Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster - Ep 160: Sir Lenny Henry

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

We’re back in National Treash territory as we welcome our first Knight of the Realm to the Dream Restaurant: Sir Lenny Henry.Lenny Henry’s ‘Rising to the Surface’ is published by Faber & Faber on 1 September. Buy it here.Lenny Henry‘s ‘The Book of Legends’ is published by Pan Macmillan on 13 October. Buy it here. Lenny Henry stars in ‘Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ on Prime Video from 2 September. Watch it here. Follow Lenny on Twitter @LennyHenryRecorded and edited by Ben Williams for Plosive.Artwork by Paul Gilbey (photography and design) and Amy Browne (illustrations).Follow Off Menu on Twitter and Instagram: @offmenuofficial.And go to our website www.offmenupodcast.co.uk for a list of restaurants recommended on the show.Watch Ed and James's YouTube series 'Just Puddings'. Watch here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, listeners of the Off Menu podcast. It is Ed Gamble here from the Off Menu podcast. I have a very exciting announcement. I have written my first ever book. I am absolutely over the moon to announce this. I'm very, very proud of it. Of course, what else could I write a book about? But food. My book is all about food. My life in food. How greedy I am. What a greedy little boy I was. What a greedy adult I am. I think it's very funny. I'm very proud of it. The book is called Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy. And it's coming out this October, but it is available to pre-order now, wherever you pre-order books from. And if you like my signature, I've done some signed copies,

which are exclusively available from Waterstones. But go and pre-order your copy of Glutton, the multi-course life of a very greedy boy now. Please? Welcome to the Off Menu podcast, taking the stake of good chat, sprinkling with the salt of amazing humour, heating up the pan of the internet until it's smoking, dropping in that great podcast stake, and having ourselves a lovely meal. That was Ed Gamble. My name is James A. Caster. We own a dream restaurant, and we welcome guests in every single week. I was doing so well. You did so well.

And we asked them their favourite ever start and main course, there's a side dish and drink not in that order. And this week, I guess, is... Selenie Henry. Selenie 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. 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. Huge. This is huge stuff. Huge in my life. This is too much. This is when I'm glad. 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 Selenie.

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, and it's going to be... This is a big deal. Big deal stuff, big deal territory. Big deal stuff. We are very excited that Selenie 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 kid's book. I mean, pretty good going. Pretty good going. I'm going to just write them. Ambidextrous, I guess. The Book of Legends, publishing on 13th October, 2022, and Rising to the Surface, 1st of September, 2022. Exciting.

Well, so 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 Selenie Henry out of the dream restaurant for saying a secret ingredient, but we do have to decide on a secret ingredient. Oh, I'll kick myself out if that happens. 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 Selenie 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' suggestion, James. I don't think I've had plain kombucha before.

Yeah. 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 favorite, I'd say. But I once had one that just, I think it just said original on it, on that plane. It was just, you know, flavorless, just as it comes, and that, you know, people say kombuchas taste like bottled farts, and I disagree with that very strongly, but the

plain one did taste like a guff. Does that not suggest they all taste like guffs, but all the ones you drink have 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. A guff of stuff. A guff in my face. Yeah.

If that's how your guffs smell. But yeah, this one was just pure guff. Yeah. I couldn't have that. So yes. If so, Lady Henry chooses the liquid guff that is original plain kombucha, then we're going to have to kick him out the dream restaurant. But 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 Lady Henry out the dream restaurant, then that's in the podcast. I don't make that promise to the listener now.

Fair enough. Fair enough. We will stop doing the podcast. Yeah. Ed, it's up to you if you want to quit on it. If you want to replace me or not. No. No.

I'll quit. So I have to get two hosts. Yes. Two new hosts. Are you going to quit? Or are you going to host it? He won't quit. But he is going to do it.

He would host it. He would host it. And then he'd have to edit his voice out the whole time. So it'd just be the guest. Just be the guest, and that would be it. Some people might prefer that. Yeah. Good point, actually.

Yeah. Certainly with this one. Hey, I'm on tour. Are you? Yes. A gamble electric. A gamble electric. A gamble electric.

I continue to drag it round the country. Come and see it. It's very exciting. Do come and see me. edgamble.co.uk for tickets. Very excited. Ed, let's get into this. Let's just do it.

Let's do it. This is the off-menu menu of Selenie Henry. Selenie Henry. Welcome, Selenie, to the Dream Restaurant. It's very nice to be here. Welcome. Selenie Henry to the Dream Restaurant. It's very nice to be here.

Welcome. Welcome, Selenie 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, it's a nightmare. It's spectacularly gorgeous looking. Why don'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 that? I think my Dream Restaurant will be called I'll Have What They're Having. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it will be, there's a parade of food, of food, like in a Shakespearean, 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 service and they go, hang on. Or 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.

We were at this very nice restaurant that was run by Marco Pia White and he sat down at that table for the whole meal, chatting away, talking to you, ordered for us. We would just be really nice to celebrate our anniversary, Marcus, but 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 do your work, Marco, giving us his time. No, he joined out. I've never joined anybody else's table. That's rude, isn't it? Well, I reckon you could. Really? Yeah.

You make me feel bad now. I think that's part of the deal with the night of the realm stuff, isn't it? You're allowed to join any table. Out of my way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm in eyes of the realms. Give me that chop. Our first night of the realm on the podcast.

Our first night of the realm. Am I? Yeah. Is it a thing? How about it to people? Young people don't respect the whole night of the realm thing at all. No. I just get called Uncle Len.

Nobody calls me Selene in my life. Uncle Len. You're going to have five pounds. I just have that all the time. You take the rubbish out now, Uncle Len. Your tune. I have that. Older people seem to tug for locks and bow and scrape,

and you get nice seats at restaurants sometimes. Sometimes. Not at the Groucho. No. Ever. The girls there just kind of look at you and go, what's your name again? Elsewhere.

Elsewhere. Elsewhere. They're kind of the older people tend to kind of go, ooh, ooh. I reckon even without the sir, you could just join someone's table these days. Yeah. Really?

Yeah. If someone's like having a meal, and Lenny Henry just sits down with them and goes, what, we have enough in there? Be like, we don't even care if it's our anniversary. This is great. Oh, that's 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. Yeah. It's a thing with me. So I do like it.

And I have a, 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, there's quite a lot of French crew, so they start for three hours in the middle of the day. And that 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, why is this just sweet 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 remember thinking, people don't just eat to eat 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 Italian stuff, is like, the crew moan about the food. If the food is not good,

people are really vexed. You know, and they, you know, they send out, you know, I've been on a couple of things recently where the make-up 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, that's bad, I'd say. Yeah, for morale, you've got to look after, you've got to look after the crew's stomachs. Yeah, you don't want the crew moaning about the food,

like, Shepard's part was rubbish. Turn over, no. Once with good catering, you hear, you know, 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 there. Yeah. That's a thing in writer's 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 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 the food is great, they're all going to go, oh, 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.

Yeah. I grew up in a house where there wasn't any money, but my mum cooked great food all the time. One of my favourite meals that I'm offering is a meal that my mum did every Saturday. 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 know... You fat bastard! I'm looking here at two press releases

for two books that, you know, your own writer's room at home has been well-cated, because 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 walk around, and then 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, and 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 said in any press conference, one of between 16 and 22,

hey, my birth dad isn't my dad, you know, just really kept it quiet. So every time I talk 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, 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, oh, my dad did this,

my mom did that, you know, I've got a sister who's from, so we all had this experience of having extra members of family. The traditional thing from working class or Caribbean families is, you know, the mom 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 not nothing to be ashamed of, and I'm gonna 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 gotta 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, here's my work. You know, they like to do that. Whereas I prefer people being funny in the room. 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 Bowden 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 Stormzy and Dave, innit, 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 are 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. Because I lived in working class doodly 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 cracked down in the middle of it and then 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, there's no queens 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 try 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, the legendary sitcom.

Well, it was kind of a comedy drama. Because lots of people, Jeff Perkins kept saying, well, Jeff Perkins is a 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. 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 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 Mrs, of course, is smarter than him. So she's often getting him to apologize 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 Lord Tallinn and work with Rowley 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 shouting in the kitchen. Often, people were very cool. And, you know, Rowley Lee's kitchen was very calm, very cool. People doing things because they wanted to do

and enjoying the process. And then, of course, Gordon Ramsay and Marco Peer Weiss get 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 kind of, you know, the world of cooking is quite militaristic. It's a bit like the army, you know. There's a real sense of you've got a brigade of people and you've got to get it done and 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?

Do you want to be in 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. 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 sensed 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 I'd feed her at the table this food because she liked pasta.

And this two Michelin stars chef would go, Oh, I'll make something. And I know Billy has this thing in the mind of... There was a... Wasn't there some fantastic food? Where was that? It was because she was at lawtelling all the time when I was doing chef.

Will 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. Who's 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 the sandwiches through. It was all fields around here,

and we'd go off and have an adventure. So, yeah, still water, please. You must have been absolutely buzzing off here in the head. Yeah, we're off in here. Sugar water. Do you remember playing? Do you remember when you... 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,

rites of passage books, when they go out and play, it's always quite structured. They're always playing baseball or something. We did kick the can and hide and seek and we climbed trees and we ran around because of all the sugar. We used to run to our mates house.

It's Tom playing, yes, and then you'd just run to somebody else. It wasn't actually playing. Unless there 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. I don't know why I've not had one. The butter and the sugar is a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It goes sort of like a nice paste, like a fondant sort of... Yeah, it's delicious. It's kind of a mmm, okay.

It's delicious. Sugar butter, white bread. White bread was a thing. We had a lot of white bread. We wanted the bread. Which is sugar, basically. But you don't... We don't really...

You know, we're sour, don't know, and white bread. We don't do that anymore, but white bread was a thing and grew up with that. Sour bread, tap water, lots of sugar and everything. Yeah.

We're all diabetic and nobody cares. Nobody cares. We're a type two, nobody cares. Get over yourself. Have a pie. Ed's type one, so he's looking down and immediately he's hitting it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm the best one. What adventures would you go on? Well, we'd go... When you had a bike, did you do this? We had six bikes with your mates and you'd just go somewhere.

And you didn't know where you were going. You'd 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 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 chopped in and 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, that was a big thing. Your mates pushing you in the water because that was funny. So there was a lot of that going on.

And then as you got older, 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. I never had any money. But my mum told me, and this is in the book, to integrate. You must integrate with the Dudley people, them. 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

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 Tyranosaurus Rex

and Emerson Lake and Palmer. And Greg listened to Dylan and the Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel and stuff. You know, some like Genesis and things like that. So I was listening to different music. I was eating different things.

Ham, egg and chips. Pine chips. Scotch, egg and everything with chips. And then I'd go home and have my dinner because 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.

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, pickle onions, scratching, scratching. 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 in 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. They definitely said I was funny. They definitely said, you're funny, you are. You should do something with that. And made me think like, oh, OK. I could be on stage. I could do that. They made me go on stage.

Now, 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 not encouraging me. I think they tried to get me to play it down, if anything. Really? Because you calm down. Were you doing impressions amongst them and stuff like that where they like you should do that?

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 somebody called Adrian just used to play the goons a lot. So I was always doing, oh, 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 like that.

And Dave Allen was kind of cool. He had that kind of Black Sea 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. And we're kind of like global hide and seek and the Spanish Inquisition. But I remember my mum, it was quite rude, but laughing at the Terry Gilliam cartoons. And so I kind of had a really good sense of what visual humour was. 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 recognise 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 knew that that might be a John Junkin joke or a Barry Crier joke or something, which is why you watched Kenny Everett.

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 Crier 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. But I was writing things down. As in your own stuff or from things that you were seeing?

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. It was a weird early attempt at craft, I think, thinking about why some jokes work. So I kind of had a thing where I was thinking all the time about types of humour. And I didn't write.

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 Through the Kind and for Lenny Henry's show.

I started to get a writing credit then, because people realised that I was writing. But it was tricky. So writing the books had been a release, a huge release. With just me and my parents with jammy dodgers and a full sugar Coke. Just writing on my own and listening to very loud music. Run the Joules and like cake and a computer is everything. Great.

That's why I got Covid from Run the Joules Kick. Did you? Really? Yeah, I definitely got Covid at that Run the Joules Kick. I tested positive enough days after that. That's the incubation period, I'm pretty sure. Was it a big gig? In the Britson Academy.

They're kind of man-run the Joules. 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. You know, it was so moving and I thought, God, you're great.

And you write funny and wooty and very potent lyrics too. They are so funny. I was at that gig as well. Did you get COVID? No, I was in the seating area. No, I was a VIP. We'd all had a lateral 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? Just wiggle around a little bit. Wriggle in your seat. Yeah. You're a seat wiggler. Me too. I like seat wiggling.

I can't be. Well, I saw Chris Rock and I sat quite near the front and I was a bit… People snogging and eating sandwiches around here. I would much rather be in VIP standing there and looking over people's heads and go, this is rather funny. He's talking about Tottenham. Well, how does he know about Tottenham? Poppadobs or bread?

Poppadobs or bread, Lady Henry. Poppadobs or bread? Poppadobs. Poppadobs 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. I'm always over-order, always have six of everything, just in case. But I love poppadobs.

I like onion barges, but they tend to be very oily. I like piratas, but they tend to be a bit dry. Poppadobs are… It's like a big crisp. It's a big… Imagine if they had a bag of poppadobs like crisps. Yeah. Like a huge…

Like a Hessian sack of poppadobs. That would be great, wouldn't it? Yeah. Because we love poppadobs. But you carry it under your arm, like a big bag, and if it's something you pull out a foot, a poppado, a foot across, and munch on it at the pictures or on the park or something. How many do you think you could get through? I had to know 12.

Yeah, yeah. I could eat 12 or 15 poppadobs. I might not eat very much afterwards, but I could eat 12 or 15 poppadobs in a sitting, because poppadobs rock. 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 Belty Triangle in Birmingham. The Light of Asia was in Dudley, and we used to go there. But in Birmingham, it's the Belty Triangle and Spartbrocken places like that. And I used to love to go to the Belty Houses in Bradford. I used to do a gig in Bradford. And then afterwards, Phil McIntyre used to take me to this place that was like a calf, a curry calf.

None of restaurants are not posh, but the food was great. Bowls of chicken curry and a poppadobs and a nan, no knife and fork, and you just eat 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 where you're imagining eating the curry. Yeah. 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. Oh, no, I don't hate myself. But I'm kind of trying not to eat my fingers. I eat fast.

So I have to slow down when it's good. Because you can't eat good food. You've got to savour it. And my girlfriend says, just slow. What's the matter with you? I've always finished and then everybody's kind of still eating. Slow down, Len. 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 Tiswas 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, 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 Osk. You know, and it'd be like six 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 that'd be it. So that was where I came from. That filled me with dread. Just the description of the gig. Absolutely filled me with dread. Yeah, he's kind of frightening. And then when I was doing Tiswas, Tarence said, oh, we're doing Bishop's Stortford. Do you want to come?

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 Tiswas T-shirts on, dresses the Phantom Flanflinger with their own custom 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 jewels. People were hanging through the windows.

They were standing on 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 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 to 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 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 cheering. 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 corn and the whole compost corn.

Here comes David Bellamy. Ah, people going nuts like that. And I just thought, if Phil McIntyre is in charge of this, I need to be with him. So I had to convince my agent who was very, hello, what? Bola hat, pinstripe suit. Mr. Love, his name was, had an umbrella, had an umbrella even in the summertime. Hello, what, what?

Bola hat. I had to convince him that having these two rock and roll merchants from North doing the tours might be a good thing. And Phil came along. Well, you know, Mr. Love, it'll be great. You know, Lenny Tiswell is very popular, you know, you 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. I preferred it so much more. Had fold back. Comedians had fold back. Going to see Ben Elton and two big ass speakers on front of the stage pumping your voice back. You're really loud. And so you kind of made you feel a bit more raw on stage, you know.

I loved it. It's always mad for me hearing about Tiswas because like, I feel 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 TV. When were you born? What year? 85. Yeah, yeah. So you have no idea what Tiswas was.

So Tiswas, I didn't know what that was. I knew who you were, watched you a lot. Then who wants to be a millionaire? Whatever age I was, that was massive. And then I learned that ages ago there was Tiswas. And I couldn't even comprehend you and Chris Taren in a show together. It didn't make sense because you occupy two completely different spaces for me. So every time someone says Tiswas, I'm like, did that, what?

I have nightmares where I think have that happened to me. Was I really in Tiswas? It was really great. Taren 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 Carraghees 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 just, you unmask me and you slag me off and then I'll be the joke.

And then I would go, well, I used to do a Rastafarian character called Algernon. He said, ooh, key. And I said, it'd be good if Algernon was into high arts this week and talked about going to the Tate 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'd have, we really wanted to please him. He was one of those, a bit like John Lloyd or Geoffrey 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 Tarant and trying to please him. And we did another show called OTT After Tiswas, 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 Tiswas audience would naturally migrate to OTT and they didn't. Of course, it was an adult audience who expected an organised, well-thought-out thing but it was just chaos. It was some snooker and, you know, pop videos and the human league showing up for some reason.

And it was just that. It was not well-thought-out at all. And as a result, it was a bit ramshackle, 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 in maybe five years' time, people come up with the new sketch type thing where people go. There's amazing sketch acts out there. I think it must be a budgetary thing. I think sketches are expensive.

If you suddenly want to do Renaissance in 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 panels slash game shows is tough for comics

because I watched them a lot. I don't want to be on them because I didn't want to. I loved shooting stars, but when they asked me to be on it, I was slightly mute because I was wishing I was at home watching it. 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 guess we grew up watching. I grew up watching panel shows and, you know, enjoying it and learning 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 to have... I got a new equivalent in Australia and I was shocked that it was prepared. I had no idea that it was prepared. So I did all the preparation with the people that were on it

and then I went on it. 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.

Because the skin is making it look like you're making it up, of course. Yes, I think so. There is a level of preparation to those things which are always surprising. When they answer on the email, the first time you do them, you're like, Oh, it's this.

It's this kind of thing. So let's start with your dream starter then. Hand dives scallops at the Ritz. 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's 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, pfft. So, on the pretext of taking my

94 year old's 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, Ro, 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. Yeah. And great thing about Spencer came outside alone. 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, pal? You can't sit down. But he does come and join you and stand there and talk about the programme 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 said, scallops or ribs? I like ribs, but scallops at the Ritz. Perfect.

Yeah, I took my mum there for a 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. It was great. You will have eaten Spencer's food.

So he did the partridge. Oh, yeah. And he did the fish dish, the Sherlock. In the finale. Yes. We've got to go to the banquet. Oh. Well, I'd like to give any time

if you want me to come on there and food and happily come on. Well, they will hold you to that. Well, watching the kind of competition and seeing people fall by the wayside, it's always a shock to me. And when the Giza 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. My hair. It comes on and he's just very like, you know, it's like if Bono suddenly became a food critic. He's incredibly scathing about the food. And it's kind of, I just get very scared for them all. But Spencer was brilliant.

The hand-dive scallops literally rocked my world. Wow. So it's that, that first. They sound amazing. Very, very strong. Delicious. I'm always surprised by how little you have to cook things sometimes.

Because I like cooking, but I often leave things in for too 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 de-brayed the burnt tissue away from the cake, revealing the beautiful cake in the middle somewhere. So there'd be this tiny cake in the middle of burnt tissue. And that's how she made her cakes. But 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 with a chef or something, and they're talking and it's top-end chefs talking about, you know, making it a steak or scallops or whatever it is. And it's hardly cooked at all. And you think, 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 and you go, well, that's not cooked? Yeah. I'll do that. No, no, you need to render the fat. With pork as well. When 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 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 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, 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've got PTSD from pilchards and white rice. We don't want to eat tinned fish and rice anymore. Please, can we have something nice? So we get to Saturday half, 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 quite a 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 churrine. That's what I remember. We'd all get our enormous churrine 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 Korean stuff and going out to Greek restaurants and exploring other cuisines. But I did think, oh, my mom's food is up there with this. I can, you know, my mom's food is good.

She had this thing where she would put beef in foil and put loads of 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 like, oh, thank God. And I would just eat this soup 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'd need the soup had been good if Mick McManus was punching somebody in the face when you woke up. So it was always that. 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 it. Me and my brother, as we try and do mom's cake as a thing in our family and nobody quite gets it right. Don't bend it enough. We always think the burning is wrong but actually, and we do the soup and we can get close. Rusty Lee'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 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 left some soup and I went in and I had it and I started to cry because my mom passed away

and it reminded me of my mom and food can do that. You know, myself, Proust and 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 round and the bottles clanging away and smashing and people in the street and smoking fags and stuff and I just thought, God, my mom was great. Your dream side dish. 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 mom 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.

I'd have two ribs. No, you have the two ribs. Yeah. And they're quite big and there's quite a lot of meat on them. But you don't want to spoil your main. So you might share that with somebody. I'm doing a lot of sharing of signs at the moment. I don't know if you do that.

Yeah. I kind of go, should we share one? I'd never mean it, though. So should we share that? Ed, you seem to have eaten all the... Sorry. My wife knows. Yeah, 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. The meat just goes, I give up. It 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. There needs to be a pause. You need to pull it off. Yes. I agree with that. But the meat does need to be tender on the 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... They just chuck it on and it's a taste 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, somebody asked him, what do you care about? And he said, you know, every single meal.

Yeah. Imagine that. Every single... I ate with him once and he'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 go, oh, it's all right. Yeah. 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. But that's a problem, man. That's a problem. If all you can do is get street food on the way to somewhere. What else are you thinking? How are you cooking these onions with the hot dogs? It's kind of like, Steve, it's just a hot dog.

You need to... 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...

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 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, 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,

I'm going to the bathroom. And it wasn't even funny. He was just kind of sitting in that kind of wild and crazy way. Steve Martin. We're having our lunch with Steve Martin. He's great. But he was a bit grumpy. Oh, he also left up...

I did an impression of him in live... 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 the Hattney Empire. And he rang me. He rang my house. And left a very long answer phone message about copyright. 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 a really nice, good guy. That's very good to hear. Yeah, yeah.

For a second there, because you were saying it's very serious. When you said he left a message to you about copyright, I was like, what, Steve Martin's going to sue them? No, it was a joke. It was a joke. It was not like that. Sorry, film. OK.

Spoken to my 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's quite a fun. It was just, it was just 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 a bit tongue-tied when I met John Armour Trading, but apart from that... Oh, well.

I also met Aretha Franklin and was a cook tongue-tied. I don't know what's the matter with me. I'm not shy. I met Aretha Franklin at an airport and I was like... I think anyone would be shyed from... She signed a book for me. She signed a book for me. But she was...

She had a huge bodyguard with her. She was like an asteroid. He was so big, this guy. And she went, let him through. Our friend Rob Dierman is 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 musicians' name, like articulate. And they had John Armour Trading. And at that point, I hadn't heard of John Armour Trading before. And the guess is that I came up with to try and get who this person was. Because they were trying to say that you had a job and it was to swap like a breastplate.

And I was like... So like an arms dealer. No, nearly there. I was like, it was not good. It had no idea. You didn't know John Armour Trading was? I didn't at the time. I didn't at the time.

She was in the B&A. She was in education. We were in the B&A. Were you? Yeah, we got... Because of this podcast. We're in one frame of many of them. 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 B&A live. We did a comic relief comic and some of the artists put us in the comic. I was so chuffed, you know, because B&A was a thing.

And Food Again, you know, the B&A and the Dandy, at the end of every episode in the last panel, they were always having sausage and mass and saying, we'll feast on this. We'll feast on this. And they always had huge sausage and mash and the sausage always stuck down.

Yeah, they stuck it in the mouth. I love that. 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 and the sausage is poked like antlers out of it. That's the way to eat sausage and mash, pal. Yeah, I went to the B&O exhibit

at Somerset House. You went there as well. And I didn't know that... Like, in the first bit of the exhibit, it explains the B&O 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 sausage.

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 sausage and mash. My abundance, yeah.

Yeah, it was all about just loving food and being a restaurant lord snooty and bass street kids all eating pies and stuff. It was a... That post-war thing of scarcity. And I get that. We didn't have much money, but we always ate. My mom was always very clear about it.

You clear your plate. This food was hard one this week. So I really got the bean on the dandy's obsession with food. Dream Drinks. Well, 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. I love it. No build-up to that. Straight in. That's how I want it. That's how I want it. And Lemmy... Lemmy bought me a bottle of...

Gave me a bottle of vodka once. It'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 have to be so drunk before you eat your meal.

I don't understand the martini thing. Have you ever had a martini? I like it. They're really strong though. It's 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 shake and not stir 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 a 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 out and chat. And then during the meal, you know, I like a glass of wine. I used to like Paulini Montrache, it was a nice white wine. I went to a farm once in South France,

and the farmer was selling wine out of in-gallon plastic containers. It was one of the best wines I've ever had. Oh, wow. It was white, and it was delicious. We had it for a week, it was fantastic. I was just drinking it from the container, and pretending I was drinking paraffin.

Look at me, I'm 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-type, sugary-type syrupy thing to put into it. You could put lemonade in it. You could have some pineapple juice in there. 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 sort of it, there's better recipes. There'll be better recipes, but it's some sweets, some sour, some alcoholic. Drink it. People often forget to put that as part of the recipe. Drink it, yeah, just make it. They're like looking at it and going,

see what I've done, my work is done. So we arrived at your dream dessert. Is this from a certain time in your life, or has it always been a favourite? Yeah. Well, crème brûlée is great. And trifle is legendary. School spotted dick and kind of

sticky toffee puddings are very popular. Can't really eat a lot of puddings at the moment because I'm 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. 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 onerous to eat, because sometimes the bready bit of the bread pudding can be a bit claggy. But when you put your spoon in 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 chocolatey brioche bread pudding. And it's literally one of the best things that you've ever eaten. 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. Yeah. Very, very nice. And you can serve a little, a nice little whiskey with it. I got into a thing. I was doing a film at a gig up north in 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 Donnie Walker. And Donnie Walker's 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, it's so delicious. Yeah, also, I mean, you know, the listener didn't see your face completely glazed over when you pictured it. Your eyes were half open. You were staring up.

Sorry, I'm a very visual person. Also, when you said Manchester and bread pudding, I thought it was going to be a Gary Rhodes thing. He used to make a... Not sure it was Gary. I've been Tom Kerridge, I don't know. But it was somebody, one of those open comic 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 new-y restaurants, sci-fi, blade-runnery type things. And God, it was good. Sounds delicious, all the different components. I never thought...

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

If you say to me, it's got currants in it, I'm there. You have me, it's got... I love currants and raisins and things. So I love chocolate raisins and I love anything with the raisin-y thing in it. 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

and going, you know, eat this child. It's like, ah, so great. So that's it. Is that good? Let me read it back to you. See how you feel about it. I'll read your menu back to you. You were like, still water, you're like poppadoms. For your starter, you were like... In a big, in a big, crisp bun. In a big Hessian sack of poppadoms.

Starter, your hand-dive scallops from the Ritz. Main course, mum's Saturday soup. Side of two rips, full of the bone. Drink, rum punch. And also, you would like a Pellini Montrache 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. On Saturday soup? On dessert, obviously. I mean, fine dining is weird, isn't it? Because hand-dive scallops are on every menu.

But the bread and butter pudding in the Saturday soup, 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, 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 and 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. So, going out from, remember taking Richard Curtis to a Caribbean restaurant and it was like that in Leopard Grove. They didn't have anything on the menu yet. Some weird, bizarre, whatever was left in the kitchen we had.

So, now, with the advent of programs like MasterChef and Great Bridge's menu and everything, we've got some great chefs going around from Caribbean heritage. There's this attempt to make... And a successful attempt to make Caribbean food find dining.

And I think you're going to see in the next 10 years, perhaps, a transition from this idea of Caribbean food, fish and chips and a curry and rice, into something that we can savor and enjoy in a kind of... Take your partner out for a nice meal way. Yeah. Rusty Lee's restaurant was that in Birmingham. But unfortunately, closed down after a while.

But there are a few places in there we 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 I think you'll see that in the next 10 years

with Caribbean food. Well, fingers crossed, there'll be 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? 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. Got you to make Saturday soup today.

Well, it's not really... Politico potato will try for you. Because you asked nicely. Pilchards, Pilchards on the Saturday, then, if it is. Oh, no! No! Thank you very much for coming to the Dream Restaurant. Thank you for having me. Well, there we go. We managed it, James.

We kept ourselves together. It was even more and more than I thought it was going to be. It's quite... Joe, what? I'm going to be honest with you. It was quite an emotional experience. 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 you said after sugar sandwiches and thinking about that. I think I need to do that as soon as possible. And on the way home, I'll go into the shop. I'll get some bread and some sugar and some butter. Yeah. An absolutely amazing episode.

And he did not say plain kombucha, surprisingly. Whoo! Thank you. So, then, he made me... 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 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? Yeah. I'm quite busy. I'm on tour. Ed Gamble Electric. Go and see it.

EdGamble.co.uk for tickets. Yes. And also, James... Oh, no. I said it too fast and messed it up. I've got a book out. James got a book out. Is it published by James? Headline.

Thank you very much for listening to this episode. We can't believe it happened either. Bye-bye. MUSIC Hello, it's me, Amy Glendale. You might remember me from the best ever episode of Off Menu, where I spoke to my mum

and asked her about seaweed on mashed potato, and our relationship's never been the same since. And I am joined by... Me, Ian Smith. I would probably go bread. I'm not going to spoil it in case... Get him on, James and Ed, but we're here sneaking in

to your podcast experience to tell you about a new podcast that we're doing. It's called Northern News. It's about all the news stories that we've missed out from the North because, look, we're two Northerners. Sure, but we've been living in London for a long time. The news stories are funny.

Quite a lot of them crimes. It's all kicking off. And that's a new podcast called Northern News. We'd love you to listen to. Maybe we'll get my mum on. Get Glendale's mum on every episode. That's Northern News. When's it out, Ian? It's already out now, Amy!

Is it? Yeah, get listening. There's probably a backlog. You've left it so late.