Richard E Grant A Taste of My Life

Hello and welcome to A Taste Of My Life, the show that dishes up people's lives on a plate.

Food is an incredibly personal and revealing way of travelling back in time.

Every single thing we eat and cook tells us something about who we are,

which is why I'm going to be taking today's guest back down memory lane.

Now today's very special guest,

his big breakthrough was playing a vile out-of-work actor

in a film that was to become an enormous cult classic.

Look at that. Look at that, "Accident black spot."

These aren't accidents.

They're throwing themselves into the road gladly!

In fact, there's no one best way to describe him,

other then unique, colourful and more than a little eccentric.

Oh, that's the right upbringing for bread.

Slice your loaf thinly and let your spices breathe.

He recently put the story of his traumatic childhood

on the silver screen.

Yes, today's guest is, of course, the wonderful Richard E Grant.

And coming up in today's show -

Richard sniffs

and sniffs

and sniffs his way back down memory lane.

Comedienne Meera Syal throws down the gauntlet

for Richard E Grant, the chef.

For your Indian friends, try vegetable biryani.

And Richard's wife invites us to their place

for an unusual breakfast.

He tends to gag or hold his nose while he eats it.

Richard E Grant, welcome to A Taste Of My Life.

Thank you, Nigel, for inviting me.

-You were born in Swaziland.

-Yes.

And, I mean, was it a sort of very traditional colonial family?

Yes, because there were the three Bs.

The three tenets of colonial life were boredom, booze and bonking,

of which my family was in the front of the queue for that.

-I mean, Mum cooked at home or...

-No.

-Who cooked?

No, no, no, we had... We had servants.

-You had servants?

-Yep, yep we did. The colonial shame of...

You know, you live as a colonialist in a very sort of feudal 19th century kind of way.

The tradition was that colonial wives taught the cook

to make seven meals for the seven days of the week,

so you knew that on Sunday it would be roast beef,

Monday roast chicken, Tuesday lamb, Wednesday shepherd's pie,

Thursday, erm...

..pork! Friday you would have fish.

So incredibly English meals, absolute traditional British food,

-in the sweltering heat...

-Yeah.

Being cooked by somebody who actually,

-it was quite alien food to them?

-Completely alien food.

Are there any particular dishes you remember,

I suppose, with a sort of fondness that, you know,

if you taste them or you smell them again,

they might actually take you back there?

Shepherd's pie, just very traditional things, really.

It's nursery food, it's traditional nursery food

and it's actually what I call proper food. That's proper food.

And what do you make the meat base out of?

Well, I was told lamb for shepherd's pie and then cottage pie was beef,

because if you could afford a cottage you could afford beef. That was the idea.

The knack to my shepherd's pie is in preparing the filling.

Take your time and let the meat cook slowly for maximum flavour.

The way I make a shepherd's pie is slightly different, because I sometimes put parsnip

in the mash with the potato, it's more or less the same,

but it's even more sort of wintry and British.

-I'm sure I can offer you some shepherd's pie?

-Yes, you can.

-Why is it yellow?

-The topping is parsnip.

I love shepherd's pie as it is, you know, the big classic sort of thing that Mum makes.

I know mother wasn't around for long, I mean, until you were sort of, what?

-Ten.

-Ten?

-Yep.

What sort of relationship did you have, was it very loving or...?

-Can I start eating?

-Yes, please do.

It was... I think that she was not someone you could disagree with.

If mum said it,

then you did it.

Definitely. And I would always argue with... Oh, this is very good.

Delicious. I could argue with my dad about things,

but not really my mum. What about you?

She was the warm and fuzzy one.

-She was?

-Dad was the scary one, yeah.

It was the reverse in my family.

I've written and directed a film about my growing-up years, called Wah-Wah,

set at the end of the Sixties, in which the first scene

is me waking up at the age of ten on the back seat of a car,

inadvertently witnessing my mother bonking my father's best friend.

So they then had a very, very acrimonious divorce, and that really

plunged my father into chronic alcoholism.

He became an extremely...abusive and violent alcoholic by night,

whilst being incredibly charming, provocative, funny and witty by day.

There's a scene in the middle of the film where - Gabriel Byrne plays him

in the film so brilliantly - I emptied a crate of his Scotch whiskey

out because I thought this would get rid of the stash in the house.

He took a gun to my head, missed and then turned it on himself,

missed again, passed out, blacked-out,

next day had no memory whatsoever and then suffered terrible remorse.

So I think that if you see somebody under the influence

of whatever drug they're on, you know that that is not who they really are, so you forgive everything.

The awful thing with that is that,

and I suppose it's the perfect psychological background to be

an actor, is that when he was drunk he would say those terrible things

and when you get a critical drubbing, and somebody says, "Well, you're all these things,"

that is...it reminds you of all of that,

as though it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You say, "Well, he was right, because that's what he said to me when I was 15."

And when you read the critics you think, "Well, they obviously know something he knew too."

-What about puddings, were there any puddings?

-Rhubarb crumble.

Yeah, rhubarb crumble. Apple crumble, all of those things.

The secret to a good rhubarb crumble is that there should be nothing flashy about it.

It's just a strange picture I'm getting,

of this totally different climate and different life

and everyone sitting round eating Northern stodge.

Yeah, sub-tropical on Christmas Day and people would be very drunk by the time the Queen's speech

came on the radio, hot turkey and all of that and sweltering heat.

I was always told that I couldn't eat just before a meal,

and so one of the great things about being an adult is that I just eat all day long, whenever I can.

Oh, that smells fantastic!

Can the viewers see how delicious this is?

I love tropical fruits, because I never had them. Thank you.

I never had them. I didn't see a mango till I was about... Thank you.

-You had a deprived childhood?

-No, I just didn't see a mango.

I mean, a lot happened emotionally in very few years.

In a way, that could have upset you so much...

-That I should be a twitching mess?

-Yes.

-And that's simply hasn't happened.

-Well, I was angry for a long time.

-Yeah.

-And then I had...

I went to a brilliant psychoanalyst when I was 42 for 18 months,

because I said all my road maps were all messed up, and he fixed me up.

I'm interested to know what you're like to cook for.

A pain in the BEEP, because

I don't drink milk, alcohol, I don't really like...

apart from a little bit of Parmesan cheese, I don't really like cheese very much.

So there are all sorts of things that I don't like eating, and that makes me annoying to cook for.

-There's a big no list of "Can't do this..."

-There's a big no list.

-I've got a little surprise for you.

-What, guts and offal?

No, much, much nicer than that, I promise you. Much nicer.

OK. Oh my God.

Wow. Oh my God.

I'm going to make Richard's breakfast

and he eats the same thing every morning, winter or summer.

He eats porridge, because it keeps him going.

Actually, he's a really quirky eater, so he has a small amount of porridge to get the bowels going.

He actually absolutely hates it.

He detests it, so he has nuts and raisins in his porridge.

So he's got quite, I think he's got quite a strong sense of smell,

he tends to gag or hold his nose while he eats it.

It takes about two minutes.

I put it on my Aga.

So it's pretty basic, pretty peasant food.

So it's going to be ready in just a minute.

So we have some fresh fruit, like stewed apricots or...

He hates prunes, so not prunes.

But he has some sort of...

fresh fruit in it, strawberries, apricots, whatever,

just to soften the blow of the porridge, really.

He likes it really runny,

if I make it too thick,

he dilutes it with more juice, not water.

Very famously sticks his nose in everything he eats,

and he has actually, in the past, he's had his face pushed into food

by surprised people, or people look at him rather worried, often, when we go out,

because they worry in case he thinks their food is off.

I think the sense of smell is the most important thing to him,

because he says it brings up all the memories of everything.

And it's true, instantly you smell something, you're immediately taken back to a place.

Right, so that's it.

-And then, on top of that...

-SHE LAUGHS

this is why I have no milk, I suppose, on top of that he has cranberry juice.

So that's basically what it looks like.

Richard would eat his breakfast over here.

It looks a bit like vomit, doesn't it?

So this is where he eats his breakfast.

How did you bribe her to get in the house? I'm amazed she let you in.

That's what he likes.

I think it will be a big surprise that I've let anybody into the home, actually, apart from anything else.

But he's eaten his porridge in front of other people.

But I think he'll be surprised to see breakfast, definitely.

Richard, just make sure you eat whatever Nigel serves up and also

just, I beg you as I do every single day, please don't eat too quickly.

Give yourself time to taste the food, darling.

23 years she's put up with me.

Really, it's a miracle.

I can't believe I'm sitting here watching my wife having cooked breakfast on your show.

This is what you've reproduced here.

So this is exactly it, oats and your beloved raisins.

Yeah, raisins, make everything go down.

-And cranberry juice.

-Yeah.

-Now, I love porridge, but I like my porridge, I have to say, oats and water.

-It's revolting.

-Why do you say it's revolting?

-Ah, because...

-It isn't?

-No, it's not.

I've got used to it. I really...

I enjoy being...

married and having found the right person enormously.

It's the most important thing in my whole life.

Still to come on A Taste Of My Life: Richard and I grapple with

a tasty challenge from comedienne and friend Meera Syal.

Every Indian in the land will be rolling over, going "Those stupid bhajis."

Friends Penny Smith and author Kathy Lette serve up some funny dishes.

..food for thought and, oh, look what I'm serving up tonight.

And over an opulent final feast, Richard tells us how his film

Wah-Wah brought his mother back into his life.

As a result of doing this, it's brought about a great reconciliation with my mum.

This is the point, normally, on A Taste Of My Life where

I have a little blast from someone's past,

from their culinary history, and then I challenge them.

And this time I'm not going to do that, because I've actually got a challenge from someone else.

Not from me, a friend of yours.

Richard E Grant, Sanjeev nothing Kumar.

Scrubbers!

'I'm sorry, that's my grandmother.'

Scrubbers!

She's a bit mentally...old.

He was a guest on The Kumars at Number 42,

in fact he was a guest in our very first programme.

Richard turned up and was THE perfect guest, the perfect guest.

Every time I've cooked for him it's been Indian food,

cos I'm a bit boring, really, I always end up doing the things my mother taught me.

But also, I feel the expectation often is, when people come to an Indian person's house,

what they kind of want is home-cooked curry

rather than the stuff they get in restaurants. Hello, darling.

It's me.

That's my greeting to you.

Because you have always loved the Indian food I've cooked,

and because I think it would be good for your soul,

I think you should attempt a vegetable biryani,

because it's something you can throw together yourself after a hard day's filming.

So, for your Indian friends, try vegetable biryani.

-OK.

-So you'll do it, yeah?

-I will, yeah.

-Try it?

-Yeah. Now?

-Yeah.

-Great.

I don't know what Meera would think.

-I mean, having said to you, "Go and make biranyi..."

-Yeah.

I wonder what she'd make... I wonder what she'll make of it.

Well, she'll be lying on her sofa with her legs up at the ceiling, laughing at us.

-Just getting it so wrong.

-Yeah, getting it so wrong.

Yeah.

Just really to get a sort of really aromatic...base

to put everything else on top of.

She's not looking, anyway, erm...

Indian risotto cooked by two white boys.

It's, erm... It's paneer.

I don't know this at all, I've never cooked with this. Just leave it?

Yeah, the rice will absorb the water.

That doesn't look like any Indian food that I've ever eaten before.

-Does it you?

-Give it a little while, and it will.

-It smells good.

-It does, doesn't it?

Yeah, it does. This stuff is not melting.

It's softening, look.

-It is softening.

-No, it's bouncing.

-It's not softening at all.

-I'm suspicious of white cubey things.

Every Indian in the land will be rolling over, going, "Those stupid bhajees!" Laughing.

-Horrified.

-Yep.

So will Meera.

The moment of truth...

OK.

Smell that.

Pretty good, Meera. You should be here, my darling.

One lump.

Out of ten?

Two.

-Four.

-Meera, I'm coming round to your house.

We can't go on like this!

I'm a trained actor reduced to the status of a bum!

I mean, look at us!

That's, of course, Withnail.

-Uh-huh.

-Has that haunted you?

I mean, it must, cos I know there's lots of huge Withnail fans.

Well, it's gone on for... Since it was made 20 years ago,

it's had this ongoing sort of cult following, and...

I don't understand why, other than that I've never met a Withnail fan I didn't think was a good egg.

-Have you been at the controls?

-What are you talking about?

-The thermostats, what have you done to them?1

-I haven't touched them.

Then why has my head gone numb?

I must have some booze.

I demand to have some booze!

Why it should have this ongoing life, I don't think any of us can really work out why that's happened.

But it's one of those films that people quote huge chunks of, they adore it.

Yeah, it has great dialogue. Yeah, it is very quotable.

-Do you eat out a lot?

-Yeah, I do.

Are you one of those people who like particular dishes in particular restaurants?

Yeah...and like a pony to the carrot, or the donkey or whatever,

I would go and eat the same things over and over and over again.

I know you like...

quite hot food, and I've heard about these peri-peri prawns that...

Yeah, but I have to...I have to qualify that - I like it not too hot.

So I'm making a mild peri-peri for Richard.

I always use raw grey prawns.

They're much juicier than the pink pre-cooked ones.

Mozambique was the adjacent country to Swaziland.

Where the food is very, very spicy.

Yeah, so it was Portuguese colonial food,

and eating prawns there, great piles of them, was, erm...

and lightly peri-peried, was a great treat always.

I'm going to offer you a peri-peri prawn.

-Or three.

-Thank you.

Oh...

Wow! That's the most wonderful... Oh!

Look at that. Absolutely wonderful.

Absolutely wonderful, circa Mozambique 1973.

You've done what? I mean, it must be over 30 films.

I've been in 34, yeah.

-I mean, which one of them is...

-HE CRUNCHES

-Excuse me, sorry.

-Do carry on. Which one of them is your favourite?

-Very good for soup stock.

-Mmm!

Favourite? Writing and directing my own novel, Wah-Wah, that was the most wonderful experience, yep.

You get asked a thousand questions a day, and so it's like pecked to death slowly by pigeons.

It's the perfect job for a detail-obsessed masochist.

Where are those prawns? Can you bring them back?

Have they been eaten? I'd like more!

A lot of your friends, I've noticed, they seem to be women.

You seem to have an affinity for drawing in sort of... close female friends.

Yeah, the majority of my friends are women, always have been.

-Why is that? It's funny.

-I think because I've so many female hormones.

I like yakking.

We've actually managed to track down some of your close female friends,

-and they've actually got a little message for you.

-Wow.

God.

I'm just going to cook a really easy onion and tomato and basil spaghetti.

Every time that I see Richard, when we go out for lunch -

or dinner - he always seems to eat spaghetti.

Richard E Grant, I mean, if you were an alien and I needed to describe

Richard E Grant, I would say, "Short, fat, very hairy...

"with a strange habit of sniffing."

I met him at a supermarket in Penge.

He was buying some beef burgers and oven chips for

Joan, Olly and him, and I bumped into him in the car park.

Obviously, you know, he was awash with Pringles and nasty salty snacks...

I'm joking, obviously!

No, funnily enough, I met him in Barbados, and

obviously the first thing I noticed about Richard was his Speedos.

And funnily enough, after that holiday, I don't think he wore them anymore.

Can you smell this, Richard?

And we've got a bit of this going in I've been assured this will help.

Yes, he has a unique quality all right.

I think the Speedos says it all, doesn't it, really?

Yes...

Tough as old boots.

Richard is very, very dull.

Whenever I go out, I always say to Joan, his lovely wife, "Just put

"me as far away from Richard as possible, cos he's so boring."

He's got nothing to talk about, and he never, ever, ever gossips.

Nice and gloopy. How could you not want to eat that?

And the piece de resistance... is the truffle oil.

-You did mention gossip.

-Well, how do you define gossip?

Gossip to me seems to be what people do all the time.

Everybody talks about everybody, so I don't see it as a pejorative thing.

-But some people are better at it, some people are really good.

-This is true, yeah.

Penny looks like she might be quite good at it.

Yeah, she's very good at it. She's a good gasbag!

Actually, I've got another message from a friend of yours,

but this is not so much a foodie message, it's...

I'll just say slightly unusual.

As you know, Richard, wordplay is foreplay for females,

how else is Woody Allen still getting laid.

And you have a black belt in tongue fu.

You've given me quiplash many times.

And you know I can't cook, but we do share a passion for food

for thought, and, oh, look what I'm serving up tonight!

Richard knows I can't cook,

I burn water, so when he comes for dinner, I just dial my finger to the bone ordering takeout.

He's deeply eccentric as a cook, and as a person,

which is what makes him delicious.

He loves women - not in a predatory way. I mean, he is my only

male friend who I can strip off to my emotional underwear for.

It's a psychological striptease that reveals all.

But he would never prey on you in any way.

I mean, dear God, I would prey on him!

You know, given half a chance!

He's really unshockable, and he's fantastically loyal and really wicked and mischievous.

Oh... Of course, my real fantasy meal

that I'd really like to give Richard is myself naked on a bed of lettuce.

Kathy!

Wow, that's amazing.

It's so odd when you know people and then you see...

It's almost like being dead, because...

you don't normally get people saying these things to you to your face.

No, sure.

Do you? It's very unnerving, and also very welcome, to receive a compliment like that.

-OK, turning over...

-Turning over, ready to rock.

-Fanny Craddock.

-Hello, Johnny.

So this is your fabulous, fabulous final feast.

-Please run me through it.

-Crab.

-Are you making it into a salad?

-Crab salad, absolutely delicious.

Soft-shelled crabs, deep-fried, absolutely...sublime.

-Fish soup.

-Fish soup, so you're gonna put those in.

In here, and here we have that old foreplay standby, unbeatable oysters.

-They do look fantastic.

-Do you like them?

-I could eat them every day of my life.

-Shall we move in together?

-Why not?

So there's sticky-toffee pudding, plus bread-and-butter pudding, and then you'll just explode.

It looks gorgeous to me, and you've managed to get raisins in both of them.

Absolutely, stuffed to the gunnals. Shall I do it with my hands?

Do it with your hands, I love doing it with your hands.

So tell me, you know when you were...when you decided to do Wah-Wah Diaries,

it's a very, very personal journey, isn't it?

Well, I reckoned that, rather than looking back in anger, looking back

with compassion on your past to try and understand why, what, where, how things happened as they did.

And as a result of doing this, it's brought about a great reconciliation with my mother.

-After all those years?

-Yeah, so it's been really good.

Without sounding like Oprah Winfrey, Jerry Springer here, it's just a way of saying,

"This happened to me, and there was addiction, adultery, divorce,

"amateur dramatics, acne, first love, lost love, unrequited love."

These things happen to most people, including you, which I know they have done.

Nigel and Richard, welcome to our show.

And a happy Christmas to all of you lovely viewers.

God, that looks fantastic.

God, that smells so good.

I like a rustic fish soup.

Rustic and fishy.

And this is Richard E Grant's final feast - a fish soup,

oysters,

a crab salad,

whole fried soft-shelled crab,

and a bread-and-butter pudding.

-We should break bread together. Isn't that the way that you do it?

-Yeah.

Ahh... Like a Christmas cracker.

What next? What does the future hold for Richard E Grant?

More eating and, er...

hopefully to write and direct some more flicks and act in them, too.

Do you have a wish...to go with your final feast?

Do I have a wish? Yeah.

I want to live in good health until I'm at least 120, so that I don't miss out on what's going on.

I worked with John Gielgud, and he was in his nineties, and I said,

"How old do you feel?" and he said,

he is 36, but he's stuck in a body that's all old and falling apart.

I said, "What's the worst thing about being your age?"

He said, "When I look in my address book, everybody's dead."

So, cultivate younger friends is the answer.

-Do you want some guests?

-Apart from you?

Apart from me. Who would you choose?

My immediate family and my best friends, because whenever I've thought about those lists and

knowing what it's like at a dinner where you don't know people, and the more celebrated they are and

the more witty they're supposed to be, I find that that is intimidating.

So I'd rather be with people that... I know and love, erm...

for my final feast, although I wouldn't mind having Barbra Streisand

or Annie Lennox just to sing us a couple of songs on our way out.

-I think we can allow that.

-Could we allow that?

-I think so.

And they both like to eat.

-Yeah.

-We can allow that.

-Richard, thank you.

-Thank you.

-Very much, thank you for being a guest on A Taste Of My Life.

-Oh, well, thank you for having me.

-Thank you for a gorgeous feast.

-Fantastic food! Soft-shelled crab?

-Yes, please.

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