Alistair McGowan My Life on a Plate

'For everyone, there's a taste of food,

'or a smell of cooking that zooms you right back to childhood.'

It's just like my mum's cake!

'I'm Brian Turner...'

It reminds me of someone I used to know at school.

'..and I'm going to stir up the food memories

'of some much-loved celebrities...'

-Oh!

-Look at that!

'..going back to their early years, before they were famous.'

Oh, my gosh!

'With recollections of Sunday roasts and school dinners...'

-It's time for something to eat.

-Brilliant.

'..and celebrating food their home regions are proud of.'

-Which way would you like to go?

-Er, this way.

'I'll recreate a nostalgic family favourite...'

Mmm. You can't beat a crumble.

'..and a tribute dish that puts my guest's life on a plate.'

Magic. Magic.

'Today, actor and comedian Alistair McGowan

'returns to Worcestershire, where he grew up.'

'The walk back in time revives vivid memories...'

HE GASPS

Oh, my goodness! Oh, it smells the same.

HE SNIFFS

'School days are fondly remembered...'

Everything happened in this little hall, I think, that I liked.

'..and I'll be rustling up dishes...'

Smells great.

'..full of the tastes of childhood.'

I was worried, you know, in a Paul Hollywood sort of way,

that it wasn't always going to gel together,

but you've done a very, very good job.

-ANNOUNCER:

-Come with us to the beautiful Vale of Evesham,

scene of market gardens and orchards, fringing the banks

of the River Avon. It's here, among other delicacies, that the harvest

of home-grown 'sparagrass', or if you prefer it, asparagus,

is in full swing.

'Alistair is from the market town of Evesham in Worcestershire,

'on the sleepy banks of the River Avon.

'Fruit and vegetables have been grown here since medieval times,

'but it was in the 19th century that business boomed for Evesham's

'surrounding market gardens and numerous fruit orchards.

'Today, the Vale is rightly proud of its heritage,

'and it's something Alistair has experienced first-hand.

'When he was a lad, he regularly worked here, in this orchard,

'picking fruit.'

-Welcome to Evesham.

-Yeah.

Growing up here in Evesham, I mean, plums were just everywhere.

I mean, they grew everything, but plums were such a staple part

of the diet here and a part of everybody's work experience, really.

And as a kid, I think, I wasn't alone, a load of us,

you know, during school times, school holidays, and certainly

during, you know, breaks from college and university,

would come back and pick the seasonal fruit,

come and plum pick, yeah.

So, you are an Evesham lad.

-You were born and bred here.

-Yep.

Lived here for how many years?

I was here till I was 18, and then moved away

and live in London now, but I've still got family in the area,

so I've been coming back for years.

And always feel a great affinity with it,

and really, those days amongst the fruit and the produce,

when I was late teens, were really very special.

So, you come from an era then when five-a-day was easy to do

because it was in the season.

Yes. Certainly five fruit was easy to do. Vegetables less so,

because I'm from an era also, and I'm sure a lot of people will

know this, maybe you too, that mothers, especially mothers

who'd been brought up during the war, would overcook vegetables

so much that they were just pulverised green mush.

So, I didn't really start to enjoy vegetables

until I learnt the beauty of steaming.

Asparagus, it is considered by many to be

-the king of vegetables.

-Yes.

-Do you have good memories of asparagus

-or not?

-No, I do like asparagus now, but as a child, no,

I absolutely hated it because it was... Again, it was overcooked

and my mother would put it in butter on the table, and this thing,

this limp thing would be held up dripping in butter and stripped,

and there was this awful stringy bit left, and I tried it once

and thought it was absolutely horrible, absolutely horrible.

But now, if it's steamed, I think it is just absolutely beautiful.

'As we take Alistair on a journey into his past,

'I am going to gather ideas from his childhood and home life,

'take inspiration from this part of Britain,

'and mix it all together to create two very special dishes for him.

'Alistair McGowan is famous for his work as a comedian

'and impressionist. In recent years, he's starred

'in critically acclaimed theatre productions.

'He got his first break providing many of the voices

'for the controversial TV satire Spitting Image.

'But it was the award-winning series The Big Impression

'that made him a household name.'

The headlines again, fighting there, trouble over there,

corruption further over there and Tony Blair has cut his hair.

Why I had to wait here 27 minutes just to do that again, I don't know.

Bye for now.

LAUGHTER

'Alistair's already given me a strong impression of his great

'fondness for his hometown here in the Vale of Evesham.'

'Walking around this orchard,

'his formative childhood memories are falling like ripe fruit.'

-Here we are.

-So, here is somewhere that you'll know.

-Yes.

-Bring back happy memories?

A ladder. It does. Some very happy memories, yeah.

They always seemed taller in those days, and it's not

cos I'm taller now. The trees were that big.

I think they're cultivated smaller now. Safety reasons, I don't know.

But the worst... I mean, the ladder was your great tool,

your ladder and your belt and your basket,

and I think we had some, dare I say, health and safety.

-Just one little comment about how to put a ladder up a tree.

-Be careful.

-Be careful.

-That's a traditional basket, is it?

-That's a traditional basket.

-Are you going to show how to put it on?

-Yeah, I'll do it.

-Can you remember?

-Oh, yes.

So, you want to loop your...

-Loop it through.

-Oh, right. OK.

And then that's your basket. That's your favourite little tool there,

-and then you are as one. There we are.

-Oh, well done.

Go on, show us how it's done. I won't go up the ladder yet,

-I'll do the lower ones.

-That's a good idea.

-Cos a lot of them

just fall off, so you want to keep your basket underneath, obviously.

And you can just slip them off.

See, that's a technique I never would have thought of,

that you just actually pull them and then let them just drop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you can get loads in there.

'This orchard is owned by Mick Morton,

'who's been growing plums here since 1953.'

'He was Alistair's boss in the picking season,

'all those years ago!'

What are the main varieties that this country grows these days?

My main, well, the main crop, is a Victoria,

because everybody knows Victorias.

All these trees here, there's 1,000 trees in all, I planted them myself.

So, these are definitely trees that you picked from.

They would have been, yeah, yeah.

How does that feel?

Well, I thought I recognised this one, actually.

I felt an affinity with it. You know, it's interesting,

cos since the age of 17, more or less, I've had intermittent

back trouble, and I've never been able to work out why,

but standing here with this basket round, I thought,

"Now I know where my back trouble came from!"

-Cos when these things get full of plums...

-24lb.

And if you're going up and down a ladder...

-Yeah, I think that's what it was.

-Rather you than me!

Now, mate, I see you've got some more down here.

These look like a very different variety.

-Are these earlier ones?

-Very early. these are Herman,

and they generally come in about the first/second week in July,

but I always say, when you... I notice you both...

Always open a plum like that first.

-Have a look to see if there's grub inside.

-Oh!

-Now he tells you!

-I trusted you.

-There you go.

Take... Take... Take that out.

-Lovely. Beautiful taste.

-Good to meet you.

-Cheers, we'll see you later.

-Good to see you, Mick.

I present you with your basket back.

'These tasty plums have given me some great ideas for later on.'

'But for now, let's find out more about Alistair's childhood.'

What was family life like? You have a sister.

-Yep, yep.

-And your mother and dad were teachers.

Yes. Yes, and it was a lovely arrangement, really,

because being teachers, they were both in primary schools,

so they finished pretty early, so whenever we were at home,

they were at home, and there was a great sense of family life,

and certainly, you know, the evening meal was really, really important

and we ate together every night.

My mother was very hard working,

she worked all day in the school

and then she'd always cook us something at night when we got home.

And was your mum a good cook?

She cooked very well and she cooked typical food,

sort of post-war food, really.

She used to do meat and two veg and I used to love liver.

She used to do a lot of liver and she would always cook it really dry.

There was a period when your mum went through

going to the frozen supermarket and buying frozen bits and pieces.

Yeah, it was in the late '70s, I think, and everybody did it.

We thought it was very exotic to have Findus crispy pancakes

and we had them kind of every single night.

So if you could go back to the past and your mum could cook it,

what dishes would instantly come to mind, apart from the liver?

She used to do some lovely desserts.

Her Sunday roasts were always very good

and she used to do lovely desserts.

Lemon meringue pie, she did very well.

Fruit crumble, she used to do very well. Treacle tarts.

The one dish she used to do and I've asked her about it,

and she doesn't know whether she made it up or not,

was something she called Egg Riviera, which sounded very posh.

It was the '70s, I think you gave French names to everything

to make them sound more exotic.

We did. In the profession, we did that, as well.

So what was Egg Riviera?

Egg Riviera was this thing that she did with boiled egg,

which would then be sliced up and put into a big glass dish,

it was always in the same dish,

with boiled potatoes that were already boiled

and then a cheese sauce over it

and then a very well-cooked bacon, as well.

Normally, sort of really crispy bacon.

So it was really, you know, eggs, bacon, cheese sauce and potatoes,

but it was delicious.

And we'd put, which I didn't normally like,

but I should have done, Worcester sauce,

and we'd put Worcester sauce on it

and it always worked on that a treat.

What about school dinners?

Did you do school dinners?

Yeah, we had school dinners.

Well, school dinners round here in those days were terrific

and I used to really, really enjoy them

and I used to love the puddings.

You'd have these things that would be listed on the board at the side,

Eve's Pudding, Charlotte's Pudding, Queen's Pudding, Anne's Pudding,

everybody's wretched pudding! But they were lovely.

-I bet they always tasted good.

-Oh, they were great.

They always came with wonderful thick custard,

which was slopped out from this wonderful metallic vat

with a metal spoon and I used to love it.

My chat with Alistair has revealed lots I can tap into later,

when I attempt my two dishes inspired by his past.

But before I think about cooking for Alistair,

I want to challenge the notion I have got in my head

that Worcestershire is purely a heritage county,

full of old farming traditions.

I have heard tell of a corner of the vale

that's more science park than it is market garden...

The Holt family have been running

their tomato-growing business for 40 years.

But their hi-tech approach provides a window

into what 21st century market gardening is beginning to look like.

Keeping an eye on production

is second-generation tomato grower Roly Holt.

-Roly, good morning. How are you?

-Really well, thanks.

I'm just sort of gobsmacked, this is not at all what I expected.

It's almost futuristic or nightclub-ish.

Take us back to the beginning, though.

Your father started as a tomato grower or...?

Well, he started in the late '70s.

He bought a bit of land, four acres.

It was a classic market gardening site

with a bit of glass, bit of arable crops.

I remember sprouts in the winter months.

So we had a bit of everything.

And it wasn't until the mid to late '80s

we started to focus on tomatoes.

15 years ago,

the Holts stopped using traditional methods

and, instead, embraced cutting-edge science

to see how it could improve tomato growing.

Today, their flagship greenhouse runs on the latest technology

with temperature, light, carbon dioxide levels

and air circulation all regulated by computer.

The most recent innovation has been the installation

of 3,500 LED lighting fixtures.

These red and blue lights simulate daylight around the clock

deep within the plant.

You're pioneers in this kind of experimentation, are you not?

Yeah, there's three real commercial sites in the UK,

which are trying it out

and it's been developed over the last five years

from a lot of trial work.

And the objective is to have fresh British tomatoes

-available to the general public all year round?

-That's the aim.

Looking closely, I've noticed these plants don't even touch the ground.

I'll suspend my disbelief until I find out more.

Well, most of the plants will be 15-meters long

by the end of the season.

They're each producing or growing a vine a week.

A vine a week? And that is one vine there?

-So this is 24 tomatoes?

-24 tomatoes, yeah.

And you can trace the plant back to where it started on the gutter

and the roots are growing within this plastic gully.

See the water flowing within the gully?

And that is all the root growth between each plant.

This is a pure hydroponic growing system.

The nutrients enter at one end of the gutter

and the water flows by gravity to a drain in the middle of the row.

So there's this system at each end of the row?

Each end of the row, yes.

It's like a V and then it gets recycled round and round

so the plant takes up what nutrients it wants.

But to appreciate the full scale of the operation,

I need to get a bird's eye view up top in the canopy.

-OK, we're going up.

-Oh, crikey! None of this!

Wow, just look at that!

It's a whole new world, is that, isn't it?

It looks like a jungle, an exotic jungle.

-Which way would you like to go?

-Er, this way.

So you can see all the new growth at the top here.

And these yellow flowers are the buds?

Those are actually where the tomatoes will grow?

That's right. So the bees will pollinate the flowers

and within a few days you'll start to see

-a little tomato like this...

-Oh, right.

And then in about eight weeks' time, that will be ready for harvesting.

If we didn't lower the crop, it would just keep growing and growing

and it would get too high,

so we drop the crop a foot a week.

So we undo the twine, lower it down and move it.

So these plants are lowered and moved to the left once a week.

As the plants drop lower,

the new growth will continue growing next week.

So that, in a number of weeks, it goes from there, to there,

to there and down to the right height?

In five weeks' time, this plant will be five meters up there.

The great thing about this is

we are always harvesting at the same height,

so you don't have to go up trolleys just to harvest.

With our feet back on the ground, we can see the end result.

After all, that's what all this is about.

-We need to aim for an orange, even colour at the end of the vine.

-OK.

So that one's fine.

So do you just hold it and...?

Yeah, hold it and then cut close to the stem.

-Cut close to the stem.

-That's it.

And place it neatly in the crate. That's right.

You know, I never looked at tomatoes with such an eye

to see how beautiful they are.

But they're a majestic colour.

Look at that one there. It's a lovely shape.

It's just the transition, isn't it, from bottom to top?

While those technological tomatoes point a way to the future,

it's time now to return to the past,

on our trip down memory lane.

Back on the outskirts of Evesham, our next port of call is school.

Alistair used to attend this primary school

and it holds very special memories for him.

Oh, these railings.

Because this is where Mum and Dad both worked as teachers.

So was school a happy time of life

and was it difficult having your mum and your dad around?

Generally, it was a very happy time, yeah, I liked school.

I liked learning.

But being here, the two years I was here, wasn't the best,

partly because of that reason.

Having my dad here, a lot of the kids would go,

"Oh, it's your dad, your dad" and all that sort of thing.

When was the last time you went in there?

I should think about 1971 or something like that.

It will be interesting to see how you come out of there,

a better or a worse man.

In the meantime, I'm going to cook a nostalgic dish, just for you.

-Great.

-So you go and enjoy.

-Thank you, Brian.

Cheers, Alistair.

We've set up a kitchen in the school hall

and I'm going to make something that I hope

will bring Alistair's fond food memories flooding back.

Goodness me, here we are.

Well, of course, it all looks smaller,

the old cliche,

and brighter.

There was wooden floors down here, beautiful parquet wooden floors,

which have been covered with a carpet and there was no brightness.

It was just very simple.

Very simple.

My classroom was through there, but that door has been filled in.

But I think there were two doors, so if we go through there...

..maybe we'll see it.

Used to be a lovely thing here with the house points on a wooden board.

Whooooah...!

Oh, my goodness!

Oh, it smells the same.

Now, my mother taught in here

and I used to come and see her when I'd left,

when I was about nine or ten.

And there is the piano in the corner,

which probably has my mother's imprints on every key.

The piano looks a little bit hidden away.

I should imagine my mother played this most days.

HE PLAYS A SCALE

Don't know what that scale was down.

It's strange, because you sort of make this journey in your head.

I think there are a number of dreams one has,

or images you have over the years,

and you do come back in your mind's eye.

But this is the first time I've been back and...

Yeah, very, very strange feeling being back in here.

But it's nice. It was nice. There were some nice memories.

The hall is where countless school dinners

have been served up over the decades.

For my nostalgia dish,

I have decided to aim straight for Alistair's sweet tooth

and do my take on one of his favourite childhood puddings.

It's fairly obvious what I'm going to cook,

because those plums were just delicious

and we know that Alistair loves plums

and his mother used to make him a plum crumble.

I'm going to do the same thing.

So I'm going to make it a little bit different.

I'm going to start by putting a bit of red wine in here.

Make sure it's a hot pan,

because it'll help to reduce it down fairly quickly

and I've got some sugar in there.

Honey.

Just give that a stir.

And this is just to soften the plums a little bit before we start, so...

And that little bit extra, I've got some nutmeg.

So in that goes in there.

There we go.

And look at these fabulous plums.

Now, I would normally have used a knife

to cut these in half and stone them,

but having listened to Mick this morning,

I'm not going to do that.

I'm going to split them in half, take out the stone.

Goes on there.

Same with this.

Take it out.

I'm going to keep some of the red wine reduction,

which I'll need later on.

Then I'm adding the plums and letting them cook

for two to three minutes.

Here, I seem to recall, was...

This was the room my father taught in when I was here.

They're lovely big rooms, aren't they?

Proper Victorian, this is, proper Victorian.

So I never really came in this room.

We were always in that room, for two years,

the one down the corridor.

And there was a lovely playground, as you can see,

which, again, looks so much brighter.

It's strange, actually, feeling my father around,

because he died 12 years ago.

I thought I knew his world inside out,

but suddenly being in this room, I thought, "Whoof...!"

This is really nice to see where he spent a lot of time.

Oh, goodness me...

Goodness me.

This room was a source of great pleasure,

because this is where we ate our school dinners

and it's also where we did what we used to call music and movement.

I don't know if they still call it music and movement.

They probably call it elementary fitness or something.

Oh, and the vaulting horse! The vaulting horse is still there.

Ah...!

I used to love these things.

We used to vault over those, or roll, do forward rolls down them.

The other thing which is - I could get quite moved in a minute -

that was in here, on the floor are the markings of a badminton court

and my father painted these markings with his own hands.

Everywhere he went, he taught at about four schools in the area

and he was mad keen on badminton

and he would just make sure there was a badminton court

and after school on Fridays

the teachers would play badminton

and you can still see these marks down here now.

My father got me playing every sort of racket sport

from the age of about five onwards, really.

Badminton, and then squash I was playing when I was seven or eight

and tennis.

We used to play football

in the back garden of my house, as well, a lot together.

We were great pals and, you know...

Yeah.

I really cherish everything he gave me sporting-wise to this day.

Yeah, great skills to have.

Great skills to have.

With the plums simmering away, I'm going to crack on with the crumble.

And we need some flour.

And I've got some cold butter.

Not too cold, but I don't want it too warm,

otherwise it makes pastry, not crumble.

And we rub that together until we get a sand-like texture.

So that's just about ready.

You can see how it's starting to look quite sandy.

I'm aiming for a crunchy topping - sugar, pumpkin seeds, and oats.

Pinhead oats, which I love.

Those succulent plums are more than ready

for a layer of the textured crumble mix.

Look at that.

You could almost eat it as it is.

Pop in the oven, heated to 180 degrees,

and cook for 30 minutes.

Everything pleasurable happened in this hall.

Same doors, I notice, in and out.

We also did a nativity play in here

and I think that was the first time I ever either acted in anything

or certainly had the performer's moment of ego,

where I was watching somebody in it thinking,

"You know, I could have done that part better."

Everything happened in this little hall, I think, that I liked.

Sport, drama, food.

And there's a piano.

No snooker table, otherwise I could live in here quite happily,

even now, with those things.

For Alistair's nostalgic crumble,

I've softened locally-sourced plums in sugar and red wine.

I've added pumpkin seeds, oats and demerara sugar

to a crumbled butter and flour mix and baked for half an hour.

But you can't have crumble without custard

and I'm planning for one that's a bit special.

I have already started by warming double cream and milk on the hob.

What do you have for me?

Well, you probably guessed what I'm cooking for you.

I think it might involve plums.

You're such an astute fellow, you are!

Marvellous. You're absolutely right.

We're going to do a classic plum crumble.

I read somewhere you like, or you liked, pink custard.

I liked it when I was here.

In goes the magical taste of vanilla.

So you've got bags of flavour.

And a clutch of egg yolks with caster sugar.

Then the trick is you put hot onto cold.

-Right.

-If you put cold onto hot,

you get long strings of sweet scramble egg,

because it just cooks as soon as it goes in there.

So, this way, it just dissipates the heat.

Returning it to the heat, let's see if we can add some colour.

-I'm going to put this in here because I'm desperate to have...

-What's that?

-This is some of the red wine that...

-Is this going to make it pink?

Hopefully so. I've never made pink custard before

and I just thought I'd have a go.

-I think it was all E numbers.

-Oh, no, don't say that!

No. It wasn't as good as this.

-Don't worry.

-Well, in fact...

Right, I'm ready. I'm going to take that off.

Pouring the custard through a sieve

will make absolutely sure it's nice and smooth.

I think that will grow in pinkness.

The pink isn't a deal breaker. It smells great.

It might not be a deal breaker for you,

but for me, it certainly is!

30 minutes are up and the crumble is bubbling and golden.

So how was the visit around the school? That's what I need to know.

Oh, it's been fascinating, yeah.

This room, particularly,

I can remember spending a lot of happy time in here.

And did you ever have crumble in those days?

Crumble, yes, but I don't think it's going to taste like this one.

So there it is, my nostalgic dish for Alistair McGowan.

I do have high hopes for this plum crumble

and my take on an old school favourite - pink custard.

Oooh...!

Oh, that's delicious. It's lovely with the pumpkin seeds, as well.

It just adds that crunch and a little gentle flavour.

Mm...

Mm!

-Those are good plums.

-They're really good.

Good old British pudding.

Mmm, you can't beat a crumble.

Made where it should be made,

-right here in the middle of where they're grown.

-Mm.

It's often said that Worcestershire is one of the most fertile regions

of the British Isles.

The climate and soil found in the Vale of Evesham

provide perfect conditions

for growing the county's most celebrated vegetable.

-NEWSREEL:

-The vegetable is grown in about three feet of sandy soil

and a special knife is used to cut the roots clean.

Of course, the great thing about asparagus is to eat it fresh.

Asparagus has been cultivated in the vale for centuries,

having been brought over by the Romans.

Traditionally, farmers would have grown their crop

in four- or five-acre plots.

Evesham's commercial asparagus production

blossomed in the 1850s, with the arrival of the railways.

-NEWSREEL:

-The favourite vegetable of the ancient Romans

will soon be on your table and mine.

And, for me, it can't be too soon.

The harvest season is short, running between April and June.

It's the busiest time of year for Evesham's asparagus growers.

It's such a big deal, there's even an annual festival

in honour of this venerable vegetable.

This is Asparafest.

The festival is all about enjoying asparagus.

So it's a music festival.

It's a food festival.

It's a family festival.

It's all those things, all combined,

all with asparagus very much at the fore.

But we're really about promoting asparagus in all its ways,

in terms of what a fantastic product it is

and particularly grown on the Vale of Evesham soil.

The festival has been going for three years

and draws in asparagus lovers from across the land.

It's a great excuse for locals to set out their stalls

and get creative with this surprisingly versatile veggie.

Everybody is always taken aback when they see asparagus ice cream.

They all want to have a try.

So, yeah, I think it's a... It's something different.

And I created my asparagus soaps.

So all handmade, but it doesn't actually smell of asparagus, though.

Smells of apple.

So if you're wondering about the festival,

you might get accosted by Gus The Asparagus Man,

who's a 6'6" spear of asparagus.

Gosh, lots of people today.

And we've got an Asparamansa, who will tell your fortune

by throwing asparagus and reading the asparagus,

much as you might read tea leaves in the bottom of a cup.

You've got a meeting of some sort going on here,

either a reunion or a party or a wedding.

It's certainly a gathering of friends and families.

She said that I was going to be having a party soon

or some sort of wedding,

which is obviously true, because we're here for a hen party.

That's amazing, that is! The power of asparagus!

Who knew?!

As well as more light-hearted fun,

there are demonstrations

of time-honoured asparagus-related country skills.

I'm tying asparagus what they call the old-fashioned way.

You put your raffia that you are going to tie with,

you then load the asparagus in.

Then shut that, to hold it, while I actually tie it up,

because I've put the raffia in ready.

Tie it round once, twice.

Tie it.

And then unrelease it, cut off the bits...

..and you have a round of grass.

Evesham's love of asparagus is infectious,

so it has to play a starring role as an ingredient in the final meal

that I'm going to cook today...

My tribute dish to Alistair McGowan.

Back in Evesham, we've arrived at Alistair's childhood home.

So here we are, Brian. This is the family home.

This is where we moved when I was ten

and I had my formative years here in this house

and my mother is still here to this day.

She's been here for 40 years.

And you come to visit her quite regularly, I assume?

I come back, you know, every six weeks or so.

So I know it well.

I've cleaned most bits of this house for her.

Every window, with newspaper.

Different one every time.

It's like the Forth Bridge, every time I come back, bit more cleaning.

What a wonderful son you are.

Why don't you just go and have another look around

and tell us all about the little in-secrets

of those rooms and your life in there?

-And I shall cook another dish for you.

-That's a good deal.

While Alistair has a good look around the old family home,

we've set up my kitchen in the back garden,

ready to use everything I have learnt

from my time spent with Alistair, to create my tribute dish to him.

So here we are. This is my childhood home.

This is the kitchen, where my mum's magic took place,

where the Egg Riviera was made.

And this, if I'm not much mistaken, is my sister Kate.

-Hi.

-Hello, Katie.

So, I've been asked all day by Brian

what my memories of childhood food are.

What are your memories of eating in this kitchen?

In this kitchen, roast dinners.

Lovely roast dinners.

And some fairly limp green vegetables on a Sunday.

-Allegedly.

-Yes.

-I wouldn't comment on that.

-You like them like that.

Yes. I've learnt to like them like that. Yes, yes.

So have you got lots of things, like I have,

that you still enjoy eating today,

because you associate them with happy times in this house?

Yes. Definitely puddings, crumbles, custard, ice cream.

I still have to have ice cream with custard because of being here,

because there was, if you remember, always ice cream.

That's right, there was always ice cream.

Now Alistair's mum used to cook a dish for him

that she called Eggs Riviera, so I am going to try and...

Well, I'm going to try and do that dish.

But I'm also going to do some asparagus with it,

because we know that he didn't like asparagus once upon a time,

so I've got a way to make him like asparagus.

And his mum used to cook roast chicken.

I'm going to need to do some chicken, as well.

And crispy pancakes...

I've got normal pancakes.

This is a dish of revelation.

So this is where we would eat, always around here.

That's where Mum would entertain us.

She always sat there. I always sat there.

And it's strange, actually, because Mum and my sister

were really the ones who were the entertainers,

they are the ones who would speak happily.

And I went into this business,

but always liked to hide behind a character.

And here we are on the wall,

this lovely display that Mum put together

of lots of different Polaroids of the people

that I did in my show The Big Impression years ago.

And you can see everybody up there from Mick McCarthy.

-IMITATES McCARTHY:

-Who was manager of the Republic of Ireland at the time.

Going back a little way now.

Very successful he was, too, at the World Cup, 2002.

And David Seaman here in the bottom

and, you know, David would say...

-IMITATES SEAMAN:

-England goalie for about, I don't know, ten years, probably.

LAUGHS LIKE SEAMAN

He was always great fun to do, you know,

because he just had that big laugh and...

LAUGHS

As soon as he did that, people were laughing at you,

because they were laughing at him laughing,

so there was a lot of laughter, which was great.

And then up here, one of my favourites to do...

-IMITATES NICOLAS CAGE:

-..was Nicolas Cage

and Nicolas Cage was kind of, you know, he still is a major film star,

but he was one of the few American film stars who I did,

because I started watching his movies.

Ronnie did a brilliant impression of Willie Carson

and I played Clare Balding and it was the two of them

presenting the racing, which they used to do.

We did loads of characters. we had a ball doing that show.

It was great fun.

It was just the two of us, so there was a huge amount of pressure

to learn all these characters and write the material,

but we rose to it and it was...

Yeah, it was just a fantastic time.

I'm cracking on with the tribute dish,

my take on Alistair's mum's speciality, Eggs Riviera.

To start off, I'm frying some lovely back bacon with cooked potatoes,

salt and pepper.

Smells delicious.

To give it all a bit of texture,

the potatoes are getting a going over with the masher.

Then I'm adding a couple of boiled eggs.

And it's a value-for-money dish, is this.

It's like an old-fashioned fry-up.

Take that off, let's put that over here.

Let's take these lovely pancakes...

Oh, look, a bit of chicken.

She used to do a lovely roast chicken dinner,

so I'm going to put some chicken in there, as well.

Fab.

Now, I think the trick here is not to put too much in to each pancake,

don't get greedy.

But make sure you've got a bit of everything in there.

And then roll them over...

..like that. So.

So behind me you can see the real talent in the family,

which was my sister's art.

She drew this picture of me when I was about 14.

She was 17.

But here is my side of the wall and this was...

Once I stopped doing the TV show, I went in to do a lot of theatre stuff

and worked at Chichester Theatre

and then, finally, about a year after that,

worked at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

And it was very emotional because, all through her life, I think,

from the 1950s onwards,

my mum had been going to see absolutely everything at Stratford

and we had always had a dream when I was sort of 17 or 18,

when I was that person, of wanting to appear on the stage at Stratford.

And it was some 20 years, really, after arriving at drama school,

finally, I was on stage there.

And I can remember the first night.

It was a musical version of Merry Wives, The Musical it was called

and I had a big number in the first half, big solo number.

And I stood there and completely dried

because I was just so thrilled to be on this stage.

And I thought, "Wow, I'm finally here."

And Mum was watching and it just meant everything to me

and I knew it meant everything to her to be there

and I just couldn't think what to sing.

And I realised a big lesson there and then,

which is that, in a musical... It was the first musical I'd done.

If you forget your words in a play,

either other people or you, yourself, will get you out of it.

But in a musical, the band carries on.

So if you forget, the band doesn't wait for you.

They all carry on.

But it all came good.

For a full-bodied cheese sauce, I'm mixing butter, flour and milk.

And it's good exercise, is this.

And in go a pair of egg yolks.

Stir it in. It will change the colour and it will make it so much richer.

Use those chicken juices!

This will really make it...

..liven up the flavours.

Then I'm ready to arrange the pancakes in the dish.

This strong mature Cheddar will give the sauce some extra kick.

And, finally, the bedroom.

My bedroom, when I was a kid.

My sister moved in here a few years ago

when she lived back at home for a while,

so it's a bit more feminine than I had it,

when it was covered in Leeds United pictures,

pictures of Peter Lorimer, Terry Yorath, people who were my heroes.

But also in this room, most importantly, probably, I once...

A friend and I were messing around

recording ourselves on an old Hitachi tape recorder

and I played it back to my sister and she said,

"Oh, you sound like John Peel on it."

And John Peel at the time was...

-IMITATES PEEL:

-..one of the most famous DJs in the country,

working on Radio 1 from ten o'clock every night

and discovering bands left, right and centre.

And it just made me think, "Well, if I can sound like him without actually trying,

"maybe I should try a little bit harder?"

And it was all thanks to Kate saying that, you know,

accidently I'd sounded like John Peel,

because my voice had just broken.

And then I started trying out people like Ted Lowe...

-IMITATES LOWE:

-..the snooker commentator when we were playing snooker down the road

and everybody would do that, "Oh, dear, and that's a mistake."

And suddenly I had two impressions

and I suppose it developed from there.

For Alistair's tribute dish, I've prepared crushed potato,

bacon and egg and rolled the mix into pancakes.

To go with them, I've rustled up a tasty cheese sauce,

which now just needs that final ingredient.

I've got some chives. So I'm going to put the chives...

Oooh, controversial.

..into the cheese sauce,

just to give it a bit of colour.

And then, what we are going to very carefully do

is spoon the sauce over the top.

Right.

It's the combination, really, of those two things,

the crispy pancakes and the...

Exactly! And rather than try and do something exactly as it was,

we'll do a tribute to the little things.

And, of course, we've got chicken in these pancakes, as well.

Because your mum used to do roast chicken lunches, as well.

I'm after complex cheesy flavours,

so I'm adding a light sprinkling of Parmesan.

Now that's done and it's all in the oven,

it's time to bring in some fresh local asparagus.

We've got the sacred...

-Evesham's own.

-Evesham asparagus, yes.

-Asparagrass, as some would have it.

-That's right, yes.

But what we've done is we've just blanched it so it's not overcooked.

Right.

Slapping the asparagus on a griddle pan for a couple of minutes

will really concentrate its distinctive flavours.

The pancakes are piping hot and the asparagus gets pride of place,

crowning the dish in all its glory.

That is my version of Eggs Riviera, but I call it Pancakes Riviera.

Pancakes Riviera? I can't wait.

It's everything I ate when I was 14 in one dish.

I've taken inspiration from Alistair's memories

and created a dish that combines his mum's original Egg Riviera recipe

with pancakes, roast chicken and, of course, asparagus.

It's only right and proper we invite Mum

to give her verdict on my version of these McGowan family favourites.

You were the inspiration of Eggs Riviera, is that right?

-That's true, yes.

-OK, right.

I won't ask for the recipe, because I know you won't give me it.

I can't remember it, to be honest.

Here you are. Grab a little mouthful.

Mm!

It tastes absolutely beautiful.

You've got to try it with Worcester sauce, anyway, Alistair.

Put a dribble on the end there.

And see if that adds or not.

Mm. Mm! Mm-mm-mm...!

That's terrific.

You just want to devour the whole lot, you see?

I think you've got the seal of approval here.

Is it good?

Absolutely super.

Yeah, the boiled egg with the potato is really nice,

the bacon is coming through.

We didn't have the chives. But the chives are subtle.

They work nicely.

-IMITATES PAUL HOLLYWOOD:

-I was worried that it wasn't always going to gel together,

but you've got a nice crispy pancake there, which is great.

The consistency's good and, you know, and I think, yeah,

you've done a very, very good job.

I feel really blessed

that Paul Hollywood's given me so many accolades.

I just hope you've enjoyed your day today, in your own home,

at the school, at the orchard.

It was a real step back in time.

It's been terrific. A real privilege to see the school again

and the orchards

and, yeah, if I'm short of a job next summer, I know where to go...

-Plum picking.

-Yeah, and if you need a tip,

get in there quickly before your mother eats it all.

She's doing well, isn't she, eh?

It's much better than mine used to be.

Thank you, dear lady.