Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S11 Ep 6: Andrew Lloyd Webber

Episode Date: February 17, 2021

We welcome our 2nd EGOT guest (Emmy, Grammy, Tony, Oscar), the musical LEGEND Andrew Lloyd Webber!Andrew talks to us over zoom about his new musical Cinderella opening in spring and written by Emerald Fennell (side note watch Promising Young Woman!).Mum and Andrew bond over their loathing of kale and we salute his campaign for getting theatres open safely. We also learn about his brilliantly rude Aunt Viola, one of the first TV chefs who wrote one the rudest cookbooks he’s ever read.Andrew also talks about his ALW foundation and campaigning for secondary school children to receive weekly music lessons. We chat about his favourite musical of all time, being a TikTok sensation and an unforgettable New Years Eve party with Shirley Bassey and Joan Collins.His last supper includes a spenny bottle of red and we had the most fun chatting away to this brilliant man!Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella will open Spring 2021 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with my mum at her house. How are you mum? I'm okay darling. You made dinner for us yesterday. Yeah. It was so delicious. You are the best at roasts. I love you so much. When you do those garlicky smelly beans. When you do the garlicky cannelly beans with parsley and and they make me so happy, and you put that with the lamb, it was just a great combo. And then when you let me have mint jelly, because there wasn't that much, I just loved it. I'll buy some more this week.

And then you kind of, yeah, you blew my socks off with the most sugary chocolate cake. I love that it was gluten-free, but it's going to give you a heart attack with the amount of sugar that was on it. So thanks so much for that. I didn't eat it. Yeah, I mean, it really stressed me and Sam out. out god you get stressed out by chocolate apparently so my world's very small apparently so it was really fuck fucking hell

yeah god life please when will the chocolate gates done it. Death by chocolate, yeah. No, honestly, getting high on chocolate Kate. God, when will this lockdown end? Anyway, today we have a corker of a guest on. We've got the Lord Lloyd Webber, Andrew Lloyd Webber, for everyone else, on Table Manners today. We're going to be Zooming him at his home in Hampshire. I'm sure my mum's going to ask if i can get a part in one of the knighthood in 1992 so he is a sir okay thank you so he's followed by a peerage from queen elizabeth

for service to arts is he a sir is he a baron is he a lord i think he's all of them he's also one of the only people that's got an emmy grammy tony and. EGOT, like John Legend, is one of those people, a previous guest, a little fat for you. He's been campaigning to try and get theatres open safely post-COVID and he is quite a remarkable man. And, you know, you will know one of his songs from one of his very successful musicals, whether it's Phantom of the Opera,

Joseph and his amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. What are the other ones that he's done mum jesus christ superstar jesus christ cats evita shit did he do cats yes oh interesting yeah god he's done so many not only has he got all of his successful musicals but he has a musical that hasn't come out yet was supposed to come out last year obviously covid's delayed it it's called cinderella the music started coming out recently and uh we can talk to him about that and also for all the mums and dads out there that have children that listen to frozen he has refurbed the old drury lane theater and frozen will be on there so don't worry he's got you so many tunes i'm sure we've got so much to talk about so many stories andrew lloyd weber coming up on a zoom table manners Andrew Lloyd Webber, we are so honoured to be chatting to you. Well, I'm thrilled to be asked.

Honestly, this is a really big deal. Firstly, because we're both obsessed with musicals. Secondly, because I always thought I really wanted to be one of the children in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoats. I was so jealous when I went to see it. And they go, I close my eyes. Anyway, I wanted that. And now I really aim to be the narrator because I remember her being so sassy in that 90s production with Jason Donovan. She was amazing.

She had like short hair, like a really good 90s haircut. And she sung so well. That was great. And we had Sheridan Smith in the Palladium last time. I didn't see her! Yeah, didn't you see her in the last one? And she was the narrator? Yes, and she sort of played all sorts of different roles too.

She was Jacob and sort of put on wigs and things. And she was very funny, which is another way of doing it. She's amazing. It was the Palladium in the days of yore. I mean, must have forgotten what theatre was like. Oh, don't. Although we did get the Palladium open for the pilot that we did with Beverly Knight, where we proved that theatres could actually be open pretty safely.

And that did allow the government to say that we could be open for a bit of time. But I'm just spending my time at the moment just trying to get the theatres open. And there are all sorts of things that could be done. But we are where we are now. And my feeling is is the vaccination is the really important thing and that nobody's really going to relax until the vaccination happens but when the theatres do open again one thing is going to be vital that we don't let up on any of the measures that we were going to take anyway if we were allowed to stay open we must do that ventilation vital you know at the I amused

me that in 1918 the London Palladium was considered to be the safest place to be in London away from Spanish flu because of its ventilation it checked 102 years ago so what where do you think you would start to get theatres open well I've always said that I thought that middle of May we could be beginning to see things open up I mean of course that was based on the information I had like in October November I think everybody thought that there would be a big massive spike now which I think could have been avoided if everybody had just knocked on the head all the Christmas shopping and everything, because it was ludicrous when we were told that we couldn't go on with the theatre in December

because everything was going into tier three. I mean, the sites outside the theatre, which was only 50% full because that was all it was allowed to be, but everybody jostling in all the shops in Oxford Street and Regent Street and everything, that did make, I think, a lot of theatre people's blood boil. But they were right to lock theatre down, but they should have locked everything else down at that time because it was going out of control and they knew it.

But I think we are where we are and I stick by that date, but I might be out by six weeks. Some shows, I mean, my new Cinderella could open at 75%. So we'll just have to see. I mean, the main thing is to get theatre open fully. Yeah. Speaking of Cinderella, when was Cinderella supposed to start? Well, it was supposed to have started in sort of April, May last year. Right. So it'll be a year late. I'd hoped to get it going in October, but then it was very obvious last October

that it was not going to happen. I mean, I pray it's not next October, but it could be go back to June, July, I suppose. But I'm going to stick with May at the moment. Who's starring? It's Carrie Hope Fletcher. Amazing. She's great.

I mean, I think this will really launch her. And the script is by Emerald Fennell, who wrote Promising Young Woman. Oh, fantastic. And Killing Eve. And The Crown. Was she involved in Killing Eve? She did the second series of Killing Eve. She was a great friend of Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

And she was Camilla in The Crown. Yeah. Oh, wow. She was. And she was in The Midwife. Oh, my God. She's very talented. She does everything. She's super And she was in The Midwife. Oh, my God. She's very talented. She does everything.

She's super talented, yeah. I've just seen Promising Young Woman. I saw the Oscar screener of it yesterday. And I mean, I tell you something, it's got to be a good chance that it'll be at Best Movies. That's Kerry Mulligan, isn't it? Yeah, I've heard. It's phenomenal.

She directed and wrote it. So it's a heck of a debut. Wow. Now I'm thinking I'm bloody lucky to have got her. You are. It's good that you got her on your team, Andrew. I'm so excited. This podcast is about food. And we go and we talk about everything else. But food is kind of at the heart of this podcast. So yes, growing up, what do you remember about the dinner table in your family home? What were you

always eating? And was there music in the background? Well, there was music in the background, but the less said about my parents' dinner table, the better. Why? Much more to the point, though, is my aunt was one of the very earliest TV chefs. You're kidding. Who? She was called Fala Johnston, and she taught me everything about cooking. And she also wrote back in the 1960s, something which at the time deeply embarrassed me, but it was the first ever gay cookbook. Gay cookbook? Yeah, in the 1960s. And it's the rudest book that I have ever read in my life.

I mean, I went through all the time when I was doing Jesus Christ Superstar, literally praying that nobody would work out that my art was somebody called Rodney Spoke, who wrote that one up, who wrote the book, which had titles and chapters like Too Many Cops Spoil the Breath and things like this. And I adored her. I adored her. She really taught me how to cook. And she sort of introduced me to the world of wine and show business because she was an actress too. She was an actress. She knew people like Charlie. She was frightfully glamorous in my book.

She knew sort of people like Vida Hope, who directed The Boyfriend, and she knew John Gielgud and Tony Hancock and all these people. Oh, wow. So, Hans, she was like the George Eliot of kind of filthy food literature. Well, she was very, she was a very, very naughty woman. And to this day, there are things that I cannot quote that my aunt said, because as times get more and more politically correct, I can quote her less and less. So what did she teach you to cook that you can remember? Well, really everything, you know.

You probably don't know this, but for six years or five years it was, I was the food critic for the Daily Telegraph. You're kidding. Yeah, in about 1997 to about just after the millennium. I feel like, Andrew, that's like the best job ever. You get to eat well or not and kind of experience all these things. I feel like you, I want your life, I think. It was great fun. But the really great thing about writing for Tadler Office

is they call the column Matter of Taste, a matter of taste. And I actually wrote about what I liked. So half the time, if I didn't find a restaurant that I really thought was any good, I'd just write about something else. It was great fun. So you can cook as well as critique. I can cook up to a point, yeah. I mean, i was a bit rusty but i've got a bit less rusty now in lockdown because it's been fun you know

thinking of things again did you cook yesterday for sunday meal funnily enough i cooked sunday dinner yesterday what did you make well it was it's a rather good recipe just sort of think about this one um you can do it prosciutto, but I did it with ham. What you do is you make basically a basic white wine sauce, and then you put tomato in with it, and you make it to a sort of tomato-y sauce. But the trick is to put a lot of sage in, chopped up. It's got to be fresh sage, but a lot of chopped up fresh fresh sage and i like to do it

sometimes with just prosciutto which you literally chop up and just warm it through and it's it's lovely absolutely lovely and you can make it what do you serve it with well you can do it with um all forms of pasta and gnocchi is quite fun it's fun and you could do you could do lots of variations on it add a bit of creme fraiche if you like you could do a bit of a bit of veal stock or chicken stock whatever I mean really the secret to all good cooking really is to have a stock that's um to hand either frozen or sitting in a pot somewhere I mean I always if I have a chicken shove the bones in the pot and simmer them um growing up minus your parents cooking yes minus it, please. But was there something that your mum was good at or your dad was good at at all?

Was nothing? No, absolutely. Well, I mean, you don't want to talk about my grandmother either. She lived with the family and she was even worse than mine. Actually, my mother was a fool. Absolutely a fool. My father never really did anything. But I often took to the kitchen you know and

said look right this is i mean i mean i i wouldn't let them ever do christmas dinner and one of the biggest mistakes i ever made was my father was the organist at the central hall westminster uh and um we left granny in charge of the turkey that was appalling error and it stays with me all these days. Dear, oh dear. But that was a big organ at the Central Hall. Bast, bast. He went there. It's amazing. We went there to rebuild it. That was one of his, because he was a great organist and he was offered the job there and he said, I'll take it, providing I rebuild the machine.

job there and he said I'll take it providing I rebuild the machine so the mighty Wurlitzer was brought into action and he was great he was he was a fabulous artist. What was the first instrument that you played? I played the violin because my mother thrust it into my three-year-old you know face and one of the most embarrassing things that ever ever happened to me was that when I was about three I was on the cover of a magazine, now thank God extinct, called Nursery World with my violin. Like a child prodigy. Yes. And the child prodigy didn't actually emerge. The infant Paganini was not there. And I then, well, I did play the piano because my mum was a piano teacher so I obviously did all that and did she teach you yeah she did she did but I mean like so many you

know kids like me I kind of rebelled against all of that really and and I I really learned to well far too much really but I could do too much by year you know and I could pick up things quite quickly so um I have to admit that my sight reading is not as good as it ought to be it's funny because I I have um I have a four-year-old daughter and I'm quite adamant I don't want her to be a singer like me but I'm obsessed with her learning the piano and I've been that pushy mother who's like started her with piano lessons and she seems up for it at the moment the teacher's really cool but I'm like you want to you want to learn how to write a song this is the basis it's like the latin I'm like you need it I didn't have it you need it and she's just like mum I just want to watch Little Mermaid

like but um do you think you do you appreciate your mum thrusting instruments on you or do you think it was always inevitable that you were going to be in music? Your brother is a cellist. You know, it was it was around you. I mean, it was around me. I mean, absolutely around me. Because my mother sort of adopted a pianist called John Lil, who won the Tchaikovsky Prize, actually. A bit older than me, but he kind of moved in with the family. And so what with my father and my, you know, my brother who took to the cello immediately. I mean, he always loved the cello. And from

the age of about three or four, he was going to be a cellist. I mean, there was never any question about that. Well, not that I know of anyway. But he was obviously a natural for that. But coming back to the piano, I do think that all kids really should learn the piano or the guitar if they can. I mean, I personally think the piano is almost unbeatable because, you know, there are pianos everywhere. And it really does, even if you never intend to take up music professionally, or even if you never intend to be a pianist professionally I mean to have that rudiments of music is really important I mean the most important thing one of the most important things I support and think is absolutely vital is music in schools you know my foundation we

support something called the music in secondary schools trust we've got over 10,000 children now in deprived areas in you know getting a weekly music lesson and i mean what it does for the kids what it does which is not necessarily about music at all but what it really does is is empower them uh and i do think that learning the piano or an instrument is something that every kid in the country should have a right to do. Did you have, because you all played instruments, you probably didn't watch telly at home, did you play music together and have musical evenings? Well, we did, but I had a kind of model theatre

where I started doing musicals as a ridiculously, prodigiously young lady. Did you? Yes. I must have been the loathsome child. Did you star in them? Well that well not really because it was a model theater but the musicals which were frightful um you know my brother was sort of co-opted into doing them and various people were co-opted into being you know because they were all toy things moving around but they were all musicals and uh so so I did that um but I was really lucky because music was all around me and then I took took up French horn, which was great fun.

I like playing the French horn. And I only gave it up when I found the Hindemith horn sonata, when it was part of the A-level horns syllabus or whatever it was. And Hindemith and I don't agree. So I'm afraid at that point I didn't really... You parted company. Well, there weren't really any big hits in it, really, I didn't think. No, there weren't.

Beyond your own musicals, what's your favourite musical that you would listen to and go and see time and time again? Well, I think probably the best musical of all time is West Side Story. I think that's probably the best. Yeah. And probably in another way, equally best is My Fair Lady. You know, in its way, I mean, it's a kind of perfectly crafted piece of music, a musical really, but my favorite musical,

my unashamedly favorite musical, it may not be the greatest musical ever written, but it certainly is my favorite, which is South Pacific. Oh, yeah, I love it. Because, I mean, South Pacific has not only the greatest song ever written, Some Enchanted Evening, which I will go to my grave saying is the best song ever written. But it's also, I mean, a phenomenal score.

I mean, just hit after hit after hit. So, Bally High, Younger Than Springtime, I'm going to watch that man right out of my head. Happy Talk, yeah, a cockeyed optim optimist which is what i am at the moment and um it's it's just an extraordinary extraordinary score i just find it amazing i've got a wonderful book which is a book about everything that richard rogers or oscar hammerstein or laurence hart ever wrote uh so it's got all the playbills and everything, but it's also got all of the reviews and excerpts from all of the reviews.

How fantastic. And it's amazing, isn't it, that you think that these musicals that I've just mentioned are all great musicals. You think West Side Story didn't win the Tony Award that year and only won one Tony Award for Best Choreography. You're joking. Why? The audiences, I mean, Hal Prunce, who I got to know very well, produced it.

I mean, because he obviously directed Phantom of the Opera and Evita. He gave me a very old friend and he said that half the New York audience would walk out. They just found it too much. It wasn't a hit first time around. South Pacific in London was called by one of the critics South Soporific. Do we not like musicals in Britain in the same way as the Americans do? It's not in our DNA in the same way as the Americans. It's in ours, isn't it, Jesse?

We love musicals. Well, do you know what? It's in a younger generation's DNA in a way that it wasn't in mine. Because if you consider all my friends, everybody who's in contemporary mind all wanted to be a Beatle or in the kind of immediate few years before me wanted to be Elvis. You know, and musicals were in the 1960s. I mean, about as unfashionable as you could possibly make anything I don't trust anybody though that I don't trust anyone who doesn't like musicals because I think there's something like not programmed right in their heart and mind because I don't understand how you cannot snobbery about theatre Jessie in Britain that yes it's not serious theatre if you go to see musicals and it's full of kind of people who don't really know what theatre's about. I feel like everybody post-COVID needs to go to a musical

and actually they'll feel so much better about everything. Or they should go and, you know, watch them on TV now because I do think there's something so escapist and beautiful about them. And I think everyone needs that. But then also, you know, you've got something like Harold Prince in his day, you know, with something like West Side. And then when he started directing himself, doing something like Cabaret, you know, who was always pushing the boundaries of musicals further. And in the days of Rodgers and Hammerstein, people sort of forget that, say, South Pacific took race on full frontal.

I mean, that was in 1948. took Race on full frontal. I mean, that was in 1948. That's that song, You've Got to Be Carefully Taught in there, which, I mean, caused quite a few eyebrows to be raised in, you know, in America in, say, the late 1940s. I think people forget, you know,

how often musicals do break new ground. But when they become sort of commercially successful, I think then people sort of think, oh, somehow they're a little bit, you know, they're not quite right. So a little bit below us, you know, but I do think that the new, new generation, I think that quite frankly, musicals are having a bit of a purple patch again. I, I'm delighted,

you know, for example, I adored Six. It was great fun. Which one was Six? Six. It's about the six wives of Henry VIII. I haven't seen it. Great fun. I mean six it's about the six wives of henry the eighth yeah i haven't seen it great fun i mean it's and jamie obviously amazing things uh yes uh the wonderful tom mccray very good script that and um yeah i mean i i and of course hamilton i mean has in its own way you know in a game appealing to an audience that perhaps wouldn't think about going to musicals normally. We wanted to know, well, actually, firstly, let's talk about Cinderella because that's your next production. You've started putting music out and it's beautiful.

And I wanted to know, why did you want to tackle Cinderella? Well, it's as usual with everything, a series of accidents. I was at a dinner in New York with some extremely high-powered television executives. And I was rather out of my depth as they were talking about American, what was the biggest success ever in the history of American television, because they were sort of saying Super Bowl, you know, Michael Jackson, blah, blah, blah, the biggest thing, blah, blah, blah. I sort of piped up from my end of the table, blah, blah, blah, the biggest thing, blah, blah, blah. I sort of piped up from my end of the table,

well, what about Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella? And everybody thought, poor old man, you know, he's really, it's really awfully sad, you know, and he wouldn't say that, wouldn't he, you know, kind of thing. I said, 1956, somebody Google it. And somebody Googled it. I can't remember. I think it was one of the, it was the top TV exec TV execs, I think, just said, oh, my God. Oh, my God.

125 million viewers in 1956. So I said, thank you very much. At which point they all said, why don't you do a Cinderella for us? Because we'd just done Jesus Christ Superstar on one of those live things, which was fantastic on NBC. And they said, why don't you write one for us? And I said, fine, I'd love to. It'd be great fun to do a live TV because for Rodgers and Hammerstein, one was live.

That was the thing. With Julie Andrews as Cinderella. Oh, perfect. She was just in My Fair Lady. So you can see why it was a big hit. Huge hit, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's kind of one of those scores

that's very, very well known. It's kind of like in America's DNA, but not known really here because it was obviously never shown here. But I got all these various scripts and storylines and everything, and I thought they were awful. I mean, they were so awful.

I just thought, that's the end of that. And I happened to be at a lunch with my great friends, the Fennells, whose daughter, Theo Fennells, the jeweler, and Emerald was there. And she said, she sends me this synopsis. And I said, that's it? Yeah, I can do this. Because every single beat of the Cinderella story is there. But when you see Promising Young Woman, you'll understand, although it's not like that, it is not the Cinderella that everybody thinks. I mean, the whole point of what Emerald's written is that you want to be yourself, not be what you think other people think you should be. In other words, don't change yourself. Don't try and be beautiful. Don't try and go to the ball dressed up as something that you're not. Cinderella goes to the ball and it doesn't work out in the way that she'd have liked it to. And it's really, that's

the central message of the show. I mean, our Cinderella is an alternative girl. And, you know, she tries to change herself to be like everybody else. And it doesn't work for her. I wanted to know, you've got, I mean, I'm really impressed by this because you're on TikTok and you're really quite popular on TikTok. You did the Phantom of the Wopra, I heard about.

And I also spied a green egg in the background of one of your TikToks, which really, really pleased me. I wanted to know how you were getting on with your green egg barbecue and is it worth it? Well, the green egg is a very good thing. I've been banned by my daughter who does all my social media stuff. She has banned me from doing what I thought was a very, very good video where I demonstrate how you can make deep fried ice cream. This is important content, I think. I agree. I agree. But she says that I mentioned the government too much in it.

I do say that because I'm no longer able to be a composer, that I've now had to turn my hand to being a chef. And because I say that Rishi says that, you know, people like me, you know, are no longer required to be in new professions. This is, you know, considered to be not good news. So sadly, I don't think we're going to see the deep fried ice cream, although the footage all exists.

And at the end of it, you see a perfect deep fried ice cream. I think we need to start a hashtag that says justice for Andrew's deep fried ice could you say justice for deep fried ice cream please I should be delighted has there ever been any kind of memorable moments with particular singers of what they will or will not eat? Because I need to know all these things because I'm quite neurotic about what I eat before I sing. And so is there anything that's been quite memorable

that you've just been like, I don't understand this? We had John Legend on and I said I'd heard this rumour that he liked to eat chicken before he sung. Fried chicken. Fried chicken. And he actually said that that was a true story and that he kind of, it worked for him and his voice. Well, I don't know. I mean, you know that it's always said that you aren't supposed as a singer to have dairy.

Yeah. But I don't know. I mean, I was married to Sarah Brightman for five years. And, you know, she was always, she never really ate that much before she sang. Do you know, I never really, really thought about it. We really, really want to talk about divas. Who's your biggest diva star that you've worked with? And that can be a positive diva. In the most positive way, the most kind of glam, you know, a diva that is glamorous and fulfils the star quality that you all imagine.

Well, probably the biggest diva I've ever worked with, and that was Ellie Vaguely, was Shirley Bassey. Oh, wow. Who was quite wonderful. Yeah, I mean, she fired me from the piano playing my own song, which is a bit of a shame. She said, it doesn't go like that. It was everything since we never said goodbye. It was a New Year a shame. She said, doesn't go like that. It was everything as if we'd never said goodbye. It was New Year's Eve we had. We had a wonderful New Year's Eve party

with her and Joan Collins. Oh, my goodness. And we had a sing song at about sort of one in the morning. And Shirley sort of attempted to get on the piano, I mean, jump on it. It wasn't a success. And then she wanted to do everything as if

he never said goodbye so I played it it doesn't go like that I said does she said no it doesn't go like that I said I wrote it and she said no it doesn't go like that so then Howard good himself he would stay with this he got on the banner and played it and he said which it doesn't go like that Howard so the end of it she just sang in her own way. Now, she, I think she'll eat anything. I mean, all of the old stars, you know, that I know from the old days, they never really bothered about what they did at all. I mean, like, you think of somebody like Michael Ball, you know,

I mean, he'll have a fag before he goes off and sings. That's amazing. Can Shelley still sing? Is she like Tom Jones, that the voice is always there? Oh, fantastic. You know, fantastic. I mean, one of the most incredible artists who I never worked with, but I was taken to see funnily enough, not long afterwards he died.

But I had no idea that he was ill and I didn't order anybody else at the time but I was taken by Liza Minnelli to go and see Sammy Davis in Monaco and oh my goodness I do you know it's one of those funny things isn't it but I guess when you're young you pigeonhole certain people and I kind of had got Sammy Davis into my mind that he was a kind of cabaret kind of, you know, what can I say, kind of talk of the town type artist, you know, and I never really, never really thought that I ever liked anything about him. I went to this concert and I don't think

I've ever felt more humble in my life because I just thought I completely missed this guy, you know, and he's one of the greatest musicians and one of the greatest natural voices I've ever heard. He did one thing where he sang, he was singing a kind of jazz improv thing. The orchestra stopped and for about two minutes

he was just improvising and doing scat stuff and everything. And when the orchestra came back in, he was in exactly the right key and hadn't moved key at all. I love that. You know, and I thought, God, you know, and I remember afterwards, I just said to him, I have to apologise.

This is the first time I've ever seen you live, you know. And I only think because we had dinner after that. And I do know, I can't remember what he ate. Damn it. And was Liza Minnelli with you yeah Liza took me she swept me up in the car and said you're coming to hear it uh you know we was in France we were down in the south of France and we went down to the Monaco sporting club where he was uh but it was it was pretty pretty impressive I have bet. Liza. I've always loved Liza.

You know, she's great. I think she pretty much eats everything. Andrew, you must go to the theatre almost every night. Do you eat before you go to the theatre or after? Well, first, I don't go to the theatre every night. Don't you? No, I probably go once a week, but not every night. You know, it depends.

I think I'd like to eat before. It is funny thing, isn't it? As you get older, I mean, I used to love, you know, kind of a lot of really great, great restaurants and things. But as you get older, you sort of find that you want to kind of go back to simple food, I think. Yeah. I certainly find that now that I don't want anything which is too

extraordinary I mean one of the things I don't know if you've noticed this but you you may well have done because you go to America so often but um I mean have you noticed that everything in America's and I've got very spice oh uh no but I remember there was a moment with heirloom everything was heirloom potatoes or tomatoes. Oh, yes, heirloom, everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And hand-dived scallops and, you know, all of that. Farm-to-table.

Heritage, yes. But everything has got quite spicy, I think. God, you need to spice up kale. Oh, kale. Mum's got a fat... Don't talk to me about kale. I mean, it is the most ridiculous thing. My wife breeds horses. And I mean, that's what you give to the horses. And when you see kale, designer kale, you know, going for more than cabbage.

I mean, give over. Give us a break. I know, I agree entirely. Oh, my God. It is. It is actually the most inedible vegetable. It is. And there's no point of it. I mean, there's a reason it's given to cattle and horses. Oh, my God, this is amazing. That's the teaser. That definitely is. Definitely.

Where are some of your favourite restaurants then? Because you must eat, I mean, you must eat out in London a lot when we can. And New York. I mean, where are some of your favourite um where you've had your most beautiful meals very very favorite restaurant new york probably because it's the first sort of really great restaurant new york that i went to and it's still there is la grenouille you know the great i don't know it's a really it's a very very old-fashioned french restaurant that has been in new york for years and years and years and years. When I was doing Jesus Christ Superstar back then, way back then, that was the first really sort of grand restaurant I was taken to there.

And the food is as good as it is, you know. Yeah. And I mean, the thing about it was coming back to the spicy food business. I went there, oh, 18 months ago. And, you know, I thought the food's not as great as it used to be. And then I thought, it's because I'm having all this spicy food. So I went and I just literally went back to my hotel and just thought, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to literally have the most simple things possible. You know, just literally sort of scrambled egg or something, you know,

and nothing, blah, blah, blah. And then I went back to Le Grand Mouillier again. And then I thought it was the greatest restaurant that I'd been to for years and years because the tastes are so much more subtle. I just wonder, have you got, how many theatres do you have? Is it seven? Seven, yeah. And have you got musicals in every theatre?

Yes, we have, yes. Because we did, when I bought the theatre group, which contains the Palladium and the Theatre Roderick Lane. There were four playhouses there, but we let those go because plays are not really. I produced, I think I produced about half a dozen plays, but they're not really what I do. And so we thought that it was best to stick to the musicals. And I mean, one of the things we decided when I first heard about COVID, which was, I have to say, it was this time last year, almost to the day, when I heard about it from Korea, we knew in the beginning of February that it was likely to be very serious

and we were in the middle at that point of the huge refurbishment and rebuilding of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane it was a massive great project and we decided that what we were going to do was to protect that and make sure that we could keep that on track as best we could because uh i mean it has in actual fact been derailed by about six months because it should have been finished last

august but um it's still the auditorium is finished and the stage tower and all of that's finished now that we still got front house to do but anyway but the other thing we decided we were going to do uh was to look at all the theatres and decide what work could we do in the theatres that we would not be able to do with a show there. And so we've completely rebuilt the auditorium of the Gillian Lynn and in time for Cinderella. We've redone the fly tower at the Adelphi. We've done a lot of work at Her Majesty's. It was absolutely impossible with Phantom of the Opera play. And so we thought, what could we do within reason?

And I'm very proud of the fact that we have done that. I mean, we've done a lot of things like ventilation. You know, we've looked at in all the buildings. And I think it's a total of 167 new loos, mostly ladies, have gone in. Oh, thank you. We're very pleased to hear that. We will all appreciate that at the interval. Master-minded by my wife. Of course. Good.

I think the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, I think it's one of my favourite theatres. I remember seeing Chorus Line there and it was sensational to watch it there. And it's Frozen. Is Frozen going on there? Frozen's going in there. Well, that'll be full every night well you've made me so happy talking about theatre I miss it so much and it's

just made me feel wonderful thinking that that all these good things are going to happen it's going to be wonderful when we reopen it but the one thing I want to do at one day at the Lane is to do Shakespeare there again because it used to be the great home of Shakespeare oh really and my aunt took me to see John Gielgud in my rude aunt took me to see John Gielgud doing the Tempest in there which was the last when I was about nine years old and the Tempest was the last Shakespeare play to play there oh that'd be really brilliant we've got we've got two more questions to ask you that are food related that we ask every guest.

One is your last supper, which would be a starter, a main, a pudding and a drink of choice. And I think I know the song that you'd go there with would be Some Enchanted Evening, I guess. Maybe you'd play? Well, food-wise, quite a difficult one, really, but actually not that difficult. I think I'd have the Cornell

de Brochet, which they do, you know, the Pike Cornell that they do at the Grenouille, which is marvelous, which they do in a sort of very light champagne sauce. And then this is a bit of a toss up really, but whether to do the poulet grand there that they do there, the chicken there, which is just very simply done with sort of bacon and um and just a really great old-fashioned french recipe or whether to do the chicken with the slightly decadent way of putting truffles underneath the skin which i quite like which is that that so that's a good one that's a very good one and then i think probably a tart tatin oh you're going full French? Yeah, full French.

Classic French. Yeah, I'm going French. I'm going classic French with this. And drink of choice? Drink of choice? Well, you see, it's a long time now. It's about five years since I last had wine, which is annoying, really. But I think if it was the last ever supper, depends when it is, of course.

I mean, if it's a few years' time. But based on the wine that I always remember, okay, so this is one of the days that I did drink. The best wine I can ever, one of the two great red wines I can remember drinking, the 1961 Chateau Palmer. Absolutely wonderful. And that should still be good. And, of course course now ridiculously expensive because wine's become so expensive but the best ever burgundy i've ever tasted was a 78 remini conti it was absolutely astounding i'm writing these down jesse i have those

so if this was a last supper and on the grounds that now these wines are so expensive that anyway why would i care because i'm not going to be around yeah i just spent the money how much do you think the romany conti is a bottle god knows do you know it's absolutely absurd what they're sort of paying for these things i mean it might be 15 grand you know you're joking for one bottle no i'm not i'm not joking i bet you i wouldn't be far short. I don't know. You should Google it. Right, you're paying, Andrew. Yeah. That's it.

Well, I know. But I'd be minding you if it's your last supper. You might as well do it, I guess. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Do you think you've got good table manners? I think I probably do. I think probably my aunt did teach me decent table manners. She sounds fun.

Along with her cocker vote. Oh, she was. Oh, she was. She was absolutely wonderful. I fun. Along with her cock over. Oh, she was. Oh, she was. She was absolutely wonderful. I remember a flight with her from Paris down to Nice, where she went round the whole aeroplane asking people to write down as many rude four-letter words as they could possibly think of. Oh, my God.

And all these, I mean, astonished French people, you know, sort of thinking, who is this woman? And, I mean, sheished French people, you know, sort of thinking, who is this woman? And I mean, she was Auntie Bi and she came up with words that she made sound rude, that, you know, you never would have even thought of. I mean, I don't know. I adored her. And she had this fabulous sense of humour. Anyways, and she taught me all I knew about food. Last question. Karaoke song.

Which song are you going to choose from your own musical? From my own musicals? Yeah. I guess it's got to be Any Dream Will Do, really, because that's what everybody knows. Do you like singing that one? It's a lovely one to get everyone in the spirit of.

Well, it's the hour, isn't it? That's the bit everybody remembers. It's been such a treat to chat to you um for this hour and thank you so much for doing this it's been a joy um i've really we've loved it so so thank you thank you and thank you so much lots of love Love Andrew Lloyd Webber. What a star. That has really put me in a good mood. Oh, it's cheered me up because it's made me hopeful that theatre's coming back. I really want to go for dinner with him now.

I want to go to that place in New York. Le Grand Rue. Let him order. Let him order the wine. I've never heard of it. Have you? No. Oh, so producer Alice just looked up the wine

just so we could get clarification on the cost of the wine. Because I'm thinking of my birthday party. It's not 15. It's only 10 grand. So there you go. Sorted. But thank you, Angelou Weber. That was amazing to chat to him and to hear what he's doing.

He doesn't seem to stop, to be honest. We'll be back next week. Thank you so much for listening and stay safe. Table Manners is produced by Alice Williams.