Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S11 Ep 8: Lydia West

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

"La!" We've got the divine Lydia West from the extraordinary C4 show 'It's A Sin' on this week's Table Manners.But we must thank Olly Alexander for putting a good word in for us!Currently filming an Apple TV series called Suspicion, Lydia dazzled us with her smile and maybe her fabulous zoom lighting that mum instantly bought online.Aged 25 when she got into acting, Lydia talks about growing up in Barnet with her mother the feeder, her dad the amazing chef and her Irish granny round the corner who does a mean lamb roast and pineapple upside down cake.We chat comfort eating on set, cheesy beans on toast and being in a movie with Celine Dion.We realise Lydia is keeping Pizza Hut busy buying up their warm cookie dough.She also sticks up for mum for the leopard print sleeve in our cookbook! Everyone needs a Lydia; the sunniest girl and a shining star in British drama! X Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The episode you're about to listen to has a lot of spoilers. We can't avoid that because we were so consumed and in love with this series called It's a Sin that's been out for a while and we apologise in advance if you don't want to find out what happens in It's a Sin. Go and watch it. Go and watch it and then come and listen to this. Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm here in clapham sitting next to my mum in her office how are you mum la well no mum you say la but there's very particular way of saying it okay say it well i think our guest this evening is going to teach us because i've seen her talking

about this on women's ever seen her you've heard her talking no but on Woman's Hour. Seen her? You've heard her talking about it? No, but I don't know because I follow Emma Barnett. Anyway, she talks about how the la. La. I don't know if you're getting it right. Well, I saw Russell T Davies talk about it. And? He said that it was a way of connecting when he was growing up in Wales and it was a way of connecting with people

and he used to say laugh to all his friends when he was living in a house in Wales and they're all gay and it was quite difficult being gay. Okay well then I won't ask Lydia. We will if you really want to. I feel like we needed to do an episode that revolved around the brilliance of this series that was it's a sin we talked about it we advertised it we talked to ollie alexander about it and now we are lucky enough to get lydia west who plays jill she was just magnificent in it and so yeah we just i still want to keep the conversation going and i want to keep on talking about it's a sin i'm sure she's got other things to talk about as well yeah of course we're gonna talk about food and family yeah so after having fern cotton on where she looked glowy but she

does look glowy regardless of the fact that she had a ring light on mum has bought two different ring lights one that was like industrial size for like a girl group and one that is a desk that has just been delivered. One was so tall that you'd have to be a giraffe to actually get your face in it. It was way above my head. What is that life of being an influencer?

How does it feel, Mum? Darling. I'm very excited that we have Lydia West chatting to us she's filming something at the moment I believe we might get a bit of goss

a little scoop and also shout out to sweet Olly Alexander when I text him and was just like babe do you think Lydia would like to do it

and he kind of set it up basically so thank you Olly I love Olly it would be lovely if Olly just popped up again like he did at the Christmas party.

Anyway, Lydia West coming up on Table Manners. La! La! So we'll have to do lot again now okay go just do it mom you do it no because i know that there's jesse says i don't do it properly well i heard you talking on women's hour and saying there's a very specific way of doing all right you do it first and i'll do it back perfect you see so what what would make it be on it no that's this is exactly what we went through the dilemma was we were i thought i was just doing it like this the whole time but apparently i

wasn't and it wasn't high enough and it was too long so i was going and then it was meant to be just it's just really like staccato and but it took some training russell had us doing all sorts of to get it right it was so hard and is that because it was very dear to russell and it had to be perfect because it was part of his story exactly so it was their private joke him between himself jill and some other of their friends i think who lived in the pink palace it was their joke so yeah it was it had to be right it wasn't just a made-up fictional joke it was like we did this and I think I don't think they do it anymore but Jill even remembers doing it and yeah we were in rehearsals that first week and we were trying to get it right and we and in the end Peter was like

I just I actually don't know now the difference between all of your laughs because we just did it so many times he was then just like i don't know and also for people that don't know but i feel like everyone that has watched the tv show has kind of consumed everything around it so lots of people may not know that jill who you play actually played your mum in the show yes she did so real life jill oh really yeah yeah oh how perfect i know i think even even knowing that jill my character was based on someone who was in russell's life that was just enough for me but then knowing that she was playing my mother, I was just double, double whammied.

I just couldn't really handle it. What was she like? She is exactly how fictional Jill is. She's so, so kind. She's so loving. She lived in the Pink Palace. She worked in the West End in theatre growing up. And she nursed people on their dying

days and she had lots of gay friends and she went on all the marches and she marched with the quilt and she just she did everything kind of that you would imagine Jill, fictional Jill does, she did and yeah her story she would be on set and she'd just have so many anecdotes from the time and even just kind of like fun that they'd get up to. Because that's what like the show we wanted it to be. Like Russell really wanted to just show the joyfulness of the show and just how the friendships and the celebration of the time. And Jill just having that inspiration on set to just tell you that, yeah, oh, my gosh. And then we went to this club and the parties in the pink palace and the marches and it was just such a huge source of inspiration for me just to kind of like listen

to her and just I was just in awe of everything that she said she's so special she's so important we'll talk about it's this in a bit but of course we will because we adored it and hence why we wanted to have you on table manners I text only i'm obsessed with table manners i'm obsessed with you both lenny can i just say darling you you remind me of someone a friend of mine his name's rob robert diamant he he's on talk art do you know the podcast yeah i know rob yeah so everything you say lenny is so profound it's like oh you're so sweet jesse are you listening to the right i'm sorry jesse jesse i'm the special one here darling and i was laughing at the fact that you call yourself an extrovert and i was like i love this i love her she's great for your birthday

lydia um but it's honestly such a pleasure to have you on. And you just kind of came on our screens. Everyone fell in love with you. The character, Jill, but also your acting was fantastic. And I hadn't watched years and years. So that was the first time I've seen you. But I hear that you've been pretty busy. Like you've been, have you been filming something just recently?

Are you filming something at the moment? I'm filming something at the moment yeah are you allowed to talk about it I am yes so I'm filming an apple tv series called suspicion which is a crime thriller kind of drama espionage drama um with Uma Thurman and it's basically yeah and it follows uh well her she is a very prominent businesswoman in New York and her son is kidnapped. And then it's kind of a who did it scandal. And there's four prime suspects from the UK. Are you shooting in the UK? Yeah, so we're shooting in and around London.

And the week the show came out, I was working nights. So I was like filming from four to four and then I was kind of getting up in the day to do press and just like see the response and everything like what was going on so I remember just going to set being like I am so confused what's happening right now I can't really handle this wow it was it's just been so epic and so unbelievable it was wonderful to keep talking about it, as do we. But I do want to know, you know, you've kind of become Jill in everyone's life.

Yeah, but she's not. But you're Lydia West. And you also look half the age of Jill. Do I? Yeah, Jill looked much older. She looked... Maybe the clothes. The clothes made you look slightly slightly more maternal absolutely and i think

that's what they wanted from her the whole thing about jill she wanted they wanted her very tactile and very kind of cozy and cuddly and maternal so a lot of kind of bright colors and textured kind of fabrics and uh like the yellow mac is was she always wears in episode four and five because it's like sunny and bright and when all this darkness and this like bleakness is happening in their lives jill is there with her bright sunny coat and her bright sunny personality and being that that figure for all these poor dear dear people that we lost so you like that lydia? You're a bright, sunny person. You are. I can see you smiling. Make me smile. Oh, I don't know. I think so. I'm very positive. I have a very kind of positive outlook in life. But Jill is really special. And yeah, I just feel honoured to have been able to play such an amazing character at such an early point in my career and for Russell and

it's such an important story to tell so I just feel all sorts of honoured. So okay so what stage of your career are you at like how long have you been kind of professionally acting for and where are you from I don't even know where you're from I'm just thinking you're from the Pink Palace. So I have been acting for two and a half years I want to say we started years and years in 2018 years and years was my first job um so I was at drama school identity which is kind of a part-time drama school and um I had my agent and he was I was going to auditions and then years and years audition came along and he was like, Lydia, go up for it. And I saw it was Russell T. Davis script. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I need to just go be seen for this. So I read for the part of Bethany.

And that was my first job. So after then, I've kind of just been working on other things. And then I did another job between Years and Years. And It's a Sin, it was called Dracula. And then the script for it's a sin came through and i was like oh russell again like wow this is amazing and i read two episodes and i was like bawling my eyes out and um i went in to read for jill twice and then i got the call and i was like i just can't believe i'm working with russell again and on such an amazing story

so yeah and i and i came into acting quite late I'm 27 now so I was 25 when I when I booked years and years and before then I went to you know I kind of grew up in North London in Barnet with with my parents and I grew up kind of I was dancing a lot so I always was like oh I want to be a professional dancer and that didn't work out because I had an injury. And then I kind of after that just didn't really get back into it. So I went to university. I studied business and I graduated from uni. And I was like, I hate this. What am I doing?

I am not a business manager. What the hell am I doing? So then I started acting. And now here we are. And do you believe that It's Your Sin has changed your life is that that role has helped you feel like it's changed things for you you know you've got this Uma Thurman Apple TV gig I mean yeah like the rest is history now it's just mental Jessie because I I get these jobs and so my first job was years and years and then kind of Emma Thompson came on board and Rory Kinnear was playing my dad and i'm just this like small fish in this this massive pond and i have no idea what

i'm doing and well i probably shouldn't admit that and then and then after that i i was like in this amazing another amazing show and then um and then i booked suspicion it was like oh my therm is on board and then i did a film last year at the end of lockdown with celine dion oh my god what celine dion okay i'm in a movie with celine she has no idea who i am but i'm in the mood okay so i've talked about this many times maybe even on table manners but have you seen the youtube that celine dion is fucking amazing oh no okay you need to after this you need to go and watch celine d Dion is fucking amazing it's probably one of my greatest joys to watch on YouTube and she's did you not get to meet her then no no not in real life that is shit I know because it was in December and um we were kind of very COVID secure filming and I don't think she she wanted to come and she wanted to come in um so she did

all her scenes away oh bugger I would have wanted my heart goes on my heart will go on yeah but it was it was really it's a bit it was a bit embarrassing because I was I do this thing like where and probably you may have seen from it's a sin um I'd like dance in my trailer like in the morning every morning to like hype up the boys and just to have as much fun as we could and kind of get really get into 80s spirit I would invite all the boys into my trailer and just dance to our favorite 80s songs and just feel your most confident best self and when I was filming text for you I didn't really it was just Russell and I who had worked together before who were friends I didn't really have any friends on set so I was just like okay I'm by myself now so let me just like put my music on and have a little dance and I put Celine on and I was

dancing to Celine Dion and then I was like Lydia you actually shouldn't do this because she's in this film it's a bit awkward that you're fine girling Celine and she's in the film so I stopped myself and just I don't know why I put on something else so are you from a big family Lydia I I'm from a really small family we have a really small extended family but I'm uh just one of three siblings my sister and my brother older sister and older brother and then my parents uh we grew up my parents and then grandparents from my mom's side live in London and they're Irish and my father is from montserrat in the caribbean and his his mother lives in boston in the us so we only just kind of have my maternal grandparents here and aunties a couple of aunties

but quite a really like our christmas is maybe 11 people always it's always been like so small that's quite big i think is it yeah how many are you well there's i've got brother and sister and mum and then we've got like a dad well yeah i've got a dad but i don't really see him but yeah i've um i'm definitely not spending christmas with him but who else do we have oh yeah because i mean i've got my nieces and we've got yeah you obviously have the kids oh yeah oh yeah i have my children i've forgotten about them yeah i have two children and one on the way yeah one almost yeah well yeah so i've got i've got one in there now and so i'm gonna have three of my own because i thought that was like what you do because i'm one of three and now i'm looking and going how am i going to manage this in the

park like feeding the ducks with three children but how many years are between them between the eldest and the little one it's like two and a half years for each one that's nice that's the same as me my sister and my brother really and are they actors no not at all what do they do so my sister who I live with we're so close and she's a teacher um and my brother he doesn't work and what kind of teacher is your sister she uh is a primary school teacher she teaches dance so my sister was a professional dancer and retired and then was like i want to be a teacher so she became a dance teacher so it's actually amazing because in her school i didn't know when i was in primary school they didn't really do this they didn't like do just like dance for all years no but she

teaches all years oh how fun dance yeah and you live together we live together yeah who's doing the cooking well I cook in the week during the week because she works kind of she and she has been working the whole of like lockdown so I I usually cook in the week and in the weekend she cooks but if there's red meat on the menu I ask her to cook because I don't trust myself with red meat but do you eat everything or are you are you fussy no I eat everything and anything and I was such like my mum is such a feeder I just grew up eating non-stop and I was always very active because I danced about five six times a week but the amount of food I would consume Jessie and Lenny so And that's your mum's Irish side. So was there any particular like Irish food that you were having?

Was it lots of soda bread, potato cakes? Yeah. So my grandma is a massive baker. So she makes or still quite regularly soda bread. We have lots of brax and cakes and pies. What's brax? Brax is like, it's basically like a fruit loaf. Fruit loaf, yeah.

It's got like currants and sultanas in it. And you kind of slice it, pop it in the microwave. Butter or under the grill and butter. And then lots of like hearty food, like bacon and cabbage. Potatoes. Bacon and cabbage. With every single meal. Ribs, Irish ribs.

I've never had Irish ribs. How do you cook them? I have never cooked them, but I think they're like boiled in their water and then you chuck the cabbage in. So the cabbage kind of boils in the salty water too. And I think you slow cook them for about eight hours. And did your dad take to this Irish cooking coming from the exotic Montserrat? So my dad's an amazing cook, but he has some questionable taste in what he eats. So my dad is one of those men who eats all sorts of ridiculous meat that I actually just won't eat.

He loves kidneys. He loves cow foot. He loves tongue. Mum loves tongue too foot he loves tongue mum loves tongue i love he loves tongue i can't i can't eat it i feel i feel have you ever tried the m&s tongue no tongue oh it's quite nice with a little a strong a strong mustard it's quite nice really yeah i can do it if i don't think about i remember my dad used to cook tongue at Christmas and he'd buy it. It was like a big cow's tongue and you have to curl it round in a basin. That's what my dad does.

Press it down. Yeah. And he kind of stews it with like onion and garlic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you have to take off the furry bit, you know, like the little prickly bit. Yeah, they have to peel it off once you've boiled it. So you boil it and then twist it round in the base and then press it with a big weight when i think about it like that it

feels quite cannibalistic yeah it's not right no no it's not right what's your favorite thing your mum cooks oh so we had lots of like hearty british food so i love my mom's fish pie i love my mom's roast dinner i love her shepherd's pie we'd always have something with a potato there's anything with a potato and even now to this day when my sister cooks i just know we're going to have like a potato and meat and veg it's very basic whereas I'm like I do like hello fresh every day so I'm like okay like let's make some jus and just make it a bit more imaginative my sister's like lamb chops a jacket potato and broccoli and I'm like this is so boring it's so but it's so funny because I did jacket potatoes for my kids tonight and they were so

disinterested in the potato my kids are not fussed about they like chips but when do you get to the point as being a child where potato becomes like a first love when you can't have them yeah maybe honestly they're like they're weird children they just won't eat a fucking jacket potato it's driving me crazy i was like here what was on the potato beans and cheese oh lovely yeah yeah i didn't even give them the tuna mayo because i knew they wouldn't do it and sausages on the side they go straight for the sausages it's just it's driving me mad because i'm like it's a jacket potato i'm not giving you lydia's dad's tongue do you know what I mean it's driving me mad what was your celebration meal when people when it was a birthday or you'd done well or oh what would you ask for

I would ask for probably like fish and chips or a takeaway so I was always like get let's get a takeaway or an Indian or something but if my dad was cooking he'd probably make like a steak and chips and egg love that ham and egg yeah ham and egg and chips are so good egg and chips is delicious egg and chips is so good evening it feels really naughty and really wonderful it does and it's just so comforting maybe you should give your kids second chance they'll love that it's really comforting yeah I mean yeah definitely but unfortunately i already i already used the egg in them anyway i mean i could go into toddler eating for an hour but i'm not gonna bore you and so lydia you know you know about table manners you know we ask everybody what their last supper is you've got a starter

a main pudding and a drink of choice what would it be so my starter would have to be so i'm obsessed with buffalo wings like obsessed and anywhere i go i have to kind of try the buffalo wings and the best place where i found buffalo wings is this amazing restaurant in it's not amazing but it's a good right it's a nice it's good for wings good for wings it's called chicks and sours and it's in haggis oh chicken sours yeah yeah yeah yeah and i haven't tried their wings oh they're buffalo wings i used to live in dalston and i would all i'd have their takeaway every friday night but i've moved recently but my flatmate still lives there and i go to her house to have the takeaway she's like

okay you're coming to see me or are you coming for chicken sours and so i'd have a buff a hot buffalo wings with like a blue cheese dip i love that oh yeah no one's ever chosen that no no one and i understand it's like it's just so good and that that kind of vinegary salty just yeah goodness so that would be my starter my main would be i think i'd have to go for oh i know everyone says a roast dinner but it is it's just so good like a lamb roast or a lamb shank even and what is so special about is it your mum's roast dinner that you're choosing or is it my granny's oh your granny's okay so what would she do that was so special i think just the potatoes and goose fat and like irish potatoes and goose fat and red cabbage with currants in them too i don't know how she but they're also quite salty and i don't know

what she does to make it so like it's almost like a vinaigrette kind of in them which is really nice um what else does she have in her roast cauliflower cheese triple cheese cauliflower cheese triple cheese yeah i love that and then just a lamb with homemade mint sauce. Oh, wow. She was a good cook, then. She's a really good cook. She is. And is she still alive? She is still alive, yeah. Oh, that's amazing. She's young, Jessie.

Yeah, you're young. I forget. Sorry. Granny's still here. She still bakes for us. And, yeah. But my granny's the kind of person who, like, no food can compare to hers. Like, if I say, like, oh, oh I cooked a meal she has no interest in like

in anything but her own her own cooking because she just doesn't trust that we could ever make anything that we'd enjoy she's so funny so even I make like a banana bread and I don't really bake but in lockdown I became a banana bread breaker and I was like granny I'll make you a banana bread and I'll bring it to your house she's like no no I don't like that I was like, Granny, I'll make you a banana bread and I'll bring it to your house. And she was like, no, no, I don't like that. And I was like, Granny, you haven't tried my banana bread. She's like, I don't like banana bread at all. I'm like, okay, fine. So what's her bake that she does that is like the one that, is it the Brat?

No, the Brat's not my favourite. It would have to be the pineapple upside down cake. Oh. I've never tried making that actually. No, I might have a go. Oh my gosh, it's so good. Do you think tinned pineapple better than fresh? She uses tinned pineapple. Yeah.

Yeah, she uses it and it's so, I think because it's so sweet and juicy. And what do you have it with, custard or ice cream? Custard. I'm going to make it this weekend. Can you make it gluten free, Mum? No. Okay. Anyway.

Okay, so we've got Granny's roast. And are you drinking Guinness with all of Granny's roast? No, I don't like Guinness. I'm not a massive drinker. Tell you what I'm obsessed with at the moment. Sparkling Moscato. I'm obsessed with sparkling rosé. Or like rosé champagne.

Oh, yeah. Do you like alcohol free rosé and or like rosé champagne. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Do you like alcohol free rosé? Love it. Right. So Marks and Spencer's do a really good one called Frisero. Is it their pink? Yeah, I've tried it.

It's so good. It's better than their white one. Yeah, it's lovely. And that's why I think I like the sparkling Moscato at the moment because it's literally just sugar. I love it. It's so sparkly and just bubbly. Oh us on to your pudding so I don't know are you no but she may have not chosen her granny's upside down cake for her last meal I for my last meal

ever I really enjoyed cookie dough like warm cookie dough when it's not yet formed the cookie. So it's like stodgy and just like gooey. And then with a scoop of ice cream, maybe like butterscotch ice cream. So you're making your own cookie dough? I'm not making my own. I'm ordering it from Pizza Hut. How do you do that? So Pizza Hut have this warm cookie dough.

You're filthy, Lydia. I love this. It's filthy. It's so filthy. You can order warm cookie dough, which you intend to make cookies with, but you don't make the cookies with, or is it just a thing?

No, so they half bake it. So it's almost like the cookie is finished, but then they take it out of the oven 10 minutes early. Are you supposed to finish it off when you get it home? no you're supposed to eat it as the dough as the warm dough how did you i don't know anyone who still orders pizza hut but i feel like you're the person that's keeping them alive lydia and you actually and you you have to order two to and i don't actually like their pizza i prefer dominoes if i'm having like bad pizza, I'd rather have Domino's. But the cookie dough,

you have to order two to get it above, I think, nine pounds or whatever. Oh my God, you'll literally just order pizza hot cookie dough to get it.

So yeah, yeah. This is a great bit of intel. What was the catering like on your, on the production? On set. Were you allowed to eat together

because of, were you allowed to eat together because of we still we filming in covid no so we started in uh september 2019 we wrapped in january thank god 2020 but the food on set so i i really loved like just like comfort eating while we were filming because it was just so sad so i ate a lot of cheesy beans on toast most mornings. And then all the kind of prop food that was set out that no one else would eat, I would be just munching on. But that's the thing. Did it really take it out of you? Because it was so upsetting.

And I guess because you were acting it, you were feeling it, you were experiencing it, you've obviously done all this research. But that's really interesting that you felt like you needed to i comfort comfort comfort food and stuff i i think that's really interesting but i completely understand why because it would probably would it zap the life out of you after doing takes of some of those scenes like in the hospitals oh my gosh i remember the scenes in the aids so we were in the aids ward for three weeks and we did obviously all of the AIDS ward stuff at once. Where was that filmed?

It was filmed in Manchester and it was in a school. It was like an old school, an old secondary school, which had closed. They converted a whole floor and created this AIDS ward. And I was even shocked kind of stepping into it because there were signs like infectious diseases enter at your own risk and all the rooms were locked. And during those days, filming some of the supporting artists, they were very, they kind of, they cast some very frail, thin supporting artists. And then they'd put kind of the KS lesions on makeup on their faces and they would be walking around. And it was harrowing. It was like what an AIDS ward in London would would have looked like in the 80s and for the first two weeks it was okay we were kind of getting through them and then there was one scene in in

the third week it was a scene where it's Collins last night and the the whole it's scripted that Jill is so strong and she comes from a show she's just come from from performance at the show and she's just kind of telling the boys how how the show went and everything's positive and nothing lets on that that that she's emotional at all and i remember being mid-take and i just broke down and i just and that that rarely happens to me because i was just i i just felt like this rush of emotion take over me and I had to just remove myself and I Peter our director I was like Peter I'm so sorry I just need a second like I've just something's just hit me and I I can't really handle this so I I I and I really wanted to call my mum and I called I tried to call my mum and she didn't answer she didn't

answer you know when you're like I just need to speak to mum right now and then she didn't answer. You know, when you're like, I just need to speak to mum right now. And then she didn't answer. So I just sat down and everyone was so, all the boys were so supportive. And it just, it just dawned on me how this was reality. And some people like Jill, there were, there were these strong people in the face of this that just kept their composure and remained strong for their friends and fought till the end and saw all of this happen at 24 years old which just like younger than I was and they're seeing their friend what was their deteriorating and poor Colin has has early onset dementia and he can't he's not even in the room so that those scenes really took it out of me and I think subconsciously I was kind of eating to to feel just kind of comfort um and

then also doing all the dancing and all the kind of we'd spend all every weekend we go we go for a Sunday dinner together all of us all the boys and myself um just to kind of just have as much fun as we can in such a well creating a project which is set in such a bleak era but that's what was so believable about the friendship like you really felt like you all lived together like it felt like you were those housemates at uni there was something so beautiful about how those friendships were depicted I love the fact that you were all kind of living and breathing each other and going for your Sunday roasts and kind of... I mean, you and Ollie are quite good friends now, aren't you?

Such good friends. He's so sweet and I was really, really nervous to sing and to be singing with him because I... No, it just, for any act, it was Ollie Alexander from Years and Years. So I'd never really sung publicly before. So when I was in the this kind of massive room it wasn't even it was I I referred to it as a sports hall because it literally looked like a sports hall in media city so the acoustics were terrible and there was just

me and and in a piano and I was singing the French Revolution number and Ollie walks in mid-song and I'm like no why now why while I'm mid-song so then I kind of get to the end and i was just like oh my god i'm so scared to meet you you're so great and he's like oh my god is that the first time you met and within an hour and it really calmed my nerves because i'd been practicing with a vocal coach for about three weeks all the songs so i knew kind of what i was doing which key i was coming in at and ollie arrived and he's like okay so which song what songs we do first I think we decided to do more more more first and Ollie was like okay does anyone have the lyrics I was like oh thank god he hasn't been practicing as much as I have um and he just made me feel so comfortable and within an hour the director the producer and the producers came down to watch our performance

and I was just like what is going on I'm just singing so what was it like shooting in Manchester did you have loads of fun did you eat out in lots of fantastic places do you have any memorable places that you ate out? Yeah, so I love, there's an amazing pasta restaurant called Sugo. And it has, it's like very seasonal. So their menu always changes, but they have an amazing gnocchetti. I think it was like a truffle gnocchetti, which was delicious. And like a ragu, beef ragu, which was lovely.

Where did you live? Were you you living in whereabouts were you staying in manchester well we were staying for for quite a lot of it i was staying in the double tree in the like piccadilly and then i moved to an apartment in piccadilly so really central but i love like the northern quarter there's an amazing restaurant called evelyn's in the northern quarter i love evelyn's in the northern quarter i love evelyn's their roast i don't know it it's great is that where you'd go for a roast yeah we try basically all the roasts i think because we were there for so long and we just we kind of we had to every weekend it's good fun though manchester is so fun and the people are warm yeah it's so great

i love it there do you sing now you've you're singing do you ever sing karaoke lenny i hate karaoke you love it i know you do strangely i love it she loves it have you been when was the last time you went oh a hundred years ago yeah she talks like she's like somebody with a season ticket so like lucky go anywhere at the minute no I'd do anything I'd sit and sing I bet you can sing I bet you can all sing I can't sing you can sing all right I can sing okay but Jessie sings the best Hannah doesn't sing very well and Alex definitely can't sing. So what's on the cards for Lydia West after you finish this Apple TV thing? I mean, I'm sure the calls are all coming in, but have you got any other things in the pipeline?

Are you sorted for 2021 and 22? No, not yet. I'm just kind of, I'm waiting for the next project. We're going to see what kind of comes along. It's hard because when you do kind of two Russell jobs, almost back to back, and telling such an important story, which we have with It's a Sin,

it just feels, I'm ready to just wait until the next kind of, until something that I'm really drawn to comes along and something special. I like reading projects and kind of, if I would watch them, just, I'd love to be involved and i i'm pretty easy to please so i i'm excited to see what what comes next we are so happy that we've got to speak to you congratulations oh lydia west do you have good table manners yes i do i know of course she does look at like she's so polite you're perfect not perfect

I would quite like to see you how you dismantle a buffalo wing I would quite like to see how that happens because that ain't pretty it's not pretty

and I don't think you can be I think when you try to you just have to go for it come here have we got buffalo wings in our cup book I've got

we've got so my friend Kitty is obsessed with buffalo wings to the point she says the um the weatherspoons ones are brilliant i've never tried she says they're great okay okay well now you need to try better center anyway we'll send you a cookbook because we've got these oven baked buffalo wings with a really good sauce that incorporates frank's hot sauce yeah and like

it's really good when you do a blue cheese dip so we've got it and it's an oven one so you won't you basically feel virtuous eating them. Oh my gosh. And they're like, they're really delicious. We'll send you a cookbook. And I heard the cookbook also has the leopard print sleeve. Oh my God. I told you it was a winner.

I'm here for this. Thank you because Jessie didn't want it. Actually, you can't see, but i've got my leopard print trousers on today can't be a bit of leopard she had me up um lydia west it's been such a pleasure to meet you everyone fell in love with you this year and it's just such a joy to actually meet you and for you to just be just as sunny if like i mean just as sunny as jill and just fun and brilliant i can't wait to watch you in this apple TV thing what's it called? Suspicion

and when's it out? We haven't finished yet so oh so it's ages fine just keep talking years and years watch years and years

and then watch it to sin again so but listen thank you thank you so much for finding the time I know it's been

a crazy time for you and so we've loved getting you in thank you for inviting me on. I'm so happy to be here. Lydia West, sunshine on a screen. Oh my goodness, she was just so gorgeous, so wonderful, so delightful. No wonder people want to work with her, because she's really good at her job. She's also lovely.

I really like that, and also just love the fact that her last meal was chicken wings that's a good call you know i get that i get that it's like you want that taste the last time and the cookie dough for pizza hut i mean please email us if anybody else has done this before or who anybody intends to go and order half-baked cookie dough from Pizza Hut. Now that you've heard Lydia. And then eat it. Well, of course eat it. I mean, cookie dough is quite delicious.

Email us at hello at tablemannerspodcast.com. So anybody who hasn't watched It's a Sin, I feel like if you haven't, and you've just listened to this whole episode, I'm sorry there were lots of spoilers, but to all our north american listeners it's the sins already out all the episodes on hbo max go and have a watch of it love you lydia west thank you for being on and everyone go and watch it's the sin i'm gonna go and watch it years and

we hope you're all right and we will see you next week Thank you. Table Manners is produced by Alice Williams.