‘My scrambled eggs are very good’.

LIFE ON A PLATE

Interview

Bob Mortimer: ‘As a kid I’d put 17 spoons of sugar in my tea’

John Hind

Saturday 17 August 2019


The co-star of TV’s Gone Fishing remembers childhood diets, ‘pocket meat’ and getting married on the day of his heart op

I eat a tin of sardines every day. I had one just a few minutes ago. Kippers or smoked haddock are a nice treat. I have quite a thing about having a fish on its own on the plate.

Before we did Gone Fishing, Paul Whitehouse and I sort of knew that “heart” would become a bit of a label for us [Mortimer had a triple bypass in 2015; Whitehouse had stents fitted the same year]. Now we get so many tweets about people who’ve made their dad get their heart checked. We have a lot of other ailments but I expect we probably won’t talk about them as much.

 

‘Of course it can go wrong. That’s why there’s a hammer in the studio’. 
Illustration: Lyndon Hayes for Observer Food Monthly

LIFE ON A PLATE

Interview

Edmund de Waal: You know what you should eat off? White plates

Mild-mannered ceramicist and bestselling author Edmund de Waal knows a thing or two about plates. Just don’t make them square

Saturday 18 October 2015
Alex Clark

I

t only occurs to me halfway through lunch that my companion might have more reason to care what the food he’s eating has arrived on than most of us. When you are an award-winning ceramicist renowned for the exquisite simplicity of your creations; when you describe yourself as having an obsession with white; and when your lifelong working relationship with porcelain takes such a hold that you have to write an entire book about it – well, then you probably notice the plates. So, I ask Edmund de Waal, potter par excellence, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes and now The White Road, is it the kind of thing that strikes him immediately?

 

Evangeline Lilly in Cleo Hollywood, The Redbury Hotel, Hollywood, Los Angeles. 
Photograph: Barry J Holmes

LIFE ON A PLATE

Interview

Evangeline Lilly: I’ll drop food on the floor and pick it up and eat it

The Lost actor reveals a soft spot for strong alcohol, organic food and the carpeted kitchens of her childhood

Sunday 15 February 2015

John Hind

One day I was waiting for a meeting at the Four Seasons [in Beverly Hills] and I noticed these beautiful ornate bottles in the mirrored cabinet behind the bar. I had my own Alice In Wonderland moment and asked, “What are they?” and the barman let me smell the special grappa in each. Now I have my own bottle kept there. It’s wonderfully potent – I love strong alcohol – but it’s something I can enjoy in a delicate little glass in the midday, when no professional wants to be seen pounding back alcohol. It gives me a lovely warm fuzzy feeling but looks classy and no one bats an eyelid.

Tracey Emin at St John Bread and Wine, Spitalfields, London. Photograph: Harry Borden

LIFE ON A PLATE

Interview

Tracey Emin: 'I was on 100 oysters a week'

The artists tells of her food fantasies and raiding the fridge as a child

John Hind

Sunday 18 April 2010

Sleeping under a dinner table is safe and snug. I picked it up as a child. As a young artist, at a big dinner, sometimes I'd get so tired I'd think, "If I just snooze for half an hour I'll be fine", and I'd slide underneath. More recently I don't, because my absence would be too noticeable.

 

Jackie Collins at her home in Beverly Hills
Photo by Patrick Fraser

LIFE ON A PLATE

Interview

Jackie Collins: 'My mafia godfather made the best pasta sauce'

The novelist recalls childhood squabbles with her sister Joan, hanging out in Soho jazz clubs and running away to LA. She also has a cocktail named after her

John Hind

Saturday 12 April 2014

My earliest food memory, in London during the war, is of the shortage of canned peaches. When mum occasionally got hold of a can, we'd be allocated one slice each and I'd fight with my sister [Joan] over a second – "You had two already", "No, I had one", "You cannot have two just because you're older than me!" I say this because, nowadays, in my house in California, I'll sometimes have a full can of Del Monte peaches for lunch, with a whole bunch of cream.