August 4, 2025 • 40 mins
Part Two of our ‘Best Of Season 4’ revisits guests from some of our favourite episodes.
Join Richard E. Grant, Francis Ford Coppola, Cate Blanchett, Tony Blair, Bono, Sienna Miller and Erling Kagge talking about food and memories, food and family, food and adventure and much much more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four. In partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Over this season, forty guests have joined me here at
the River Cafe, and today we're looking back at some
of those conversations.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Richard E.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Grant, Francis Ford Coppola, Kate Blanchett, Tony Blair, Bono, Sienna Miller,
and erle In CagA. When I think of Richardy Grant,
of course I think of his brilliant films and him
as a great actor. But what I really think of
(00:37):
is Richard and his wife Joan in the early days
of the River Cafe. They were married a year before
the restaurant opened and lived right across the river. Coming
in for lunch, are we sitting at the same table.
They were warm and lovely and absorbed in each other journeys.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
To make your chocolate nemesis every single cres party we had,
and she'd make two of them. And I think the
combination of that is must be thirty six eggs.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Let's compare a recipe to a script. So when you're
comproising your lines, tell me about the difference between a
kind of script and.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
The exactly same way you have the recipe in front
of you, but then something inspires you to add something,
or though you're you go of in a tangent, do
you ask if the director or the writer are open
to an adjunct to something or an addition or an
improvisation around sections. So it means that it evolves, is
not unless it's Shakespeare. You can't improve on a genius. Really,
(01:41):
I don't think so. And because of the rhythm and
the meter of it, you would be doing a disservice.
I think if you tried to extemporize on it.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
What does in encore like at the end of the performance.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I've only done one musical, My Fair Lady, And because
musical there's music for people to reperform, you can do
a sort of final verse of something. But in the
theater you can't. All you can do is bout. You
can't say, oh, well I'll do I'll do to be
or not to be again. Yeah, that's an amazing That's
(02:17):
what I.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Really love is sometimes when the end of a musical,
then it's all over, and then they come like guys
and dolls will come out and do you know lucky
a lady or when you see a guy or you
my fair lady, you could come out.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
You obviously played Henry Higgins.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Higgins, what a great part, absolutely amazing role.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
What's your favorite song from My Fair Lady? I think
I wonder if it's the same as mine?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Go on, what is yours?
Speaker 5 (02:44):
I've grown accustomed to her face?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Is there a better song? Thrown a custom? I've gone accustomed.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
To the She whistles nice and new smiles her friends,
her perhaps her.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
Dad's second to me.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Now it's to you. That should be the ending of
this from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Oh I I we shard sang it for my seventeenth
birthday to be.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I said, that's all I'm want you to do is
to sing me. I've gone a custom interip.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I do think it's a beautiful because this is amazing.
Was that the last theater that you did.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, that's the last time I did theater and I
did it in Chicago ten years ago, and then I
did it at the Sydney Opera fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I should bring it to London. I would love to
see it again. You can't do it now because of misogyny.
Because of the misogyny, Yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Melissa McCarthy's daughters came to see it in Chicago, and
they were ten and thirteen, and they were appalled by
the misogyny of it. They said, how can any woman
put up with that?
Speaker 5 (03:54):
When you were performing it, did you feel a sense?
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Well, my steer on it was that Higgins is on spectrum,
and that he is. He doesn't mean to be as
cruel as he is. He just he you know, he
says that there's no filter whatsoever, so it just comes out,
you know, you should be thrown out like a cabbage
(04:17):
ley for whatever. And he is so joy filled when
Eliza gets all the words phonetically correct. Yes, he embraces
her and it's you know, it's no accident to me
that straight after that she sings, I could have danced
all night, and it is The way that I interpreted
was that that was as close as he could ever
(04:39):
get to saying he's in love with somebody interesting. So
it was very physical and we grabbed each other.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
And I think it's the first musical I ever saw.
I think I went to see it.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I was saying the other day that my dad used
to take me because we lived in upstate, New York,
and every sort of big treat maybe once every couple
of months, he would take me down to New York
in the car and to have lunch, and then you'd
take me to a musical, and then we would buy
the record, and then we would take it home to
the country, and there was nothing else to do except
just listen to it all the time.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So really, this is really generational that we share on
this because in the sixties, every musical that came out,
my parents had the LP of it and played it incessantly,
so our whole family knew the lyrics of every single
musical that came out. You say it to people now,
I think you're yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
But the other thing about the musicals, without being naming
any is that they don't have those.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Two and so much anymore. They're they're not as.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Kind of hummable, are they that you come out you
can remember on the street.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Where you live. The Wicked would argue.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
With us, probably, yeah, but I find it, Yeah, I
find it slightly challenging, but it isn't. I haven't seen
My Fair Lady ever, probably even since I was a
kid a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
So on Broadway, Yeah, do you remember.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Who was in it?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I think it was Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. I
think it was that I was really young, I have
to say so, I think, but it was my very
first musical. And then I saw I saw West Side Story,
I saw My Fair Lady. I saw I really one that,
and he used to come in here, stop the world,
I want to get off.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, and Leslie and Evie came here all the time,
and I used to come up to it. I remember
the first time I met him, he was with Michael
Gabe and I said, I bet I'm the only person
in this room that knows, you know, say my mishki
mischikal for whatever those songs were or what kind of
full of And he loved it.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
He would sing it.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
With me because he could have any chance to see.
But those, yeah, they kind of grow up with those,
you know, do you know what your first one?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
The first one was the Sound of Music, and then
Mary Poppins. But I'd heard My Fair Lady before I
saw those, before I saw the movie. My parents had
all the Rogers in Hammerstein, Carousel, King, and I had
all those record collections, so I knew all those before
I ever saw the movies.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Since Francis Ford Coppola agreed to do a podcast with me.
I've been slightly overwhelmed, but good friends who know us,
both Wes Anderson, Fisher, Stevens, Greta Gerwerk assured me. Actually, Ruthie,
the two of you are rather alike. Francis and I
are here together after a long lunch in the River
Cafe to talk about food and wine, movies and families,
(07:34):
menus and friends, and much much more.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
I'm convinced that The Godfather was successful because it was
the first gangster film that had a lot of kids
running around in the seats. They never were gangster pictures
though they didn't have kids. But of course an Italian
wedding was all the kids sliding around.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
So you grew up in a family that could Italian food,
but in New York and New York speak Italian.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
That's how we started. Did you know Italian?
Speaker 4 (08:03):
No? I only heard some cursed, but my mother didn't
want us to be like Italians couldn't live in certain neighborhoods. Yeah,
and the Italians, you know, each immigrant group in America
was bullied by the one that came before, and the
one who came before. The Italians were the Irish, and
(08:23):
the Irish used to beat up on the Italians.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
The policeman and the Godfather, right, the police.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
The police were all Irish and they used to they
used to pick. That's the way it works.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
So you were restricted to this neighborhood. And did you
experience food other than Italian food or did you was
eating out?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
If you see the Godfather, you realized that I knew
that Italians used to get takeout Chinese food.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, every street.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Corner in New York had a German delicatessen, a candy
store what we call the candy store, which was a
soda fountain where they sold coke which was five cents
said they make it to put the syrup and it
wouldn't be in a bottle, and model airplanes and uh uh.
And a German delicatessen where you would buy cheesecake.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
So there there would be a mix.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
And and always a Chinese restaurant in the neighborhoods. There
were a lot of Polish people and Italians because they
were both Catholic. And there were a lot of Italian
Polish weddings because they were both Catholic. And I went
to a lot of Polish weddings, and I knew what
Polish food was like. They had kebbasa whereas we had sazich.
(09:36):
It was America. It was a wonderful a mixture of cultures.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
And we want to keep that. We want to keep
we want to keep that.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
And then should we talk about polio.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Question.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I'd be interested in the fact that as a child
you had polio and spent how long invent I spent.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
The whole sixth grade, so a whole year year, and
little boy a year. And in those days polio, you know,
of course it had also affected adults. President Franklin Roosevelt
had polio, but there was an epidemic for children in
nineteen forty nine. And I was a cup Scout and
I went on a cup Scout camp out and it
(10:17):
was raining, and the next morning I had the symptoms.
And you know, polio only affects you one night. In
other words, it's the night of the fever. Is the
night you have it, and then you get over it.
But the damage is to your spinal cord, and napolio
destroys the nerves selectively within the spinal cord, so that
(10:41):
I mean literally, when I woke up, I woke up
in an a ward with like eight hundred kids piled
up everywhere crying a whole row of iron lungs because
the kids whose lungs were affected couldn't breathe, so they
had to be in a machine that breathe, and they
were crying for their parents. Nightmare.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
We have good news.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Ruthie's Table four is launching on YouTube throughout the summer.
We'll be posting some of our favorite interviews across the series.
To watch, go to YouTube dot com slash hat symbol
Ruthie's Table four pod. People always ask me who my
(11:30):
dream guest would be on Ruthie's Table four. Kate Blanchett
has always been top of that list. An actor, director,
and a vocal activist for values and ideas close to
my heart.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Kate and I are going.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
To talk about our shared love of food and as always.
Speaker 8 (11:47):
Family, I mean brand Australia. When I was growing up
with multiculturalism and so once we really embraced the wave
of Vietnamese and Lemonese and Greek and Italian immigrants and refugees,
our cuisine became extraordinary. And now it's been exported to
the world as Pan Pacific or Asia Pacific and so
(12:11):
it's but at the time when I was growing up,
my mother was an excellent cross.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
So tell me about So your mother was left with
three children. Yeah, well she was what she.
Speaker 8 (12:20):
Was thirty nine and my brother was eleven, I was ten. Well,
she had to go back to work as a as
a teacher, and so she taught home economics. So our
kitchen was fantastic private. Yeah, a lot of a lot
of Italian cooking and a lot of fresh seafood and salads,
(12:41):
and that was not what people were eating at the time.
But I think the thing when there was a lot
of grief in my house. So the meals were delicious,
but they were silent, and that's been one of the
great joys I think from my side of the family.
But also for me is my husband came from this
(13:02):
enormous Catholic family. So the food may not have been Yeah,
I know he's Australian, but today had massively noisy, loud,
raucous meals.
Speaker 7 (13:13):
And my husband's an excellent cook.
Speaker 8 (13:15):
And actually the first time I met my brother in
law was at Christmas and he there was I came
towards the house and there.
Speaker 7 (13:23):
Was people were screaming with laughter.
Speaker 8 (13:25):
And I don't know what the what the meal is,
but it's a medieval recipe where you stuff a goose.
Speaker 7 (13:32):
With a pigeon.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
I know that quail, that's and what had.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
Happened was he'd open oven and the thing.
Speaker 8 (13:40):
Shot out the telescope out onto the wall. So there
goes Christmas lunch. Yeah, so they were madly trying to
stuff it back in.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
I know that recipe.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I mean, I've never done it myself, but I know
that it's dangerous.
Speaker 7 (13:53):
Have you ever done that?
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Do you know that?
Speaker 7 (13:55):
Really dangerous?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
That's so funny because they probably asked the cookie they
expand bad and then therefore, Yeah, that's hilarious.
Speaker 8 (14:02):
Yeah, so they're wildly adventurous with their When you met him,
my husband and I got to we've been married. God,
we got married very quickly, actually in ninety seven. It
wasn't a shotgun wedding. We didn't have children for quite
some time, but I think we're twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, so you were embraced by this family. But going
back to yours, so you grew up with you know,
your father in the beginning cooking, and I assume that
your mother both cooked and meals and lots of people,
evacues and people and then it became a kind of sadness.
Speaker 7 (14:36):
And then did there was very simon.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yeah, and did that change? Did you?
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Well?
Speaker 8 (14:42):
I yeah, I was thinking about it, maybe because I
was coming to speak to you.
Speaker 7 (14:46):
But then I've always loved the dinner party.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
And so what I would do is I wouldn't go
to a lot of parties as a teenager.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
I would have dinner parties.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (14:56):
Yeah, so I would where everyone would dress up, My
girlfriends would all dress up, and it would all cook
something and we'd you know, I don't know who we
were trying to ape or what we were trying to eate.
There was a lot of sorbet inside orange cups and
I don't know. And I grew up with this Salvador
Daly cookbook, you know, the one that he'd done and
he'd done the illustrations. Yes, yes, and I cooked recides
(15:18):
from that.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's crazy to admit that I didn't make anything.
Speaker 7 (15:22):
That was where I cooked my first.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
Cerealist cookbook, a Surrealist Respue.
Speaker 7 (15:26):
But it was hard in Melbourne at the time to
find a pheasant.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
Brave of you.
Speaker 8 (15:30):
I tried, I tried so I cooked and tried to
decorate the dishes from the Salvador Daly cookbook.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
What age was this?
Speaker 7 (15:39):
This is probably about thirteen.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
So that's yeah, because I often talked to people who
when I say, Okay, so you grew up in this
nurturing home with a grandmother and a mother and cooking,
and then what happened when you left home? And very
often people say, then when I had my own flat
and I started buying local ingredients and I started cooking.
But thirteen is an early age to do and to entertain.
Speaker 8 (16:02):
And I think it's because it was my father's book.
He worked in advertising, and it was must have been
a gift that he was given one year and yeah,
so it was sort of trying to Yeah, not that
I can remember him ever cooking from it, but it
was just it was something of his that I maybe
I gravitated towards that.
Speaker 7 (16:20):
And also this.
Speaker 8 (16:23):
Surrealism seemed to make sense to me. I had very
vivid nightmares and dreams as a child, and so his
work and the surrealism movement as a whole kind of
really unlocked something for me.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
The world knows Tony Blair as a visionary leader prime minister.
I know him as a close and loyal friend and
the first dinner we had for him in our home
in nineteen ninety six, he went straight into the kitchen
to talk to a young, inexperienced chef, Jamie Oliver, asking
how he was making the rottolo dispinacci. Tony Blair has
(17:05):
been interviewed countless times. We're going to look at his
life and his career through memories of food, food in politics,
food and family and tonight the curiosity.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Is all mine.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
So Downing Street is in office, it's a public space,
it's a governmental space, but it's also a home. And
you were there with young children and presumably they came
home from school and you sat down to meals or
did you not. Did you have a certain way that
this was work and then you would have family time
(17:39):
at the weekends and was there a routine of structure
for being a family.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Or before going into Downy Street. I mean we did
have a much more structured life, but then once you
become premnise to frankly, your schedules just packed. And so
at the weekends usually when we were through and checkers,
we would eat all together and that would be great,
but otherwise it was pretty hand to mouth. When my
(18:04):
kids knew I was coming on this podcast, they said
to me, are you going to tell them that you
used to cook for us and that you're cooking was terrible?
And I said, well, now, what I might just do
is just say that the meals I cooked for my
children were memorable. Memorable, believe it at that. So yeah,
(18:25):
I mean no, Downing Street was just too busy.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
There wasn't or maybe there still isn't a Downing Street
chef that cooks first lunch. And I know at the
White House they have the residents, and I know that
the State Department is very careful with ambassadors about what
they can spend on parties and food. But to have
the Office of the Prime Ministry, you would think that
(18:50):
there was a yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
And by the way, in our embassies you can eat
very well in British embassies abroad in the Elisa you get.
I think it's a high quality of actually and very
traditional friends cooking.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
You didn't give very many steak dinners at Downing Street
that you would know.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
I didn't be at the Palace.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
I always took the view with with didn't. I mean,
occasionally I would do it and if someone really wanted
to have a dinner. But I with other political leaders,
I mean, I just know what I feel like. You know,
when you're engaged with the political leader. I mean, you know,
maybe you have a drink together and so on, and
maybe you do have a meal together occasionally, but you
want to do business. You want to sort out the
(19:29):
business of the day. And then if you're a foreign
leader and you're visiting, and you're in London, and you know,
maybe frankly would like to go out and spend some
time with your your friends or colleagues and rather than
be within the formality of these dinners, which on the
whole I never felt yielded a great deal.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Was there any in your memory that wasn't in China
or in Russia, or in Germany or France. Was there
a steak dinner that really well brings in your memory?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
There wasn't a state dinners where the head of state,
So the only state dinner in the UK would be
the Queen obviously getting the dinner, and where again the
food is pretty good actually, but I do remember one
really memorable meal. So France and the UK and Germany
(20:17):
we were all together in this consort him to build
the airbus three eighty okay, and we visited Toulouse, which
is where part of the plane was being being built,
and so the leaders all went there and jactually Rack
was the president at the time. And I remember we
after we visited the plant and saw the plane and
(20:39):
so on, we sat down and we had a I
think they called it a cas.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
It was completed. What was it like?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
What was just with with the beans and the yeah
and the sausage, and it was unbelievably good. And the
funny thing was so Jacquesuiaq, who's you know, big, big,
big and someone I actually, despite our disagreements politically from
time to time, I liked greatly. But the strange thing
about Jack was he didn't drink wine. He's a French president,
(21:09):
didn't drink wine.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
He didn't drink wine.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And I don't think he was very interested in food.
I mean, I'm and so I was saying to it
this he was talking to me about the airbus three eighteen.
I was saying to him, Jack, you gotta understand this
food is absolutely unbelievable. And I think he's always a
bit eccentric. After a time, because I was calling the
chef over and talking to him and saying like, okay,
(21:32):
that is a memorable meal.
Speaker 9 (21:35):
I do you remember having to eat humble pie with
George Bush because I'd slagged.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
That dish is humble pie? Did you have that for dessert?
Was that like apple pie or raspberry pie? Had humble pie?
Speaker 9 (21:50):
It's a dish Irish people don't like to eat.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Fifteen years ago, staying in the home Bonno's best friend
Patty mckillan, I injured my back and for a week
the only people I.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
Met were Irish.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
The warmth, the laughter, the music, the kindness was so overwhelming,
even with the pain. I wanted it to last forever too.
Today Bono and I are going to talk about family, food, music,
memories and more. You too his five for social justice
with his one campaign and read his philanthropy, his strong values,
(22:29):
his vision.
Speaker 9 (22:31):
I'd gone in and I'd had a meeting with them.
I was just very sort of cross because he had
said that we were going to get these aid drugs
to people on bicycles and motorcycles, whatever it takes to
the furthest reaches, whatever. And I'd said, if you can
get guinness to the rural poor, if you can get
Coca Cola. We can get these lifesaving drugs. And I said,
(22:54):
mister President, paint them red, white and blue if you want.
These will be the best advertisements for America ever. So eventually,
after extraordinary campaign with a lot of people involved from
different sides of the fence, he'd agreed announced it, and
then I'd gone in and said it's not happening. It's
not happening, and eventually it did. It's twenty six million
(23:18):
people actually since then, because Barack Obama followed through and
I went in and I've been banging. I remember I
was banging on the table of the President of the
United States, and he got, hey, hey, I am the president. Okay,
I I I'll just remind you of that.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
I inspect your He he was funny too, George Bush.
Speaker 9 (23:41):
He had a great, great sense of humor. Yeah, so
I remember that anyway. I remember he said, sit down,
have some lunch, let's talk.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
About do you remember what you ate?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Chicken?
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Chicken? And then did you meet with Barack Obama?
Speaker 7 (23:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (23:59):
Yeah, with every few times, a few times. But again
I would just say, and Obama was an extraordinary man
for so many reasons, but one of the more extraordinary
reasons is that even though George Bush had started this
pep FAR, which is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief,
(24:22):
Barack Obama carried it on, in fact, put more of
American taxpayers money into it, even in President Bush had
and never asked for recognition. And it was kind of amazing.
But I do remember once, maybe this is okay to
tell the story because everyone knows now, I remember sitting
(24:46):
with Alicia Keys, myself and Barack Obama having lunch, and
I brought him a guitar and I ended up I
played I don't know, something like something simple on the guitar,
and he Breack Obama began to sing.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Yeah, he loves to sing.
Speaker 9 (25:05):
But he'd never sung in public at that point, and
I was I was slagging them off, saying, oh, so
it's not enough to be the president of the United States.
You know, you're coming after our jobs. You're coming after
our jobs. And then a week later he sang and
then I don't know if you recall after the school
shooting when he sang amazing.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Grace, sang amazing grace.
Speaker 9 (25:28):
Can you imagine the leader of the free world singing
amazing Grace?
Speaker 5 (25:32):
And sing amazing Grace.
Speaker 9 (25:35):
It's a song that means to me. It's a song
about a slaver, John John Newton, whose ship sank them
in Donny Gaull in Northern Ireland. So people that don't
gonna feel close to this song, but I will sing
it if you like.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Ea z Grace Hal sweet.
Speaker 6 (26:06):
Boo Le's say.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Ooh rage like me?
Speaker 9 (26:21):
Yeah, w wows loss.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Boot now I am found.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Was blind.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Boot now?
Speaker 10 (26:40):
I see everyone knows.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Sianna Miller is an actress, of fashion designer and a
brave combatant who stood up for her rights against a
powerful media empire. Your experience that you had as a
person who was you know, doing their work, raising their children,
having your privacy, doing no harm, breaking no rules. Had
something horrible happened to her? And we could bring it
(27:19):
back to the food. I could say, what do you
eat when a when a newspaper empire goes for you
and tries to destroy you and goes into your phone?
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Did that?
Speaker 5 (27:27):
Did you feel hungry? Or did you give up eating?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
But it is part of our conversation life and food
and fairness. And I wondered if you could say how
you felt when you woke up in the morning and knew.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
Did you have breakfast or did you did stress? I
lose my appetite, you lose it.
Speaker 11 (27:47):
Yeah, it's interesting and I'm such a I love to
eat more than anything. It's kind of it's where I
get a huge amount of pleasure. But I yeah, I
lose my appetite if I'm under immense stress.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
So what was it nice?
Speaker 11 (28:00):
Well, the paparazzi attention at a very young age was
probably the most traumatizing and surreal because it happened from
one day to the next.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
I will weld.
Speaker 11 (28:09):
I was twenty one and I'd fallen in love with
my co star of.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
My first film, and he was very famous, and there
were pictures of us.
Speaker 11 (28:20):
We'd gone to the National Portrait Gallery or something, the
Taate Modern, I can't remember. And I remember leaving his
house the following day and getting in a black taxi
and the cave saying have.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
You seen the news of the world today? And I
was like, what you know?
Speaker 7 (28:33):
Twenty one?
Speaker 6 (28:33):
And he said have you seen the news of the world?
Speaker 11 (28:35):
And I said no, and he said, you're all over it,
and he threw a copy of the newspaper in the
back of the cab.
Speaker 6 (28:40):
And there we were on the front.
Speaker 11 (28:43):
It was so it was honestly like normal life to
absolute surreal, you know, life after that and I got
home to my flat and there were photographers all outside
my flat and that was it.
Speaker 6 (28:54):
That was it. It was gloves off at.
Speaker 11 (28:56):
That moment in culture where the tabloids had it all
the power and young women were really persecuted and men.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
But it was really crazy. And at first it was
kind of funny.
Speaker 11 (29:06):
I felt like Lara Croft or in some virtual experience,
and my friends we'd like run away and try and hide,
and it was giggly, but it became very quickly, very
insidious because it was threatening and aggressive, and it really
took over my entire identity. I felt like was being
(29:27):
written and read by people. But I felt so out
of control in a really formative moment. And this all
happened before that film had come out, or any film
would come out. I was at the very beginning of
my career, and I do look back and wonder how
different things would have been if I had been known
as an actor.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
First.
Speaker 11 (29:48):
It was a lot of a battle to kind of
establish myself and to be taken seriously and not seen
as someone who wore ice clothes, or had a famous boyfriend,
or it was a battle, and I think I definitely
through it.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
I'm sure at that.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
Time, but it was.
Speaker 11 (30:02):
And then of course the phone hacking. I knew that
was going on at the time.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
It was very difficult.
Speaker 11 (30:08):
Because it would be well, it would be impossible for
them to know half of what they knew without some
form of eavesdropping. And I think there were bugs put
in houses and in cars, and trackers on cars and
all sorts of it was and you feel like you're
going mad, but clicks on the line of my mother's landline.
(30:29):
So it was relieving in a way to know that
I hadn't gone mad when I found out.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
But to find out was really difficult.
Speaker 11 (30:38):
I had to take the met Police to court to
get the evidence that they had in order to take
the news of the world to court, and they wanted
twenty one days to hand it over the evidence that
they had, and the judge said, hand it over.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
Today in these four huge boxes filled.
Speaker 11 (30:51):
With emails and phone numbers and numbers of my friends
and anyway, in the end I didn't settle out of
I took them to court, which meant I got far
less money than I would have done had I been quiet.
But actually it's one of the proudest things that I did.
And now some of the friends whose numbers they also
(31:11):
had got some money too, So it kind of feels
like that's a lovely that's a lovely ending to a saga.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
Yeah, I was so comforted.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
You could find in those days into cooking or to.
Speaker 11 (31:24):
The cooking was always a grounding. I mean, it was
a decade really of harassment, but as much as possible,
it's okay because it sucks in retrospect, but it also
is a huge part of who.
Speaker 7 (31:39):
I am and why I am.
Speaker 11 (31:40):
The way that I am and what matters to me
is very clear, and what doesn't matter and what's out
of your control is also very clear. And I think
I tried to control it for a long time and
then gave up. And I now know my friends, my family,
the people I love, the restaurants I love, the food
I love, The community around me is sacred and respected,
and the rest I don't care. I feel like everyone
(32:03):
in the world see my you know, dirty underwear.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
There's nothing more I can. Everyone knows everything, whatever it's.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
But I know the power.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Yeah, that's saying that gives you.
Speaker 6 (32:12):
I have been killed, you.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
Know, there are people who have been destroyed.
Speaker 11 (32:16):
Well now I'm proud that I didn't go that far,
but I understand absolutely why you lose your mind. It
kind of perpetuates behavior that coping mechanisms that are toxic,
drinking too much or going out too much, or just
keeping moving because it's also crazy and you can see
why people unravel, and actually it suits them the more
(32:37):
you unravel. But I think, yeah, having that stability in
my family, my mother, my sister, it kept it kept
me anchored in a way where I feel like if
I didn't have that, I understand how people derail completely.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Imagine a state bottled olive oil, chair and bottle for
the River Cafe arriving at your door every month. Our
subscription is available for six or twelve months, with each
oil chosen personally by our head chefs and varying with
each delivery. It's a perfect way to bring some River
Cafe flavor into your home or to show someone you
(33:19):
really care for them with the gift. Visit our website
shop the Rivercafe dot co UK to place your order now.
Arlene Kaga is one of the world's great explorers, a
man whose life embraces solitude. He is the first person
(33:41):
to reach by foot the North Pole, South Pole, and
Mount Everest.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
When did you first become in love with a pole?
With all the.
Speaker 12 (33:50):
First time I became aware of the North Pole, I
was seven years old. My pilots gave me this globe,
this globust, for my birthday present. And this was in
nineteen seventy. So at that time, the globes were small,
a bit blueish dark blue where the oceans were deep,
it was dark brown where the mountains were high. And
(34:12):
at the top of the globe it was a little
flat metal plate to kind of hold the globe together.
And then I was wondering what's below that metal, and
of course that was a North Pole. And then, as
you know, then I was wandering about it. And then
slowly through my life I got more and more interested
(34:32):
and eventually obsessed about walking to the North Pole. So
I was in low with the North Pole for many years.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
What's the longest time you've gone on a trip? Would
it be for a month?
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Would it be?
Speaker 5 (34:45):
Oh, makes too.
Speaker 12 (34:46):
Much like sixty sixty five days?
Speaker 5 (34:49):
Sixty five days.
Speaker 12 (34:50):
They bring all the food you need with you the
whole time.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Okay, So what are the disciplines around that? How much
it will wait to carry, how much space it will take,
and how much nutrition will it give you?
Speaker 12 (35:03):
Yes, balance, it's you eat around one kilow every day
with dried food and they mix it with water.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
It's all dry old.
Speaker 12 (35:13):
Dry to say weight, because what is it for breakfast?
You have oat oat meal?
Speaker 5 (35:19):
You have to use a lot of water then.
Speaker 12 (35:20):
Yeah, from melting ice and snow. Oh, so you don't
bring in the water. So that's a good noise, that's
a goodness. So don't worry about that.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
Take any you just take the snow and just let it.
Speaker 12 (35:32):
Yeah, you need to find all old ice because fresh
fresh ice contains lots of salt. So you can tell
by the color of the eyes if it contains salt
or not.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
And then how do you melt it?
Speaker 12 (35:46):
You melt it by having little primacies that what they
call it little heater, which is made in a way
so all the heat from the flame goes to the pot.
So even when it's minus fourteen fifty degrees, we're not
heating the tent. It gets a little but warmer because
of the body heat. But it's we don't heat the tent.
Speaker 5 (36:07):
Why don't you want to eat because.
Speaker 12 (36:08):
You want to say weight, So you have like two
des liters of fuel per day, and then you have
to really save everything because you've got to drag everything
you need for more than two months, and then you're
not having enough fuel to heat the tent, so you're
freezing so much to actually you know you sometimes you
start crying because you're freezing so much. But anyway, so
(36:32):
this this old milk, but also we mix it with
formula milk, dried formula milk because that's what gives the
most energy program and then eat the same for larnch
throughout the day, maybe some chocolate or definitely some chocolate,
but with extra calories, especially made chocolate. The extra calories
just as like a snack, having brakes and maybe chocolate.
(36:55):
Like you have to get used to the taste because
it's so much fatter it so it doesn't really taste
well at home. But you know the thing is this
food is none of this food tastes really good when
you start eating it. But then as the days and
weeks pass by and you get more and more tired
and more and more hungry, it tastes better and better
(37:17):
and better, and eventually it tastes as good as a
food at Wevercaffee.
Speaker 5 (37:23):
Which absolutely.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I was going to ask you, if you ever on
a trip were aware that it might be your birthday,
it might be Christmas, it might be a Norwegian holiday,
would you celebrate in any way?
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Yes.
Speaker 12 (37:39):
When I walked to the South Paul alone, I had
Christmas and New Year's by myself. I was alone for
fifty days and nights.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
And fifty were alone for fifty days.
Speaker 12 (37:51):
And no radio and no telephone contact, so in total solitude.
So then I was still remembering Christmas Eve, which is
a big day Norway. I ate a little bit extra,
had a piece of cake with me. When you're alone
for such a long time, you kind of stop thinking
in the sense that the past and the future don't
(38:12):
matter so much. And of course that's a kind of
a noise too, because thinking and think about the past
or the future, but you're very much in the present.
You kind of stop thinking, which is a beautiful feeling.
But then on Christmas Eve, I sat there eating this cake,
I felt like, at least like you know, then I
was thinking about people back home and that they were
(38:32):
thinking about me, because Also, when you're alone for such
a long time you don't really believe people, then you
kind of you kind of get a feeling that you're
also kind of forgotten.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
And was there a pleasure that you had when you
were walking the.
Speaker 12 (38:48):
Pleasure is I think the pleasures on an expedition are
there original sources to gratefulness in the sense that you
get rested when you talk tired, you get warm after
having been cold, you get full after having been hungry,
and that's kind of that's what gratefulness is about. And
(39:11):
I think gratefulness is one of the most undervalued things
in life.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
And as I.
Speaker 12 (39:17):
Said, Norway, where most people should be super duper grateful
all day hard and Moon is grateful, so you know,
we should almost learn in that school to be grateful.
But anyway, on an expedition, you really feel gratefulness for
those three reasons and the same reasons why humans very
grateful one hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
And that's it for this season. That with this table before,
we'll be back in October, and until then we'll be
sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. And
remember now you can watch the full conversations on our
new YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and search for
(40:02):
Ruthie's Table four, have a wonderful, wonderful summer.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
You were listening to Ruthie's Table four. In partnership with Montclair.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Over this season, forty guests have joined me here at
the River Cafe, and today we're looking back at some
of those conversations.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Richard E.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Grant, Francis Ford Coppola, Kate Blanchett, Tony Blair, Bono, Sienna Miller,
and erle In CagA. When I think of Richardy Grant,
of course I think of his brilliant films and him
as a great actor. But what I really think of
(00:37):
is Richard and his wife Joan in the early days
of the River Cafe. They were married a year before
the restaurant opened and lived right across the river. Coming
in for lunch, are we sitting at the same table.
They were warm and lovely and absorbed in each other journeys.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
To make your chocolate nemesis every single cres party we had,
and she'd make two of them. And I think the
combination of that is must be thirty six eggs.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
Let's compare a recipe to a script. So when you're
comproising your lines, tell me about the difference between a
kind of script and.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
The exactly same way you have the recipe in front
of you, but then something inspires you to add something,
or though you're you go of in a tangent, do
you ask if the director or the writer are open
to an adjunct to something or an addition or an
improvisation around sections. So it means that it evolves, is
not unless it's Shakespeare. You can't improve on a genius. Really,
(01:41):
I don't think so. And because of the rhythm and
the meter of it, you would be doing a disservice.
I think if you tried to extemporize on it.
Speaker 5 (01:49):
What does in encore like at the end of the performance.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I've only done one musical, My Fair Lady, And because
musical there's music for people to reperform, you can do
a sort of final verse of something. But in the
theater you can't. All you can do is bout. You
can't say, oh, well I'll do I'll do to be
or not to be again. Yeah, that's an amazing That's
(02:17):
what I.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Really love is sometimes when the end of a musical,
then it's all over, and then they come like guys
and dolls will come out and do you know lucky
a lady or when you see a guy or you
my fair lady, you could come out.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
You obviously played Henry Higgins.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Higgins, what a great part, absolutely amazing role.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
What's your favorite song from My Fair Lady? I think
I wonder if it's the same as mine?
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Go on, what is yours?
Speaker 5 (02:44):
I've grown accustomed to her face?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Is there a better song? Thrown a custom? I've gone accustomed.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
To the She whistles nice and new smiles her friends,
her perhaps her.
Speaker 5 (03:03):
Dad's second to me.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
Now it's to you. That should be the ending of
this from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Oh I I we shard sang it for my seventeenth
birthday to be.
Speaker 5 (03:15):
I said, that's all I'm want you to do is
to sing me. I've gone a custom interip.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
I do think it's a beautiful because this is amazing.
Was that the last theater that you did.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, that's the last time I did theater and I
did it in Chicago ten years ago, and then I
did it at the Sydney Opera fifteen years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I should bring it to London. I would love to
see it again. You can't do it now because of misogyny.
Because of the misogyny, Yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Melissa McCarthy's daughters came to see it in Chicago, and
they were ten and thirteen, and they were appalled by
the misogyny of it. They said, how can any woman
put up with that?
Speaker 5 (03:54):
When you were performing it, did you feel a sense?
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Well, my steer on it was that Higgins is on spectrum,
and that he is. He doesn't mean to be as
cruel as he is. He just he you know, he
says that there's no filter whatsoever, so it just comes out,
you know, you should be thrown out like a cabbage
(04:17):
ley for whatever. And he is so joy filled when
Eliza gets all the words phonetically correct. Yes, he embraces
her and it's you know, it's no accident to me
that straight after that she sings, I could have danced
all night, and it is The way that I interpreted
was that that was as close as he could ever
(04:39):
get to saying he's in love with somebody interesting. So
it was very physical and we grabbed each other.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
And I think it's the first musical I ever saw.
I think I went to see it.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
I was saying the other day that my dad used
to take me because we lived in upstate, New York,
and every sort of big treat maybe once every couple
of months, he would take me down to New York
in the car and to have lunch, and then you'd
take me to a musical, and then we would buy
the record, and then we would take it home to
the country, and there was nothing else to do except
just listen to it all the time.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
So really, this is really generational that we share on
this because in the sixties, every musical that came out,
my parents had the LP of it and played it incessantly,
so our whole family knew the lyrics of every single
musical that came out. You say it to people now,
I think you're yeah, it's insane.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
But the other thing about the musicals, without being naming
any is that they don't have those.
Speaker 5 (05:35):
Two and so much anymore. They're they're not as.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Kind of hummable, are they that you come out you
can remember on the street.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Where you live. The Wicked would argue.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
With us, probably, yeah, but I find it, Yeah, I
find it slightly challenging, but it isn't. I haven't seen
My Fair Lady ever, probably even since I was a
kid a long time ago.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
So on Broadway, Yeah, do you remember.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
Who was in it?
Speaker 2 (06:00):
I think it was Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. I
think it was that I was really young, I have
to say so, I think, but it was my very
first musical. And then I saw I saw West Side Story,
I saw My Fair Lady. I saw I really one that,
and he used to come in here, stop the world,
I want to get off.
Speaker 6 (06:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, and Leslie and Evie came here all the time,
and I used to come up to it. I remember
the first time I met him, he was with Michael
Gabe and I said, I bet I'm the only person
in this room that knows, you know, say my mishki
mischikal for whatever those songs were or what kind of
full of And he loved it.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
He would sing it.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
With me because he could have any chance to see.
But those, yeah, they kind of grow up with those,
you know, do you know what your first one?
Speaker 3 (06:49):
The first one was the Sound of Music, and then
Mary Poppins. But I'd heard My Fair Lady before I
saw those, before I saw the movie. My parents had
all the Rogers in Hammerstein, Carousel, King, and I had
all those record collections, so I knew all those before
I ever saw the movies.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Since Francis Ford Coppola agreed to do a podcast with me.
I've been slightly overwhelmed, but good friends who know us,
both Wes Anderson, Fisher, Stevens, Greta Gerwerk assured me. Actually, Ruthie,
the two of you are rather alike. Francis and I
are here together after a long lunch in the River
Cafe to talk about food and wine, movies and families,
(07:34):
menus and friends, and much much more.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
I'm convinced that The Godfather was successful because it was
the first gangster film that had a lot of kids
running around in the seats. They never were gangster pictures
though they didn't have kids. But of course an Italian
wedding was all the kids sliding around.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
So you grew up in a family that could Italian food,
but in New York and New York speak Italian.
Speaker 5 (08:00):
That's how we started. Did you know Italian?
Speaker 4 (08:03):
No? I only heard some cursed, but my mother didn't
want us to be like Italians couldn't live in certain neighborhoods. Yeah,
and the Italians, you know, each immigrant group in America
was bullied by the one that came before, and the
one who came before. The Italians were the Irish, and
(08:23):
the Irish used to beat up on the Italians.
Speaker 5 (08:26):
The policeman and the Godfather, right, the police.
Speaker 4 (08:28):
The police were all Irish and they used to they
used to pick. That's the way it works.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
So you were restricted to this neighborhood. And did you
experience food other than Italian food or did you was
eating out?
Speaker 4 (08:41):
If you see the Godfather, you realized that I knew
that Italians used to get takeout Chinese food.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Yeah, every street.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
Corner in New York had a German delicatessen, a candy
store what we call the candy store, which was a
soda fountain where they sold coke which was five cents
said they make it to put the syrup and it
wouldn't be in a bottle, and model airplanes and uh uh.
And a German delicatessen where you would buy cheesecake.
Speaker 5 (09:12):
So there there would be a mix.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
And and always a Chinese restaurant in the neighborhoods. There
were a lot of Polish people and Italians because they
were both Catholic. And there were a lot of Italian
Polish weddings because they were both Catholic. And I went
to a lot of Polish weddings, and I knew what
Polish food was like. They had kebbasa whereas we had sazich.
(09:36):
It was America. It was a wonderful a mixture of cultures.
Speaker 5 (09:40):
And we want to keep that. We want to keep
we want to keep that.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
And then should we talk about polio.
Speaker 4 (09:49):
Question.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
I'd be interested in the fact that as a child
you had polio and spent how long invent I spent.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
The whole sixth grade, so a whole year year, and
little boy a year. And in those days polio, you know,
of course it had also affected adults. President Franklin Roosevelt
had polio, but there was an epidemic for children in
nineteen forty nine. And I was a cup Scout and
I went on a cup Scout camp out and it
(10:17):
was raining, and the next morning I had the symptoms.
And you know, polio only affects you one night. In
other words, it's the night of the fever. Is the
night you have it, and then you get over it.
But the damage is to your spinal cord, and napolio
destroys the nerves selectively within the spinal cord, so that
(10:41):
I mean literally, when I woke up, I woke up
in an a ward with like eight hundred kids piled
up everywhere crying a whole row of iron lungs because
the kids whose lungs were affected couldn't breathe, so they
had to be in a machine that breathe, and they
were crying for their parents. Nightmare.
Speaker 7 (11:05):
We have good news.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Ruthie's Table four is launching on YouTube throughout the summer.
We'll be posting some of our favorite interviews across the series.
To watch, go to YouTube dot com slash hat symbol
Ruthie's Table four pod. People always ask me who my
(11:30):
dream guest would be on Ruthie's Table four. Kate Blanchett
has always been top of that list. An actor, director,
and a vocal activist for values and ideas close to
my heart.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Kate and I are going.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
To talk about our shared love of food and as always.
Speaker 8 (11:47):
Family, I mean brand Australia. When I was growing up
with multiculturalism and so once we really embraced the wave
of Vietnamese and Lemonese and Greek and Italian immigrants and refugees,
our cuisine became extraordinary. And now it's been exported to
the world as Pan Pacific or Asia Pacific and so
(12:11):
it's but at the time when I was growing up,
my mother was an excellent cross.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
So tell me about So your mother was left with
three children. Yeah, well she was what she.
Speaker 8 (12:20):
Was thirty nine and my brother was eleven, I was ten. Well,
she had to go back to work as a as
a teacher, and so she taught home economics. So our
kitchen was fantastic private. Yeah, a lot of a lot
of Italian cooking and a lot of fresh seafood and salads,
(12:41):
and that was not what people were eating at the time.
But I think the thing when there was a lot
of grief in my house. So the meals were delicious,
but they were silent, and that's been one of the
great joys I think from my side of the family.
But also for me is my husband came from this
(13:02):
enormous Catholic family. So the food may not have been Yeah,
I know he's Australian, but today had massively noisy, loud,
raucous meals.
Speaker 7 (13:13):
And my husband's an excellent cook.
Speaker 8 (13:15):
And actually the first time I met my brother in
law was at Christmas and he there was I came
towards the house and there.
Speaker 7 (13:23):
Was people were screaming with laughter.
Speaker 8 (13:25):
And I don't know what the what the meal is,
but it's a medieval recipe where you stuff a goose.
Speaker 7 (13:32):
With a pigeon.
Speaker 6 (13:34):
I know that quail, that's and what had.
Speaker 7 (13:36):
Happened was he'd open oven and the thing.
Speaker 8 (13:40):
Shot out the telescope out onto the wall. So there
goes Christmas lunch. Yeah, so they were madly trying to
stuff it back in.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
I know that recipe.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I mean, I've never done it myself, but I know
that it's dangerous.
Speaker 7 (13:53):
Have you ever done that?
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Do you know that?
Speaker 7 (13:55):
Really dangerous?
Speaker 2 (13:55):
That's so funny because they probably asked the cookie they
expand bad and then therefore, Yeah, that's hilarious.
Speaker 8 (14:02):
Yeah, so they're wildly adventurous with their When you met him,
my husband and I got to we've been married. God,
we got married very quickly, actually in ninety seven. It
wasn't a shotgun wedding. We didn't have children for quite
some time, but I think we're twenty eight.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
Yeah, so you were embraced by this family. But going
back to yours, so you grew up with you know,
your father in the beginning cooking, and I assume that
your mother both cooked and meals and lots of people,
evacues and people and then it became a kind of sadness.
Speaker 7 (14:36):
And then did there was very simon.
Speaker 5 (14:38):
Yeah, and did that change? Did you?
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Well?
Speaker 8 (14:42):
I yeah, I was thinking about it, maybe because I
was coming to speak to you.
Speaker 7 (14:46):
But then I've always loved the dinner party.
Speaker 8 (14:49):
And so what I would do is I wouldn't go
to a lot of parties as a teenager.
Speaker 7 (14:54):
I would have dinner parties.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 8 (14:56):
Yeah, so I would where everyone would dress up, My
girlfriends would all dress up, and it would all cook
something and we'd you know, I don't know who we
were trying to ape or what we were trying to eate.
There was a lot of sorbet inside orange cups and
I don't know. And I grew up with this Salvador
Daly cookbook, you know, the one that he'd done and
he'd done the illustrations. Yes, yes, and I cooked recides
(15:18):
from that.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
It's crazy to admit that I didn't make anything.
Speaker 7 (15:22):
That was where I cooked my first.
Speaker 5 (15:24):
Cerealist cookbook, a Surrealist Respue.
Speaker 7 (15:26):
But it was hard in Melbourne at the time to
find a pheasant.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
Brave of you.
Speaker 8 (15:30):
I tried, I tried so I cooked and tried to
decorate the dishes from the Salvador Daly cookbook.
Speaker 5 (15:38):
What age was this?
Speaker 7 (15:39):
This is probably about thirteen.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
So that's yeah, because I often talked to people who
when I say, Okay, so you grew up in this
nurturing home with a grandmother and a mother and cooking,
and then what happened when you left home? And very
often people say, then when I had my own flat
and I started buying local ingredients and I started cooking.
But thirteen is an early age to do and to entertain.
Speaker 8 (16:02):
And I think it's because it was my father's book.
He worked in advertising, and it was must have been
a gift that he was given one year and yeah,
so it was sort of trying to Yeah, not that
I can remember him ever cooking from it, but it
was just it was something of his that I maybe
I gravitated towards that.
Speaker 7 (16:20):
And also this.
Speaker 8 (16:23):
Surrealism seemed to make sense to me. I had very
vivid nightmares and dreams as a child, and so his
work and the surrealism movement as a whole kind of
really unlocked something for me.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
The world knows Tony Blair as a visionary leader prime minister.
I know him as a close and loyal friend and
the first dinner we had for him in our home
in nineteen ninety six, he went straight into the kitchen
to talk to a young, inexperienced chef, Jamie Oliver, asking
how he was making the rottolo dispinacci. Tony Blair has
(17:05):
been interviewed countless times. We're going to look at his
life and his career through memories of food, food in politics,
food and family and tonight the curiosity.
Speaker 5 (17:16):
Is all mine.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
So Downing Street is in office, it's a public space,
it's a governmental space, but it's also a home. And
you were there with young children and presumably they came
home from school and you sat down to meals or
did you not. Did you have a certain way that
this was work and then you would have family time
(17:39):
at the weekends and was there a routine of structure
for being a family.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Or before going into Downy Street. I mean we did
have a much more structured life, but then once you
become premnise to frankly, your schedules just packed. And so
at the weekends usually when we were through and checkers,
we would eat all together and that would be great,
but otherwise it was pretty hand to mouth. When my
(18:04):
kids knew I was coming on this podcast, they said
to me, are you going to tell them that you
used to cook for us and that you're cooking was terrible?
And I said, well, now, what I might just do
is just say that the meals I cooked for my
children were memorable. Memorable, believe it at that. So yeah,
(18:25):
I mean no, Downing Street was just too busy.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
There wasn't or maybe there still isn't a Downing Street
chef that cooks first lunch. And I know at the
White House they have the residents, and I know that
the State Department is very careful with ambassadors about what
they can spend on parties and food. But to have
the Office of the Prime Ministry, you would think that
(18:50):
there was a yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
And by the way, in our embassies you can eat
very well in British embassies abroad in the Elisa you get.
I think it's a high quality of actually and very
traditional friends cooking.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
You didn't give very many steak dinners at Downing Street
that you would know.
Speaker 5 (19:05):
I didn't be at the Palace.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
I always took the view with with didn't. I mean,
occasionally I would do it and if someone really wanted
to have a dinner. But I with other political leaders,
I mean, I just know what I feel like. You know,
when you're engaged with the political leader. I mean, you know,
maybe you have a drink together and so on, and
maybe you do have a meal together occasionally, but you
want to do business. You want to sort out the
(19:29):
business of the day. And then if you're a foreign
leader and you're visiting, and you're in London, and you know,
maybe frankly would like to go out and spend some
time with your your friends or colleagues and rather than
be within the formality of these dinners, which on the
whole I never felt yielded a great deal.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Was there any in your memory that wasn't in China
or in Russia, or in Germany or France. Was there
a steak dinner that really well brings in your memory?
Speaker 1 (19:56):
There wasn't a state dinners where the head of state,
So the only state dinner in the UK would be
the Queen obviously getting the dinner, and where again the
food is pretty good actually, but I do remember one
really memorable meal. So France and the UK and Germany
(20:17):
we were all together in this consort him to build
the airbus three eighty okay, and we visited Toulouse, which
is where part of the plane was being being built,
and so the leaders all went there and jactually Rack
was the president at the time. And I remember we
after we visited the plant and saw the plane and
(20:39):
so on, we sat down and we had a I
think they called it a cas.
Speaker 5 (20:46):
It was completed. What was it like?
Speaker 1 (20:47):
What was just with with the beans and the yeah
and the sausage, and it was unbelievably good. And the
funny thing was so Jacquesuiaq, who's you know, big, big,
big and someone I actually, despite our disagreements politically from
time to time, I liked greatly. But the strange thing
about Jack was he didn't drink wine. He's a French president,
(21:09):
didn't drink wine.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
He didn't drink wine.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
And I don't think he was very interested in food.
I mean, I'm and so I was saying to it
this he was talking to me about the airbus three eighteen.
I was saying to him, Jack, you gotta understand this
food is absolutely unbelievable. And I think he's always a
bit eccentric. After a time, because I was calling the
chef over and talking to him and saying like, okay,
(21:32):
that is a memorable meal.
Speaker 9 (21:35):
I do you remember having to eat humble pie with
George Bush because I'd slagged.
Speaker 5 (21:40):
That dish is humble pie? Did you have that for dessert?
Was that like apple pie or raspberry pie? Had humble pie?
Speaker 9 (21:50):
It's a dish Irish people don't like to eat.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Fifteen years ago, staying in the home Bonno's best friend
Patty mckillan, I injured my back and for a week
the only people I.
Speaker 5 (22:03):
Met were Irish.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
The warmth, the laughter, the music, the kindness was so overwhelming,
even with the pain. I wanted it to last forever too.
Today Bono and I are going to talk about family, food, music,
memories and more. You too his five for social justice
with his one campaign and read his philanthropy, his strong values,
(22:29):
his vision.
Speaker 9 (22:31):
I'd gone in and I'd had a meeting with them.
I was just very sort of cross because he had
said that we were going to get these aid drugs
to people on bicycles and motorcycles, whatever it takes to
the furthest reaches, whatever. And I'd said, if you can
get guinness to the rural poor, if you can get
Coca Cola. We can get these lifesaving drugs. And I said,
(22:54):
mister President, paint them red, white and blue if you want.
These will be the best advertisements for America ever. So eventually,
after extraordinary campaign with a lot of people involved from
different sides of the fence, he'd agreed announced it, and
then I'd gone in and said it's not happening. It's
not happening, and eventually it did. It's twenty six million
(23:18):
people actually since then, because Barack Obama followed through and
I went in and I've been banging. I remember I
was banging on the table of the President of the
United States, and he got, hey, hey, I am the president. Okay,
I I I'll just remind you of that.
Speaker 6 (23:37):
I inspect your He he was funny too, George Bush.
Speaker 9 (23:41):
He had a great, great sense of humor. Yeah, so
I remember that anyway. I remember he said, sit down,
have some lunch, let's talk.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
About do you remember what you ate?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Chicken?
Speaker 5 (23:53):
Chicken? And then did you meet with Barack Obama?
Speaker 7 (23:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (23:59):
Yeah, with every few times, a few times. But again
I would just say, and Obama was an extraordinary man
for so many reasons, but one of the more extraordinary
reasons is that even though George Bush had started this
pep FAR, which is the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS relief,
(24:22):
Barack Obama carried it on, in fact, put more of
American taxpayers money into it, even in President Bush had
and never asked for recognition. And it was kind of amazing.
But I do remember once, maybe this is okay to
tell the story because everyone knows now, I remember sitting
(24:46):
with Alicia Keys, myself and Barack Obama having lunch, and
I brought him a guitar and I ended up I
played I don't know, something like something simple on the guitar,
and he Breack Obama began to sing.
Speaker 5 (25:03):
Yeah, he loves to sing.
Speaker 9 (25:05):
But he'd never sung in public at that point, and
I was I was slagging them off, saying, oh, so
it's not enough to be the president of the United States.
You know, you're coming after our jobs. You're coming after
our jobs. And then a week later he sang and
then I don't know if you recall after the school
shooting when he sang amazing.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Grace, sang amazing grace.
Speaker 9 (25:28):
Can you imagine the leader of the free world singing
amazing Grace?
Speaker 5 (25:32):
And sing amazing Grace.
Speaker 9 (25:35):
It's a song that means to me. It's a song
about a slaver, John John Newton, whose ship sank them
in Donny Gaull in Northern Ireland. So people that don't
gonna feel close to this song, but I will sing
it if you like.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Ea z Grace Hal sweet.
Speaker 6 (26:06):
Boo Le's say.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Ooh rage like me?
Speaker 9 (26:21):
Yeah, w wows loss.
Speaker 5 (26:27):
Boot now I am found.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
Was blind.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Boot now?
Speaker 10 (26:40):
I see everyone knows.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
Sianna Miller is an actress, of fashion designer and a
brave combatant who stood up for her rights against a
powerful media empire. Your experience that you had as a
person who was you know, doing their work, raising their children,
having your privacy, doing no harm, breaking no rules. Had
something horrible happened to her? And we could bring it
(27:19):
back to the food. I could say, what do you
eat when a when a newspaper empire goes for you
and tries to destroy you and goes into your phone?
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Did that?
Speaker 5 (27:27):
Did you feel hungry? Or did you give up eating?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
But it is part of our conversation life and food
and fairness. And I wondered if you could say how
you felt when you woke up in the morning and knew.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
Did you have breakfast or did you did stress? I
lose my appetite, you lose it.
Speaker 11 (27:47):
Yeah, it's interesting and I'm such a I love to
eat more than anything. It's kind of it's where I
get a huge amount of pleasure. But I yeah, I
lose my appetite if I'm under immense stress.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
So what was it nice?
Speaker 11 (28:00):
Well, the paparazzi attention at a very young age was
probably the most traumatizing and surreal because it happened from
one day to the next.
Speaker 5 (28:08):
I will weld.
Speaker 11 (28:09):
I was twenty one and I'd fallen in love with
my co star of.
Speaker 6 (28:14):
My first film, and he was very famous, and there
were pictures of us.
Speaker 11 (28:20):
We'd gone to the National Portrait Gallery or something, the
Taate Modern, I can't remember. And I remember leaving his
house the following day and getting in a black taxi
and the cave saying have.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
You seen the news of the world today? And I
was like, what you know?
Speaker 7 (28:33):
Twenty one?
Speaker 6 (28:33):
And he said have you seen the news of the world?
Speaker 11 (28:35):
And I said no, and he said, you're all over it,
and he threw a copy of the newspaper in the
back of the cab.
Speaker 6 (28:40):
And there we were on the front.
Speaker 11 (28:43):
It was so it was honestly like normal life to
absolute surreal, you know, life after that and I got
home to my flat and there were photographers all outside
my flat and that was it.
Speaker 6 (28:54):
That was it. It was gloves off at.
Speaker 11 (28:56):
That moment in culture where the tabloids had it all
the power and young women were really persecuted and men.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
But it was really crazy. And at first it was
kind of funny.
Speaker 11 (29:06):
I felt like Lara Croft or in some virtual experience,
and my friends we'd like run away and try and hide,
and it was giggly, but it became very quickly, very
insidious because it was threatening and aggressive, and it really
took over my entire identity. I felt like was being
(29:27):
written and read by people. But I felt so out
of control in a really formative moment. And this all
happened before that film had come out, or any film
would come out. I was at the very beginning of
my career, and I do look back and wonder how
different things would have been if I had been known
as an actor.
Speaker 5 (29:46):
First.
Speaker 11 (29:48):
It was a lot of a battle to kind of
establish myself and to be taken seriously and not seen
as someone who wore ice clothes, or had a famous boyfriend,
or it was a battle, and I think I definitely
through it.
Speaker 7 (30:00):
I'm sure at that.
Speaker 6 (30:01):
Time, but it was.
Speaker 11 (30:02):
And then of course the phone hacking. I knew that
was going on at the time.
Speaker 6 (30:06):
It was very difficult.
Speaker 11 (30:08):
Because it would be well, it would be impossible for
them to know half of what they knew without some
form of eavesdropping. And I think there were bugs put
in houses and in cars, and trackers on cars and
all sorts of it was and you feel like you're
going mad, but clicks on the line of my mother's landline.
(30:29):
So it was relieving in a way to know that
I hadn't gone mad when I found out.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
But to find out was really difficult.
Speaker 11 (30:38):
I had to take the met Police to court to
get the evidence that they had in order to take
the news of the world to court, and they wanted
twenty one days to hand it over the evidence that
they had, and the judge said, hand it over.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
Today in these four huge boxes filled.
Speaker 11 (30:51):
With emails and phone numbers and numbers of my friends
and anyway, in the end I didn't settle out of
I took them to court, which meant I got far
less money than I would have done had I been quiet.
But actually it's one of the proudest things that I did.
And now some of the friends whose numbers they also
(31:11):
had got some money too, So it kind of feels
like that's a lovely that's a lovely ending to a saga.
Speaker 5 (31:17):
Yeah, I was so comforted.
Speaker 2 (31:19):
You could find in those days into cooking or to.
Speaker 11 (31:24):
The cooking was always a grounding. I mean, it was
a decade really of harassment, but as much as possible,
it's okay because it sucks in retrospect, but it also
is a huge part of who.
Speaker 7 (31:39):
I am and why I am.
Speaker 11 (31:40):
The way that I am and what matters to me
is very clear, and what doesn't matter and what's out
of your control is also very clear. And I think
I tried to control it for a long time and
then gave up. And I now know my friends, my family,
the people I love, the restaurants I love, the food
I love, The community around me is sacred and respected,
and the rest I don't care. I feel like everyone
(32:03):
in the world see my you know, dirty underwear.
Speaker 6 (32:05):
There's nothing more I can. Everyone knows everything, whatever it's.
Speaker 7 (32:08):
But I know the power.
Speaker 5 (32:10):
Yeah, that's saying that gives you.
Speaker 6 (32:12):
I have been killed, you.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
Know, there are people who have been destroyed.
Speaker 11 (32:16):
Well now I'm proud that I didn't go that far,
but I understand absolutely why you lose your mind. It
kind of perpetuates behavior that coping mechanisms that are toxic,
drinking too much or going out too much, or just
keeping moving because it's also crazy and you can see
why people unravel, and actually it suits them the more
(32:37):
you unravel. But I think, yeah, having that stability in
my family, my mother, my sister, it kept it kept
me anchored in a way where I feel like if
I didn't have that, I understand how people derail completely.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Imagine a state bottled olive oil, chair and bottle for
the River Cafe arriving at your door every month. Our
subscription is available for six or twelve months, with each
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each delivery. It's a perfect way to bring some River
Cafe flavor into your home or to show someone you
(33:19):
really care for them with the gift. Visit our website
shop the Rivercafe dot co UK to place your order now.
Arlene Kaga is one of the world's great explorers, a
man whose life embraces solitude. He is the first person
(33:41):
to reach by foot the North Pole, South Pole, and
Mount Everest.
Speaker 5 (33:46):
When did you first become in love with a pole?
With all the.
Speaker 12 (33:50):
First time I became aware of the North Pole, I
was seven years old. My pilots gave me this globe,
this globust, for my birthday present. And this was in
nineteen seventy. So at that time, the globes were small,
a bit blueish dark blue where the oceans were deep,
it was dark brown where the mountains were high. And
(34:12):
at the top of the globe it was a little
flat metal plate to kind of hold the globe together.
And then I was wondering what's below that metal, and
of course that was a North Pole. And then, as
you know, then I was wandering about it. And then
slowly through my life I got more and more interested
(34:32):
and eventually obsessed about walking to the North Pole. So
I was in low with the North Pole for many years.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
What's the longest time you've gone on a trip? Would
it be for a month?
Speaker 4 (34:45):
Would it be?
Speaker 5 (34:45):
Oh, makes too.
Speaker 12 (34:46):
Much like sixty sixty five days?
Speaker 5 (34:49):
Sixty five days.
Speaker 12 (34:50):
They bring all the food you need with you the
whole time.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Okay, So what are the disciplines around that? How much
it will wait to carry, how much space it will take,
and how much nutrition will it give you?
Speaker 12 (35:03):
Yes, balance, it's you eat around one kilow every day
with dried food and they mix it with water.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
It's all dry old.
Speaker 12 (35:13):
Dry to say weight, because what is it for breakfast?
You have oat oat meal?
Speaker 5 (35:19):
You have to use a lot of water then.
Speaker 12 (35:20):
Yeah, from melting ice and snow. Oh, so you don't
bring in the water. So that's a good noise, that's
a goodness. So don't worry about that.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
Take any you just take the snow and just let it.
Speaker 12 (35:32):
Yeah, you need to find all old ice because fresh
fresh ice contains lots of salt. So you can tell
by the color of the eyes if it contains salt
or not.
Speaker 1 (35:44):
And then how do you melt it?
Speaker 12 (35:46):
You melt it by having little primacies that what they
call it little heater, which is made in a way
so all the heat from the flame goes to the pot.
So even when it's minus fourteen fifty degrees, we're not
heating the tent. It gets a little but warmer because
of the body heat. But it's we don't heat the tent.
Speaker 5 (36:07):
Why don't you want to eat because.
Speaker 12 (36:08):
You want to say weight, So you have like two
des liters of fuel per day, and then you have
to really save everything because you've got to drag everything
you need for more than two months, and then you're
not having enough fuel to heat the tent, so you're
freezing so much to actually you know you sometimes you
start crying because you're freezing so much. But anyway, so
(36:32):
this this old milk, but also we mix it with
formula milk, dried formula milk because that's what gives the
most energy program and then eat the same for larnch
throughout the day, maybe some chocolate or definitely some chocolate,
but with extra calories, especially made chocolate. The extra calories
just as like a snack, having brakes and maybe chocolate.
(36:55):
Like you have to get used to the taste because
it's so much fatter it so it doesn't really taste
well at home. But you know the thing is this
food is none of this food tastes really good when
you start eating it. But then as the days and
weeks pass by and you get more and more tired
and more and more hungry, it tastes better and better
(37:17):
and better, and eventually it tastes as good as a
food at Wevercaffee.
Speaker 5 (37:23):
Which absolutely.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
I was going to ask you, if you ever on
a trip were aware that it might be your birthday,
it might be Christmas, it might be a Norwegian holiday,
would you celebrate in any way?
Speaker 4 (37:37):
Yes.
Speaker 12 (37:39):
When I walked to the South Paul alone, I had
Christmas and New Year's by myself. I was alone for
fifty days and nights.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
And fifty were alone for fifty days.
Speaker 12 (37:51):
And no radio and no telephone contact, so in total solitude.
So then I was still remembering Christmas Eve, which is
a big day Norway. I ate a little bit extra,
had a piece of cake with me. When you're alone
for such a long time, you kind of stop thinking
in the sense that the past and the future don't
(38:12):
matter so much. And of course that's a kind of
a noise too, because thinking and think about the past
or the future, but you're very much in the present.
You kind of stop thinking, which is a beautiful feeling.
But then on Christmas Eve, I sat there eating this cake,
I felt like, at least like you know, then I
was thinking about people back home and that they were
(38:32):
thinking about me, because Also, when you're alone for such
a long time you don't really believe people, then you
kind of you kind of get a feeling that you're
also kind of forgotten.
Speaker 5 (38:44):
And was there a pleasure that you had when you
were walking the.
Speaker 12 (38:48):
Pleasure is I think the pleasures on an expedition are
there original sources to gratefulness in the sense that you
get rested when you talk tired, you get warm after
having been cold, you get full after having been hungry,
and that's kind of that's what gratefulness is about. And
(39:11):
I think gratefulness is one of the most undervalued things
in life.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
And as I.
Speaker 12 (39:17):
Said, Norway, where most people should be super duper grateful
all day hard and Moon is grateful, so you know,
we should almost learn in that school to be grateful.
But anyway, on an expedition, you really feel gratefulness for
those three reasons and the same reasons why humans very
grateful one hundred thousand years ago.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
And that's it for this season. That with this table before,
we'll be back in October, and until then we'll be
sharing some of our favorite episodes from the archive. And
remember now you can watch the full conversations on our
new YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and search for
(40:02):
Ruthie's Table four, have a wonderful, wonderful summer.
Speaker 3 (40:11):
Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership
with Montclair
Host
Ruth Rogers
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