May 3, 2022 • 24 mins
A few months ago, I walked into a very busy River Café lunch to be greeted by a buzz from the young waiters and chefs working here. They were incredibly excited – “Ruthie, Ruthie” they said, “Rag’n’Bone Man is on Table 4, why don’t you ask him to be on your podcast”. I personally have a rule not to interrupt anyone’s lunch, much less Britain’s most successful and brilliant blues singer, but this time I broke that rule. And here we are today, on a spring evening, in The River Cafe garden – about to get to know each other.
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home.
On Ruthie's Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers.
Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks.
Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation.
For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/
Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. A few months ago,
I walked into a very busy River Cafe lunch to
be greeted by a buzz from the young waiters and
chefs working here. They were incredibly excited. Ruthie, Ruthie, they said,
(00:24):
Rag and bone Man is on table four. Why don't
you ask him to be on your podcast? I personally
have a rule not to interrupt anyone's lunch, much less
Britain's most successful and brilliant blue singer. But this time
I broke that rule, and here we are today on
a spring evening in the River Cafe garden, about to
(00:46):
get to know each other. I am incredibly excited. Alms Sunshine,
my own sunshine. You made me have me. Skis are
a great you know, dear love you Shin. Do you
(01:17):
want to come on tour? Thank you? Okay? Would you
like to read your recipe? What recipe are you going
to read? I'm going to read raspberries with Ricotta. I
was going to try and do my best radio voice
or like phone voice like my mom used to do.
Any voice you like, you can sing it, I can
(01:39):
do my best. This is a delicious summer dessert. We
only make it when the raspberries are ripe. You will
need five fifty grams of fresh raspberries, two hundred and
fifty grams of buffalo ricotta, one a mouthia lemon, four
tablespoons of caster sugar. Finally, grate the lemon pill and
(02:02):
mix with the sugar. Leave for a while to allow
the flavors to combine and the sugar to be absorbed.
Scatter the raspberries on a large plate, Turn the rocotto
out very carefully, and then slice it as finely as possible.
Place rocotto slices delicately over the raspberries and sprinkle with
(02:25):
the lemon and the sugar. My mom would be proud
of me, that she'd be fair of you. Oh, my
mom was fantastic. She's an amazing woman. I grew up
in a single parent household, just my mom, me and
my sister. And I was lucky with my mom growing
up because actually my mom and my dad because we
(02:48):
my mom didn't have much money. You know, my mom
was quite often on benefits and stuff, but we always
got buy with decent food. You know, one pot kicking
a lot of the time. But my mom was always
good with flavor. And I learned that super young. I
was maybe like ten or eleven when I started kicking myself.
Do you remember what she would make? My favorite thing
(03:09):
was always muscles and just make a huge, huge point
when I'm talking about huge, like you know, like the big,
big saucepans, lots of garlic, lots of wine, sometimes cream
if we had it, but and and you know, loads
of bread. Did your mother worked did she? Did? She have?
Not really, because my sister's down syndrome, so that sort
of meant that she most of the time, you know,
(03:31):
didn't work much. It was it was at home all
the time, looking after me and my sister. But what
was the age difference between We're only a year and
a half apart, and you said that you started cooking
when you were I think we guess If my mom
was busy and we wanted to eat or we were hungry,
I was told to just you know, either you eat
(03:51):
what's there, or you'll make something. And I think I
watched my mom cook a few times. I watched my
grandma cook, so I think I had a fairly good
understanding of how things were met A taste or it
just was trial and error and I was allowed to
explore whatever. You didn't have fear of lighting the fire
(04:12):
or those crappy electric cookers with a spiral hobs, you know,
like that, the properly eighties eighties ones. And so you
were cooking for your sister. Did she appreciate the food
that you could? Oh? Yeah, yeah sure. I mean now
she's got older, she cooked a little bit. She comes
around to my house and and tries cooking a few things.
(04:33):
But I think I just wanted to look after it, right, Yeah, yeah,
I think that also. You know, young men who have
lived in a single parent family know how to take
care of themselves and people around them much more. And
I think that gives you something, yeah, very special. I
had a friend who say she only wanted Boyfriends of
(04:53):
single parents do so much more domestically, you know. But
going to your parents, there was always music. So that
was your mom? Was it your mom and your dad
or was it yeah, my mom and dad. My first
experience of music was not from like a record player.
We're just from people being in my house playing music.
(05:15):
And was it because they had friends from musicians? Was
your what did your father do? Well, my dad's always
been a musician by trade. He's a diver actually, it
was always working away or riggs and stuff, cable lane
ships and whatnot. But he's always been a guitarist and
he played like guitar, banjo, own mandolin. Yeah, we because
(05:36):
we grew up around a lot of folk music. So
I kind of guess like food and that came together
when we were super young because it was hand in hand.
It was like everyone's coming around for dinner and the
night would end in like wine and songs. You like,
my dad playing. I don't remember it that well, but
(05:57):
I remember my uncle Rob being there with my dad
and they're being bottles of wine and blues being plaid.
Did he play? When you say American polk music was
a pizza gur weavers, I would say more like Irish
folk music, stuff like Planksty and Christie Moore. Yeah, some
(06:18):
old gypsy songs and stuff like that, and there'd be
someone playing a fiddle and does he play now he still?
Oh yeah, for real, my dad played. My dad actually
played on my last album. Yeah. Yeah. There's a song
at the end called Old Habits and there's a little
piece of guitar music that comes afterwards. Can we listen
to it? Yeah? Sure, do we have it. It's almost
(06:51):
like a secret track. So when they when the song
Old Habits finishes, there's about ten seconds and then the
guitar parts starts, and it's just something that I recorded
and my dad one day and I wanted to put
it on the record, which is nice. My dad actually
(07:19):
wrote that tune while he was I think waiting for
one of us to be born. I don't know whether
it was me, Lucy or my other sister Rhan. Is
he interested in food? Yeah, I mean my dad's a
pretty good cook. He's always fairly simple. It takes really
good but it'd be simple. It'd be like a good salad,
(07:39):
new potatoes, and then like a good piece of fish.
But it was always it was always season good and
it's fresh, you know. There was always like and he
makes a good dressing for the salad and it would
be a nice piece of like seabuss or something. He's
kind of always he went. He wouldn't allow like ketch
up on the table and stuff like that, which I
kind of right. You describe your mother, who was very
(08:00):
careful about flavoring, and you remember that you talked about muscles.
I don't know where she bought them. I don't know
where you grew up. And she used wine in the
sauce for her children. And then your father, who I
find his music so beautifully compelling. This grilled fish and
he almost sounds like the way he cooked was the
way he played his music. And so you grew up
(08:22):
with us food of your childhood? Where did they learn
to cook? Well? I mean I actually asked my dad
that question because I was like, I know, I know
that we used to have like good food as kids
and having stuff like muscles, you know, when we were young.
But I think my mom and dad lived in Spain
(08:43):
for quite a long time, and I didn't know that,
saidtle Bit later on. I think they lived in Heavier
in Spain for maybe like five or six years, but
have been in what the seventies, I guess late seventies
before they had us. Yeah, so it's probably from there.
And actually, like where we grew up in Uckfield is
(09:04):
pretty close to Brighton, close to a place called Seaford,
which is on a good place to buy fish and
Hastings which is awesome for for buying fish, probably more
so back then, tell me about as a child. The
story I've heard when you performed in order to buy
ice cream. Yeah, there's a truth to this story. Uh
(09:27):
In in the summer, the kids from our street we
used to sometimes get together, and so we had a
house full of instruments. We had guitars that were hanging
on the walls and sometimes there are old crappy ones
that no one played anymore, or or old keyboard that
doesn't really work. Um. We we would get those instruments
(09:48):
and put them out on the front lawn, open the
windows and play like whatever music it was through the
stereo as loud as possible and act like we were
playing it and put a bas get there in front
of us to ask for money so we could go
and buy ice cream from the ice cream band. Did
it well? He did? I mean people came out and
(10:09):
gave us money. I think we made made enough to
get some ice cream. That's the version of I grew up,
you know, selling lemonade when I was a kid. You know,
take lemonade and then put a table on the front
lawn and at five cents please. Yeah, we were like
buskings and like guns and roses. Okay, I am here
(10:32):
with Rory Dragon Bowman and one of his biggest fans
apart from me, that is Louie Warwyn, who is a waiter.
How old you, Louis? I'm three? Okay. So when I
went around today saying guess who's coming to dinner tonight?
Guess who's coming to talk? You were especially excited, So
I thought, why not share the mic with you? Okay,
(10:54):
here you go, hi, Rory. Um. I think as an artist,
you've collaborated with loads of different people or so, in
the spirit of collaborating, who would your dream musical dinner
guests be alive or dead? Um? Prince Probably. I've got
(11:15):
to say Prince because I feel like he was a
bit of a tricky customer and I think he'd probably
bring a good dynamic to the table. Do you think
he'd be a fussy eater? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I think
I'd be demanding, you know, but I kind of like that,
kind of like people to be a bit more rock
and roll these days. Someone take authority at the table. Absolutely.
(11:36):
How do you think that fame change the way you
perceived yourself and others perceived you? And was there ever
moment of frustration within that? It's a constant battle if
I'm honest, between being really happy that it gave me
the opportunity to do what I'm doing now and to
(11:58):
travel the world and to play shows for lots of people,
and don't I always feel lucky always, But there are
points of it that I never thought I would have
to deal with the feeling of being out in public
and have people staring at me. And it's not something
as a person that I really warm to as a
(12:19):
feeling because I'm quite private and I'm not really an
outgoing person, if I'm honest, So parts of that made
me more introvert. And the reason I live in a
place where no one is. I live in a village
that probably has about five thousand people in it, so
(12:42):
I do hide away a little bit. But I'm kind
of okay with that now. It might be something that
you know, co with, yeah, yeah, And to be honest,
I've always liked peace and quiet, not now with the
kids and that, but but you know, being being around
nature and suff like that helps for when you do
have to change world. Um, you know, during the time
(13:07):
this time, you know, when people didn't go out so much,
I found myself just forgetting that who I was and
just going out and doing normal stuff and someone would say, oh,
can I have a picture? I'm like, what, who by?
Leave me alone? I think public and private is hard.
For the most part, people are pretty understanding and nice,
(13:27):
but we do live in a different world. Now. I've
noticed in the restaurant, but when people were very, very
careful of anyone who eats here and whether they're famous
or not. We do respect privacy, but at the table
that we really if we see somebody going up to somebody,
so please respect that. Generally people will give autographs or
(13:47):
sign something later, but there's a real reluctant to have
a photograph taken with someone because you don't know where
it's going to be. Is that a line too far?
Do you think that you just draw on the photograph.
If I'm with my kids, it's a straight now every time,
because they don't they don't deserve to be drawn into
that world. But if I'm on my own don't. I
(14:08):
don't really mind, as long as people respectful. I was
in a hotel the other night and someone put a
photo in front of my face while I had him up. Well,
I had spaghetti on my fork, and that's align t far,
you know, Like I was would it be okay when
you're finished eating? If if I have a picture outside,
that's cool. I don't you know, I would never be
(14:29):
grabbed that. But when I'm when I'm eating, it's not okay.
We're going to talk about food now. You know what.
I've talked to actors who are in in a play,
or directors who are making films, or indeed musicians who
are playing gigs. There seems to be a kind of
(14:49):
rigor about what they eat and how they're affects your performance,
most notably Victoria Beckham, who said that when she was
in The Spice Girl, she discovered very early on what
she could eat to perform and which she couldn't need
to perform. And I was wondering whether there was an
element of that in your work. When you're traveling, when
(15:10):
you're going on stage to perform, how does that effect
what you eat. My answer to that question is very simple.
It's very simple because I can actually can't eat anything
before I perform um. So I'm not a nervous person,
well certainly not. I'm actually more nervous to do this
podcast with you than I am to go on stage,
(15:31):
because talking like this doesn't always come naturally to me.
But singing doesn't really make me nervous, or be on
the stage doesn't make me nervous. It's just the feeling,
the sensation of being full. When I'm trying to sing,
it affects the way my diaphragm works and it's harder
to get the notes. So generally early in the morning,
(15:52):
I'll have breakfast. Do you know if it's a show
that I have like a big breakfast, so then I don't.
Then I kind of gives me enough for the rest
of the day. Or if I'm real hungry, I have
like fruit during the day because that doesn't blake you out,
and then really badly I'll eat like eleven o'clock at
night after the show because I will be super hungry.
That's why I say I made the decision to eat
(16:13):
stuff like sushi or cleaner foods like something Japanese um,
eat a lot of soups and things like that because
I'm eating later later on. Where is your next traveling?
Where are you going? I don't know the first place
we're going to, but we have we have some great
gigs coming up this time, some Switzerland dates. And the
(16:33):
trouble is when we when I go places the places
that I always wanted to visit, other places that I
spend the least time in. Well, but I don't know why.
Maybe it's just fate, you know. I'm like, what do
you remember about this beautiful place at the airport the
hotel and the show and then the airport again in
the morning. You just don't get time sometimes, and you know,
(16:54):
the Sudds law is always the places that you think,
I would love to be in this beautiful place, but
I've only two hours after a show that you can
go back, of course, and maybe you should go a
day earlier and stay a day later so you can
eat the food of where you're going. So it's a
very very busy summer, but there are a couple of
days maybe here and there I could, I could do that.
(17:16):
I think that, you know, having that someone who cares
about food and as curious as you are and wants
to eat, well, then you should, you know, being in
switch free somewhere where the food is good. Yeah, yeah,
tell them that's the deal. You know that you'll do
the constitut you do the deal. Music is so important,
(17:46):
isn't it. Well? For me, food and music as as
a chef and working in a restaurant, working with people,
are cooking and serving food to people. We also we
love to sing. We sing quite a lot if we
have any chance at all. And somebody's leaving at somebody's birthday, um,
we sing. And the other day we had a party
(18:07):
for someone who was leaving from maternity leave and uh,
and so I just said to them, find out, you know,
who can play some music. What what can we do
for the music. And when I came in, we had
the party and we had a speech and I said
goodbye to her. You know, we had wine, and then
one of our waiters came out and played the trombone. Yeah,
(18:30):
and he played Babylove, you know, the supreme song, you know,
because she was going and she was going to have
a baby. And he came up with his trombone, and
I thought, you know, I discovered something about him. I
didn't know that he played them blone and it was beautiful.
And then you find out somebody plays the guitar. We
have somebody And music is so so important. Do you
(18:54):
ever have the music in the restaurant? No, because personally
I don't like background music itself. I always find if
I go to someone the house and they put music on,
and then you're trying to talk or trying to eadn't
the music is playing in the background, and I think
acoustically it's hard in a restaurant. But when I'm Valentine's Night,
(19:14):
we get a piano. We have a piano. We take
out a table and we have somebody coming and play
the piano. And what do you play when you come
in the house? Do you turn on music when you're Yeah,
I mean our radio doesn't really stop playing all day long,
and I find it really relaxed in the mornings. But
then you know, I'll pick up Ruben from nursery and
he'll come back and he'll listen to like he wants.
(19:36):
He wants to listen to the music from the Millions movie.
But some of the music is quite good. You know
the New Millions movie. They use the song you know
the Turtles the tea. So that's some places every day
(19:56):
of my house so happy and and this song is
in my house every single day, to the point where
if it comes to the radio, like, yeah, that's funny.
Do you talk about having a vegetable garden, Yeah, I
have been growing vegetables not this last year much because
(20:17):
my had this big polytonnel in my garden to grow in,
but we had a big storm and it blew away,
so it was like it was in the next door's house,
basically got blown over the fence. But do you, like,
did you do you actually tend the garden yourself? I
tried to. Yeah, I don't. I feel like I had
a lot of the time, I don't know what I'm doing.
But sometimes, you know, I've had quite decent amount of
(20:39):
like carrots and strawberries and stuff sometimes and successfully grow
loads of chili's way more than I needed, and a
crazy amount of tomatoes. We were talking before. I think
it's just fun with especially when with the kids around,
you know, Like I had a tomato to three maybe
four tomato plants, all the different kinds, and as soon
(21:01):
as they would grow, I'd seen them, and then the
next day they'll be none left because Ruben, we're just
going to pick them off and eat. That experience of
going anyway into a garden and taking something from I
can't get to sit and eat like spaghetti like a carbonaro,
but he'll pick off like seven Do you make a
point of trying to eat well, so so Zoe my misses.
(21:24):
She has three boys and I have I have a
four year old, So we have a four year old,
a five year old, a ten year old, and a
twelve year old in the house, all boys. Boys. So
it's hectic, and i'd say maybe like once a week
we managed to get round the table, you know. But
I'm happy with that at the moment. You give your
(21:45):
kids to catch up, Yeah, yeah, I try to let them,
to let them choose, but I tried to not give
them the ones with too much sugar and stuff in.
But I was always deprived, not deprived, that's the wrong word.
I wasn't allow sugary stuff, but for a good reason,
because you know, kids with dancing drome shouldn't have too
(22:06):
many sugary foods because they process it differently and they're
susceptible to more to diabetes. So we were not We
weren't allowed so much sugar as a kid, you know. Um,
So I think now I'm like, yeah, go ahead, just
say what you want kind of thing. Okay, So there
there's a question that I asked at the end of
(22:27):
every conversation. And this has been a really lovely conversation.
So happy that we had time to talk together. If
food is what we prepare when we're hungry, or food
is what we feed our children, or food is something
that we use for celebration, it is also something we
turned to for comfort. So I was going to ask
(22:48):
you if you had a comfort food that you could
describe to me, what would that be? Rory it would be.
I've gone through this in my head a few times,
like what would be the most confident food? But I
think it's it's like an old school bacon sandwich, like cheap,
pre cut white bread, proper butter bacon that's kind of
(23:12):
fried to it with an inch of its life like,
so it's super super crispy, about four slices and cheap
ketchup and that's it. Bacon catchup and bread and then
you cut it in half and maybe have a cup
of tea on the side. Sounds good? Is it? Bacon hot? Yeah? Yeah?
You love no dear, oh my child love you? Please
(23:37):
don't my son shin. That was so nice. Thank you.
(24:00):
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go
to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk. River
Cafe Table for is a production of I Heart Radio
and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to River Cafe Table for a production of I
Heart Radio and Adam I Studios. A few months ago,
I walked into a very busy River Cafe lunch to
be greeted by a buzz from the young waiters and
chefs working here. They were incredibly excited. Ruthie, Ruthie, they said,
(00:24):
Rag and bone Man is on table four. Why don't
you ask him to be on your podcast? I personally
have a rule not to interrupt anyone's lunch, much less
Britain's most successful and brilliant blue singer. But this time
I broke that rule, and here we are today on
a spring evening in the River Cafe garden, about to
(00:46):
get to know each other. I am incredibly excited. Alms Sunshine,
my own sunshine. You made me have me. Skis are
a great you know, dear love you Shin. Do you
(01:17):
want to come on tour? Thank you? Okay? Would you
like to read your recipe? What recipe are you going
to read? I'm going to read raspberries with Ricotta. I
was going to try and do my best radio voice
or like phone voice like my mom used to do.
Any voice you like, you can sing it, I can
(01:39):
do my best. This is a delicious summer dessert. We
only make it when the raspberries are ripe. You will
need five fifty grams of fresh raspberries, two hundred and
fifty grams of buffalo ricotta, one a mouthia lemon, four
tablespoons of caster sugar. Finally, grate the lemon pill and
(02:02):
mix with the sugar. Leave for a while to allow
the flavors to combine and the sugar to be absorbed.
Scatter the raspberries on a large plate, Turn the rocotto
out very carefully, and then slice it as finely as possible.
Place rocotto slices delicately over the raspberries and sprinkle with
(02:25):
the lemon and the sugar. My mom would be proud
of me, that she'd be fair of you. Oh, my
mom was fantastic. She's an amazing woman. I grew up
in a single parent household, just my mom, me and
my sister. And I was lucky with my mom growing
up because actually my mom and my dad because we
(02:48):
my mom didn't have much money. You know, my mom
was quite often on benefits and stuff, but we always
got buy with decent food. You know, one pot kicking
a lot of the time. But my mom was always
good with flavor. And I learned that super young. I
was maybe like ten or eleven when I started kicking myself.
Do you remember what she would make? My favorite thing
(03:09):
was always muscles and just make a huge, huge point
when I'm talking about huge, like you know, like the big,
big saucepans, lots of garlic, lots of wine, sometimes cream
if we had it, but and and you know, loads
of bread. Did your mother worked did she? Did? She have?
Not really, because my sister's down syndrome, so that sort
of meant that she most of the time, you know,
(03:31):
didn't work much. It was it was at home all
the time, looking after me and my sister. But what
was the age difference between We're only a year and
a half apart, and you said that you started cooking
when you were I think we guess If my mom
was busy and we wanted to eat or we were hungry,
I was told to just you know, either you eat
(03:51):
what's there, or you'll make something. And I think I
watched my mom cook a few times. I watched my
grandma cook, so I think I had a fairly good
understanding of how things were met A taste or it
just was trial and error and I was allowed to
explore whatever. You didn't have fear of lighting the fire
(04:12):
or those crappy electric cookers with a spiral hobs, you know,
like that, the properly eighties eighties ones. And so you
were cooking for your sister. Did she appreciate the food
that you could? Oh? Yeah, yeah sure. I mean now
she's got older, she cooked a little bit. She comes
around to my house and and tries cooking a few things.
(04:33):
But I think I just wanted to look after it, right, Yeah, yeah,
I think that also. You know, young men who have
lived in a single parent family know how to take
care of themselves and people around them much more. And
I think that gives you something, yeah, very special. I
had a friend who say she only wanted Boyfriends of
(04:53):
single parents do so much more domestically, you know. But
going to your parents, there was always music. So that
was your mom? Was it your mom and your dad
or was it yeah, my mom and dad. My first
experience of music was not from like a record player.
We're just from people being in my house playing music.
(05:15):
And was it because they had friends from musicians? Was
your what did your father do? Well, my dad's always
been a musician by trade. He's a diver actually, it
was always working away or riggs and stuff, cable lane
ships and whatnot. But he's always been a guitarist and
he played like guitar, banjo, own mandolin. Yeah, we because
(05:36):
we grew up around a lot of folk music. So
I kind of guess like food and that came together
when we were super young because it was hand in hand.
It was like everyone's coming around for dinner and the
night would end in like wine and songs. You like,
my dad playing. I don't remember it that well, but
(05:57):
I remember my uncle Rob being there with my dad
and they're being bottles of wine and blues being plaid.
Did he play? When you say American polk music was
a pizza gur weavers, I would say more like Irish
folk music, stuff like Planksty and Christie Moore. Yeah, some
(06:18):
old gypsy songs and stuff like that, and there'd be
someone playing a fiddle and does he play now he still?
Oh yeah, for real, my dad played. My dad actually
played on my last album. Yeah. Yeah. There's a song
at the end called Old Habits and there's a little
piece of guitar music that comes afterwards. Can we listen
to it? Yeah? Sure, do we have it. It's almost
(06:51):
like a secret track. So when they when the song
Old Habits finishes, there's about ten seconds and then the
guitar parts starts, and it's just something that I recorded
and my dad one day and I wanted to put
it on the record, which is nice. My dad actually
(07:19):
wrote that tune while he was I think waiting for
one of us to be born. I don't know whether
it was me, Lucy or my other sister Rhan. Is
he interested in food? Yeah, I mean my dad's a
pretty good cook. He's always fairly simple. It takes really
good but it'd be simple. It'd be like a good salad,
(07:39):
new potatoes, and then like a good piece of fish.
But it was always it was always season good and
it's fresh, you know. There was always like and he
makes a good dressing for the salad and it would
be a nice piece of like seabuss or something. He's
kind of always he went. He wouldn't allow like ketch
up on the table and stuff like that, which I
kind of right. You describe your mother, who was very
(08:00):
careful about flavoring, and you remember that you talked about muscles.
I don't know where she bought them. I don't know
where you grew up. And she used wine in the
sauce for her children. And then your father, who I
find his music so beautifully compelling. This grilled fish and
he almost sounds like the way he cooked was the
way he played his music. And so you grew up
(08:22):
with us food of your childhood? Where did they learn
to cook? Well? I mean I actually asked my dad
that question because I was like, I know, I know
that we used to have like good food as kids
and having stuff like muscles, you know, when we were young.
But I think my mom and dad lived in Spain
(08:43):
for quite a long time, and I didn't know that,
saidtle Bit later on. I think they lived in Heavier
in Spain for maybe like five or six years, but
have been in what the seventies, I guess late seventies
before they had us. Yeah, so it's probably from there.
And actually, like where we grew up in Uckfield is
(09:04):
pretty close to Brighton, close to a place called Seaford,
which is on a good place to buy fish and
Hastings which is awesome for for buying fish, probably more
so back then, tell me about as a child. The
story I've heard when you performed in order to buy
ice cream. Yeah, there's a truth to this story. Uh
(09:27):
In in the summer, the kids from our street we
used to sometimes get together, and so we had a
house full of instruments. We had guitars that were hanging
on the walls and sometimes there are old crappy ones
that no one played anymore, or or old keyboard that
doesn't really work. Um. We we would get those instruments
(09:48):
and put them out on the front lawn, open the
windows and play like whatever music it was through the
stereo as loud as possible and act like we were
playing it and put a bas get there in front
of us to ask for money so we could go
and buy ice cream from the ice cream band. Did
it well? He did? I mean people came out and
(10:09):
gave us money. I think we made made enough to
get some ice cream. That's the version of I grew up,
you know, selling lemonade when I was a kid. You know,
take lemonade and then put a table on the front
lawn and at five cents please. Yeah, we were like
buskings and like guns and roses. Okay, I am here
(10:32):
with Rory Dragon Bowman and one of his biggest fans
apart from me, that is Louie Warwyn, who is a waiter.
How old you, Louis? I'm three? Okay. So when I
went around today saying guess who's coming to dinner tonight?
Guess who's coming to talk? You were especially excited, So
I thought, why not share the mic with you? Okay,
(10:54):
here you go, hi, Rory. Um. I think as an artist,
you've collaborated with loads of different people or so, in
the spirit of collaborating, who would your dream musical dinner
guests be alive or dead? Um? Prince Probably. I've got
(11:15):
to say Prince because I feel like he was a
bit of a tricky customer and I think he'd probably
bring a good dynamic to the table. Do you think
he'd be a fussy eater? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I think
I'd be demanding, you know, but I kind of like that,
kind of like people to be a bit more rock
and roll these days. Someone take authority at the table. Absolutely.
(11:36):
How do you think that fame change the way you
perceived yourself and others perceived you? And was there ever
moment of frustration within that? It's a constant battle if
I'm honest, between being really happy that it gave me
the opportunity to do what I'm doing now and to
(11:58):
travel the world and to play shows for lots of people,
and don't I always feel lucky always, But there are
points of it that I never thought I would have
to deal with the feeling of being out in public
and have people staring at me. And it's not something
as a person that I really warm to as a
(12:19):
feeling because I'm quite private and I'm not really an
outgoing person, if I'm honest, So parts of that made
me more introvert. And the reason I live in a
place where no one is. I live in a village
that probably has about five thousand people in it, so
(12:42):
I do hide away a little bit. But I'm kind
of okay with that now. It might be something that
you know, co with, yeah, yeah, And to be honest,
I've always liked peace and quiet, not now with the
kids and that, but but you know, being being around
nature and suff like that helps for when you do
have to change world. Um, you know, during the time
(13:07):
this time, you know, when people didn't go out so much,
I found myself just forgetting that who I was and
just going out and doing normal stuff and someone would say, oh,
can I have a picture? I'm like, what, who by?
Leave me alone? I think public and private is hard.
For the most part, people are pretty understanding and nice,
(13:27):
but we do live in a different world. Now. I've
noticed in the restaurant, but when people were very, very
careful of anyone who eats here and whether they're famous
or not. We do respect privacy, but at the table
that we really if we see somebody going up to somebody,
so please respect that. Generally people will give autographs or
(13:47):
sign something later, but there's a real reluctant to have
a photograph taken with someone because you don't know where
it's going to be. Is that a line too far?
Do you think that you just draw on the photograph.
If I'm with my kids, it's a straight now every time,
because they don't they don't deserve to be drawn into
that world. But if I'm on my own don't. I
(14:08):
don't really mind, as long as people respectful. I was
in a hotel the other night and someone put a
photo in front of my face while I had him up. Well,
I had spaghetti on my fork, and that's align t far,
you know, Like I was would it be okay when
you're finished eating? If if I have a picture outside,
that's cool. I don't you know, I would never be
(14:29):
grabbed that. But when I'm when I'm eating, it's not okay.
We're going to talk about food now. You know what.
I've talked to actors who are in in a play,
or directors who are making films, or indeed musicians who
are playing gigs. There seems to be a kind of
(14:49):
rigor about what they eat and how they're affects your performance,
most notably Victoria Beckham, who said that when she was
in The Spice Girl, she discovered very early on what
she could eat to perform and which she couldn't need
to perform. And I was wondering whether there was an
element of that in your work. When you're traveling, when
(15:10):
you're going on stage to perform, how does that effect
what you eat. My answer to that question is very simple.
It's very simple because I can actually can't eat anything
before I perform um. So I'm not a nervous person,
well certainly not. I'm actually more nervous to do this
podcast with you than I am to go on stage,
(15:31):
because talking like this doesn't always come naturally to me.
But singing doesn't really make me nervous, or be on
the stage doesn't make me nervous. It's just the feeling,
the sensation of being full. When I'm trying to sing,
it affects the way my diaphragm works and it's harder
to get the notes. So generally early in the morning,
(15:52):
I'll have breakfast. Do you know if it's a show
that I have like a big breakfast, so then I don't.
Then I kind of gives me enough for the rest
of the day. Or if I'm real hungry, I have
like fruit during the day because that doesn't blake you out,
and then really badly I'll eat like eleven o'clock at
night after the show because I will be super hungry.
That's why I say I made the decision to eat
(16:13):
stuff like sushi or cleaner foods like something Japanese um,
eat a lot of soups and things like that because
I'm eating later later on. Where is your next traveling?
Where are you going? I don't know the first place
we're going to, but we have we have some great
gigs coming up this time, some Switzerland dates. And the
(16:33):
trouble is when we when I go places the places
that I always wanted to visit, other places that I
spend the least time in. Well, but I don't know why.
Maybe it's just fate, you know. I'm like, what do
you remember about this beautiful place at the airport the
hotel and the show and then the airport again in
the morning. You just don't get time sometimes, and you know,
(16:54):
the Sudds law is always the places that you think,
I would love to be in this beautiful place, but
I've only two hours after a show that you can
go back, of course, and maybe you should go a
day earlier and stay a day later so you can
eat the food of where you're going. So it's a
very very busy summer, but there are a couple of
days maybe here and there I could, I could do that.
(17:16):
I think that, you know, having that someone who cares
about food and as curious as you are and wants
to eat, well, then you should, you know, being in
switch free somewhere where the food is good. Yeah, yeah,
tell them that's the deal. You know that you'll do
the constitut you do the deal. Music is so important,
(17:46):
isn't it. Well? For me, food and music as as
a chef and working in a restaurant, working with people,
are cooking and serving food to people. We also we
love to sing. We sing quite a lot if we
have any chance at all. And somebody's leaving at somebody's birthday, um,
we sing. And the other day we had a party
(18:07):
for someone who was leaving from maternity leave and uh,
and so I just said to them, find out, you know,
who can play some music. What what can we do
for the music. And when I came in, we had
the party and we had a speech and I said
goodbye to her. You know, we had wine, and then
one of our waiters came out and played the trombone. Yeah,
(18:30):
and he played Babylove, you know, the supreme song, you know,
because she was going and she was going to have
a baby. And he came up with his trombone, and
I thought, you know, I discovered something about him. I
didn't know that he played them blone and it was beautiful.
And then you find out somebody plays the guitar. We
have somebody And music is so so important. Do you
(18:54):
ever have the music in the restaurant? No, because personally
I don't like background music itself. I always find if
I go to someone the house and they put music on,
and then you're trying to talk or trying to eadn't
the music is playing in the background, and I think
acoustically it's hard in a restaurant. But when I'm Valentine's Night,
(19:14):
we get a piano. We have a piano. We take
out a table and we have somebody coming and play
the piano. And what do you play when you come
in the house? Do you turn on music when you're Yeah,
I mean our radio doesn't really stop playing all day long,
and I find it really relaxed in the mornings. But
then you know, I'll pick up Ruben from nursery and
he'll come back and he'll listen to like he wants.
(19:36):
He wants to listen to the music from the Millions movie.
But some of the music is quite good. You know
the New Millions movie. They use the song you know
the Turtles the tea. So that's some places every day
(19:56):
of my house so happy and and this song is
in my house every single day, to the point where
if it comes to the radio, like, yeah, that's funny.
Do you talk about having a vegetable garden, Yeah, I
have been growing vegetables not this last year much because
(20:17):
my had this big polytonnel in my garden to grow in,
but we had a big storm and it blew away,
so it was like it was in the next door's house,
basically got blown over the fence. But do you, like,
did you do you actually tend the garden yourself? I
tried to. Yeah, I don't. I feel like I had
a lot of the time, I don't know what I'm doing.
But sometimes, you know, I've had quite decent amount of
(20:39):
like carrots and strawberries and stuff sometimes and successfully grow
loads of chili's way more than I needed, and a
crazy amount of tomatoes. We were talking before. I think
it's just fun with especially when with the kids around,
you know, Like I had a tomato to three maybe
four tomato plants, all the different kinds, and as soon
(21:01):
as they would grow, I'd seen them, and then the
next day they'll be none left because Ruben, we're just
going to pick them off and eat. That experience of
going anyway into a garden and taking something from I
can't get to sit and eat like spaghetti like a carbonaro,
but he'll pick off like seven Do you make a
point of trying to eat well, so so Zoe my misses.
(21:24):
She has three boys and I have I have a
four year old, So we have a four year old,
a five year old, a ten year old, and a
twelve year old in the house, all boys. Boys. So
it's hectic, and i'd say maybe like once a week
we managed to get round the table, you know. But
I'm happy with that at the moment. You give your
(21:45):
kids to catch up, Yeah, yeah, I try to let them,
to let them choose, but I tried to not give
them the ones with too much sugar and stuff in.
But I was always deprived, not deprived, that's the wrong word.
I wasn't allow sugary stuff, but for a good reason,
because you know, kids with dancing drome shouldn't have too
(22:06):
many sugary foods because they process it differently and they're
susceptible to more to diabetes. So we were not We
weren't allowed so much sugar as a kid, you know. Um,
So I think now I'm like, yeah, go ahead, just
say what you want kind of thing. Okay, So there
there's a question that I asked at the end of
(22:27):
every conversation. And this has been a really lovely conversation.
So happy that we had time to talk together. If
food is what we prepare when we're hungry, or food
is what we feed our children, or food is something
that we use for celebration, it is also something we
turned to for comfort. So I was going to ask
(22:48):
you if you had a comfort food that you could
describe to me, what would that be? Rory it would be.
I've gone through this in my head a few times,
like what would be the most confident food? But I
think it's it's like an old school bacon sandwich, like cheap,
pre cut white bread, proper butter bacon that's kind of
(23:12):
fried to it with an inch of its life like,
so it's super super crispy, about four slices and cheap
ketchup and that's it. Bacon catchup and bread and then
you cut it in half and maybe have a cup
of tea on the side. Sounds good? Is it? Bacon hot? Yeah? Yeah?
You love no dear, oh my child love you? Please
(23:37):
don't my son shin. That was so nice. Thank you.
(24:00):
To visit the online shop of The River Cafe, go
to shop the River Cafe dot co dot uk. River
Cafe Table for is a production of I Heart Radio
and Adami Studios. For more podcasts from I heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Ruth Rogers
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