do you seem to have eaten all that?

Sorry.

My wife knows.

She's like, yeah, we'll share that.

She knows she's not having any of it.

I am very disappointed when ribs don't fall off the bone.

Yeah.

The chewy rib is not really my thing.

I like the fall off the bone one where the meat just goes, I give up!

And just falls off the bone like that.

I agree, but in competition American barbecue, it's actually marked down if it falls off the bone.

That's what it is.

There needs to be a pillow.

You need to pull it off.

I agree with that, but the meat does need to be tender ribs.

Otherwise, it's not great.

And I like a sauce.

I like it when it's been marinated in a delicious sauce.

Sometimes ribs can be a bit, you know, they just chuck it on and it's...

it tastes of a smoke in the meat, really.

And I think that if you've taken the trouble to make a good marinade, that can elevate the rib to something quite extraordinary.

And we want extraordinary, don't we?

Steve Martin says, you know, somebody asked him, what do you care about?

And he said, you know, every single meal.

Imagine that.

I ate with him once, and it's true.

He took a really long time to choose his food.

He wanted it to be perfect.

He doesn't want any meal time to be disappointing.

Imagine that.

How many crap meals have you had and gone, oh, it's all right.

Just let me eat that.

Come on, I've got to get on.

You know, Steve Martin wants every single meal to be perfect i think i agree with steve martin really yeah it's definitely steve martin that's a problem man that's a problem if all you can do is get street food on the way to somewhere wait a second

how are you cooking these onions with a hot dog

steve it's just a hot dog you need to no no no no no i need to know what kind of soy sauce they're using on these ribs anyway i'd love to know the context that you and steve martin were you working on something together no it was um we got this phone call from pete and he said we're going out with steve martin for lunch.

Do you want to come?

And I was almost there before he'd finished the phone call.

And I was just sitting there and Steve Martin was there.

And it was brilliant.

It was so, and

it was kind of like all of us.

He didn't perform at the table.

He didn't do any jokes.

So it was kind of like being with this slightly grumpy middle-aged bloke.

But we didn't care because we were all kind of in awe of him, watching him eating his, being really fussy over it.

Because even when he was fussing over his food, it was kind of funny.

So we were kind of biting our lips, trying not to laugh.

and he did one thing where he went um

i'm going to the bathroom and we were

and it wasn't even funny it was just kind of said it in that kind of wild and crazy way and we all went

steve martin we're having our lunch with steve martin it's great but he was a bit grumpy oh he also left up um I did an impression of him in Live and I made a film called Live and Unleashed in 1989 and I did an impression of Steve with prosthetics at the beginning of the film where I walk into that in the Empire and he rang rang me, he rang my house and left a very long answer for a message about copyright and about plagiarism.

It was funny, he said, maybe you know, my lawyers will be on the phone to you at some point because you've literally stolen my soul.

It was great, he was really nice, good guy.

That's very good to hear.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For a second, there, because you were saying it was very serious when you said he left a message to you about copyright.

I was like, what, Steve Martin's gonna sue that guy?

No, it was a joke, it was a joke in it.

It was not like that.

Sorry, film.

Okay.

Spoken about lawyers.

Do you feel like you and Steve Martin?

Do you feel like you have a natural bond as well because your surnames are also Christian names?

So when Steve Martin and Lenny Henry are hanging out, it was just like quite a fun.

It was just, we're both comics and quite miserable in real life.

It was just cool to meet him.

They say you should meet your heroes, but I go, what's that all about?

You should meet them.

Yeah.

It doesn't matter.

I was big tongue-tied when I met John Armour Trading, but apart from that.

I also met Aretha Franklin and was cooked tongue-tied.

I don't know what's the matter with me.

I'm not shy.

I met Aretha Franklin at the airport and I was like,

I think anyone would be shy.

She signed a book for me.

She signed a book for me.

But she had a huge bodyguard with her.

It was like an asteroid.

He was so big, this guy.

And she went, let him through.

Our friend Rob Deerman, who's a comedian, you might have read Rob.

Does a live comedy music show, like a quiz.

And I was paired up with someone and they had to describe musicians and I had to guess who they were without saying the musician's name, like articulate.

And they had Joe Narma trading.

And at that point, I hadn't heard of Joe Narma Trading before.

And the guesses that I came up with to try and get who this person was because they were trying to like you know say like so say like you know you had a job and it was to like swap like a like a like like like a breastplate and uh

and I was like ah so like

you're an arms dealer

yeah you didn't know Joan I'm a trading didn't at the time didn't at the time choosing the beanov

we were were in the beano.

We were in the beano.

Yeah, we got, because of this podcast, we're in one frame of a mini the mings cartoon.

They decided it was set in a restaurant, and in the foreground, there's me and Ed having a little meal.

That's great.

I was in the beanoe.

We did a Comic Relieve comic, and some of the artists put us in the comic.

I was so chuffed, you know, because Beano is a thing.

Yeah.

food again, you know, the Beano and the Dandy, at the end of every episode in the last panel, they were always having sausage and mash and saying, we'll feast on this.

50p, we'll feast on this and they always had huge sausage and mash and the sausage always tucked out like

I love that I always I've never had sausage and mash like that

but if I was serving sausage and mash I would sort of want a pile of mash bigger than my head yeah and the sausages poked like antlers out of it yeah that's the way to be sausage and mash pals yeah I went to the bino exhibit at Somerset House you went there as well yeah and uh I didn't know that like in the first bit of the exhibit it basically explains the Beano is all about food.

And I was like, I didn't even think about that.

But like, yeah, they have a big sculpture of the mash and the sausages.

Desperate Dan, cow pie.

Yeah.

Cow pie, yeah.

But is it because of post-war, because of rationing and stuff, because food was so scarce?

All the comics were about stealing cakes and eating sausages and bunch.

Yeah, it was all about just loving food and being a Lord Snooty and Bass Street kids all eating pies and stuff.

It was that post-war thing of scarcity.

And I get that.

We didn't have much money, but we always ate.

My mum was always very clear about you clear your plate.

This food was hard won this week.

So I really got the bean on the dandy's obsession with food.

Dream drinks.

When I saw the Beatles on something drinking scotch and coke, I drank scotch and coke for a long time.

And the Edge bought me a bottle of tequila once.

I love it.

No build-up to that.

Straight in.

That's how I want.

And Lemmy,

Lemmy bought me a bottle of, gave me a bottle of vodka once.

What's a gig.

But these are not my dream drinks.

My dream drink is a rum punch because it's quite strong, but it doesn't mess up the meal because you don't want to be so drunk before you eat your meal.

I don't understand the martini thing.

Have you ever had a martini?

I like martini.

They're really strong, though.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just like pour a large glass of gin,

add something like vermouthi, you'll put an olive in it, drink.

There's no, what is the shaken, not stirred thing?

It's just a pint of gin.

The first martini I had, I couldn't even talk afterwards.

I was so kind of like shocked how strong it was.

Anyway, so rum punch is just right as long as, you know, a maniac hasn't made it.

I've had some maniac-made rum punches where people can't move.

If you use Ray and Nephew rum just and put it in a bowl and people are just dipping into it at a party,

there's quite a lot of Ubers to call with a stretcher that you need because people are so drunk they can barely move.

So a likely made rum punch with fruit and stuff in it.

And that's a lovely thing to have with your starter to sip at and chat.

And then during the meal, you know,

I like a glass of wine.

I used to like Polini Montraché was a nice white wine.

I went to a farm once in south of France and the farmer was selling wine out of in-gallon plastic.

containers and it was one of the best wines.

Oh wow.

It was white and it was delicious.

We had it for a week.

It It was fantastic.

I was just drinking it from the container and pretending I was drinking paraffin.

Look at me all drinking paraffin.

But

it was really delicious.

I'm trying to work out which musical legend it turns out the farmer is.

Yeah, yeah.

It wasn't a musical legend.

It was just a farmer.

Do you have a rum punch recipe for the listeners?

Some sweets, some sour.

So you need some rum.

You need some kind of glycerin-y type, sugary type, syrupy thing to put into it.

You could put lemonade in it.

You could have some pineapple juice in there.

It'd be quite nice to have some of the pineapple on the side of the glass.

And then you kind of mix it a bit.

And then that's sort of it.

There's better recipe.

There'll be better recipes, but it's some sweet, some sour, some alcoholic.

Drink it.

People often forget to put that as part of the recipe.

Drink it, drink it.

Just make it.

They like looking at it and going, see what I've done.

My work is done.

So we arrive at your dream dessert.

Is this from a certain time in your life, or has it always been a favourite?

Yeah, well, creme brulee is great, and trifle is legendary.

School spotted dick and kind of sticky toffe puddings are very popular.

Nowhere else, can't really eat a lot of puddings at the moment because I was trying to watch my weight because I'm diabetic.

But I do like a dessert still.

But there's a legendary one.

There was a restaurant in Manchester, I can't remember its name, so I apologise in advance.

Chef

made a bread pudding with brioche.

It had currants in it, chocolate, and a thimbleful of whiskey.

Oh, who is it?

It was

literally mind-blowing.

Because the custardy bit just made this chocolatey whiskey custard.

And the brioche, because it wasn't bread, wasn't too oneristy, because sometimes the bready bit of a bread pudding can be a bit claggy.

But when you put your spoon it, it sort of went

like that.

Yeah.

There was resistance, but not too much resistance.

And so, oh, this thing.

And guess what Chef did?

He gave me the recipe.

Oh, wow.

So somewhere in my house, tucked into a book somewhere is a recipe for this chocolate, chocolate-y brioche-y bread pudding.

And it's literally one of the best things that you've ever eaten.

And do you make that at home?

I've made it a few times when I wanted to impress people.

And it's a very nice dessert to have.

Very, very nice.

And you can, you know, you can serve a little, a nice little whiskey with it.

I got into a thing, I was doing a Phil McIntyre gig up north in Scotland, Scotland and we were staying in a very, very nice hotel where they had a whiskey bar with every whiskey you could probably name and lots of local ones.

And it changed my mind about whiskey because my family, my uncles used to drink Johnny Walker and Johnny Walker is just like drink, fall down.

Whereas there's a whole, like with these people who taste tea, there's a whole thing with whiskey where it's not just about drinking and falling over, it's about taste and nuance and texture and stuff.

So I had a really lovely whiskey tasting night, which I can't quite remember.

But I did learn that whiskey is not something to just be drunk because you want to get drunk.

It's something you can actually drink like a very, very fine wine or liqueur.

So if you serve it with a very, very nice whiskey.

Puck it.

Oh, it's absolutely delicious.

Yeah.

Also, I mean, you know, the listener didn't see your face completely glaze over

when you pictured it.

Your eyes were half open.

You were staring at the bottom of the body.

Sorry, I'm a very visual person.

Also, when you said Manchester bread pudding, I thought it was going to be a Gary Rhodes thing.

Yeah.

He used to make a...

Not sure it was Gary.

It might have been Tom Kerridge.

I don't know, but it was somebody, one of those up-and-coming chefs in the late 80s, one of those people.

But it was in Manchester, and it was like a little restaurant.

I remember it was quite steel and graphite, one of those nice kind of newy restaurants, sci-fi blade runnery type things.

And God, it was good.

Sounds delicious.

All the different components.

I never thought I...

As a kid, I was always sort of anti-bread pudding or bread and butter pudding because it sounded so weird.

Yeah.

But then the first time I had it, I was like...

It's good, isn't it?

It's mind-blowing.

It's so good.

But the normal bread pudding is delicious.

The idea of custard and bread and raisins, currants, I love custard.

If you say to me, it's got currants in it, I'm there.

You know, you have me, it's got,

you know, I love currants and raisins and things.

So I love chocolate raisins and I love anything with a raisin-y thing in it.

You know, rum and raisin ice cream, I love that.

So bread, butter, pudding, custard, raisins, it's like you're talking to a seven-year-old Lennon going, you know, eat this, child.

You know, it's like oh so great so that's that's it is that good that's well let me read it back to you see how you feel about it i'll read your menu back to you like still water you'll like pop a doms for your starter you would like in a big crisp in a big hessian sack of pop-a-doms starter your hand dived scallops from the ritz main course mum's saturday soup side of two ribs fall off the bone drink rum punch and also you would like a pellini montroche white wine throughout the meal dessert the brioche bread pudding with currants chocolate, and whiskey from the place in Manchester.

That sounds fantastic.

That sounds very good.

All day long I'm eating that.

Yeah, I'm on board with that.

I'm desperate to try Saturday soup from somewhere.

I want Saturday soup.

I want the dessert, obviously.

I mean, fine dining is weird, isn't it?

Because hand-dived scallops are on every menu.

But the bread and butter pudding and the Saturday soup, you don't...

you don't see when you go out.

But there are more, thank God, there are more Caribbean restaurants opening all the time.

It's been a thing with Caribbean restaurants in Britain because whenever you go to the ones that exist from

like late 80s to now, there's very little on the menu when you get there.

You have the soup?

No, the soup done.

You have the stew, the stew done.

You have the cooked chicken with the rum and the curry, that done.

You have the coconut with the that finish.

What you have left?

Let me go and ask the chef.

We have the random stew.

You want some of that?

All right then.

You know, so going out from, I remember taking Richard Curtis to a Caribbean restaurant and it was like that in Labra Grove.

We didn't have anything on the menu.

We had some weird, bizarre, whatever was left in the kitchen we had.

So

now, with the advent of programmes like MasterChef and Great British Menu and everything,

we've got some great chefs going around from Caribbean heritage.

And there's this attempt to make...

and a successful attempt to make Caribbean food fine dining.

And I think you're going to see in the next 10 years, perhaps, a transition from this idea of peasant food, fish and chips and curry and rice into something that we can savour and enjoy in a in a kind of a

take your partner out for a nice meal way yeah rustelise restaurant was that in birmingham but unfortunately closed down after a while but there are there are a few places now where you can go and have a kind of nice meal and eat caribbean food and it's great certainly in france certainly in places like antigua and certainly in jamaica they're not ashamed of their heritage they kind of elevate it and um i think you'll see that in the next 10 years with caribbean food well fingers crossed there'll be more more such restaurants We'd all have a Saturday soup any day of the week.

Am I allowed to eat it outside of a Saturday soup?

Well, we did, because you know, if we could get it to make Saturday soup on Thursday, for instance, that was good because it wasn't pilchards.

Yeah, yeah.

Why do you make Saturday soup today?

Well, it's not really politique, but I will try and heal.

As you ask nice,

pilchards on the Saturday, then, if it was.

No!

Thank you very much for coming to the dream restaurant.

Thank you, it's been lovely.

I'll have what they're having.

Well, there we go.

We managed it, James.

We kept ourselves together.

I was even more in awe than I thought I was going to be.

It's quite, Joe, I'm going to be honest with you, Ed, it was quite an emotional experience.

Well, it was a fantastic episode.

What an absolute gentleman.

So funny.

Yeah.

I felt regaled by the end.

I felt regaled.

I've been regaled.

But also, I know that you missed a lot of what he said after sugar sandwiches because you were just thinking about that.

Thinking, I need to do that.

Yeah.

As soon as possible.

On the way home, I'll go to the shop.

I'll get some bread and some sugar and some butter.

butter.

Yeah.

An absolutely amazing episode.

And he did not say plain kombucha, surprisingly.

Woo, thank you, Sir Lenny.

We didn't have to have that awful moment.

Yes.

A Night of the Realm.

That would be awful.

So do go and buy Rising to the Surface, Lenny Henry's new memoir.

Published by Faber.

Published by Faber out on 1st of September.

And his new kids' book, Book of Legends, published by Macmillan.

Macmillan.

And that's out on the 13th of October.

And do watch him.

He is in the new Lord of the Rings series, The Rings of Power, on Prime Video.

And that starts on the 2nd of September.

He's a very busy night.

He's a busy night.

Hard days.

Hard days.

Hard days.

Yeah.

It's a bit busy.

He's busy.

He's busy.

He's working like a dog.

I'm quite busy.

I'm on tour.

Ed Gamble Electric.

Go and see it.

Edgamble.co.uk for tickets.

Yes.

And also, James A.

Oh, no.

I said it too fast and just messed it up.

Oh, no.

I've got a book out.

James has got a book out.

Is it published by James?

Headline.

Headline.

Thank you very much for listening to this episode.

We can't believe it happened either.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

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, it's 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.