Nobody Panic - Still Panicking: How to Host a Dinner Party with Monica Heisey

Episode Date: October 14, 2025

Still Panicking: From dining out to eating in, food with friends or dinner alone, this week we look back at Stevie and Tessa's top mealtime tips.Author of the Sunday Times bestseller, and frankly brilliant book, 'Really Good Actually', Monica Heisey joins Stevie and Tessa to talk them through her passion for hosting a really good dinner party. Longtime listeners will know we've tackled this one before, but the tips were mostly about lemons. Monica brings some absolutely banging advice. Also she's so nice. And the book is fantastic, buy it at once.Find Monica on Instagram @monicaheiseyBuy Monica's book 'Really Good Actually' here.This episode was first released on 28 March 2023.Recorded and edited by Naomi Parnell for Plosive.Photos by Marco Vittur, jingle by David Dobson.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/nobodypanic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Carriad. I'm Sarah. And we are the Weirdo's Book Club podcast. We are doing a very special live show as part of the London Podcast Festival. The date is Thursday, 11th of September. The date is 7pm and our special guest is the brilliant Alan Davies. Tickets from kingsplace. It's coming to London. True on Saturday the 13th of September. At the London Podcast Festival. The rumours are true. Saturday the 13th of September at King's Place. Oh, that sounds like a date to me, Harriet. Welcome to you. I'm Stevie, Tessa. If you're not listening to Nob to Pan it before, we do how-toos. We have Monica Heisean. Thank you so much for coming in. Monica's written, I would say the funniest books of my personal life, of my personal life. Really good, actually, which is out literally now. You're coming on to tell us how to host a dinner party. That is our correct. Yeah, thank you so welcome. You're so welcome. You look very chic. She looks like she's flown in from, I don't know. No.

Monaco. Well, yeah, but not from Monica. Oh, sorry, sorry. Also, she arrived on time, message to say, I'm in the coffee shop around the corner. Can I bring anyone a coffee? And then arrived, sheik, as you like. Exquisite. Welcome.

You didn't see me have a coffee accident outside and then have to do that thing where you slurp all the spilled coffee off the top of the cup. Just like a little hamster in the street. A chic hamster from Monaco. After that, I sorted it right out. I recently got into ordering a child. I think you. This is huge. Huge for me.

But I did it the other day with a chic friend and then I was like, and a try latte please. And I was like, look at me. So chic. Then we had to immediately get into an Uber to travel. It was the most hellish ride of my life. I was just shaking,

holding this hot drink. And I kept like going a little bit onto my hands. And then I was, and I was just being scolded, but I couldn't say anything. Because they didn't want to alert anyone that I was new to hot drinks. Anyway,

we're both bringing very manicurve. energy because we're very threatened by Monica's glamorous and powerful persona. Threatened. The book, if I may do, because Monica's currently hawking your book around, but if I may sell it for you, it is out now, as Stevie says, it's called Really Good Actually. It's got a lovely orange cover, unless you're listening in the US, in which it has a beautiful blue cover. And it is about being a surprisingly young divorcee.

And I would say if you are not going through a divorce yourself, but have ever experienced, heartbreak, it's the one for you. If you're currently in it, I would say perhaps too raw, too much. Yeah, if you're currently going through a divorce, yeah, maybe. Pop it down. Pop it down for later, I say. But in a few years, you're going to be like, oh, wow, this is really speaking, this is speaking. And listen, I've said it before, but I think we throw around the phrase, voice of a generation,

but if I may, I think she's here. She's a Vogue. She's a Vogue. Right, we'll stop now. We actually should have done this before Monica's here. We didn't want, Monica, we were like, go and talk about divorce, but Monica's, poor Monica's had to chat about divorce for too long. Yes.

Yeah. No more divorce. Yeah. My first press interview, the woman just went, so, what went wrong in your marriage? Oh, holy shit. And I was like, Susan, we might not get there today. Yeah. I don't know.

Dinner parties. Dinner parties. Yeah. So, no divorce. Gentle, gentle, gentle. Dinner parties. Long-time listeners will know, or indeed if you're joining us for the first time, you can spiral back many episodes ago to how to host a dinner party

when me and Stevie gave it our best shot. The main takeaways were Tess is saying, have some limes and lemons in a bowl. No, no, limes. Have some lemons in a bowl. So then when they come in, you just go like, oh, sorry, I'll just pop these away. You have to say, it has been a very big bowl of lemons

and you have to say, let me just get this out of your hair or get this out of your way. Okay, I'm sure hair wasn't wrong. As I said, I thought that's a mistake. Yeah. Just let this. Oh, let me just get this out of the way. Yeah.

Let me just get these out. And then also the other one was have a, the, we don't have to recap the Buckingham Palace letter. No, I don't want to talk about the Buckingham Palace letter. Right. And then they have to respond. So then,

and then leave the letter to Buckingham Palace on the floor by your door. It's to you, but from Buckingham Palace. Yeah, I don't mean. You write to booking palace, so they have to respond to you. You have to do this months in advance. Months in advance. Yeah. And Stevie, your tips were almost exclusively order,

deliver you and then put it in, in a pen. Correct. Correct. Yes. We revisited that tip a few times in the app. As if it was like, and just remember,

you can always, the option is always there to order Deliveroo and put it in your oven yourself. Yeah. Have never, ever done a dinner party where I haven't done that. Really?

Every time I've done. What's your maximum guest number? Three. Three, including yourself. No, I think the most I've ever done is five and that was, so above three, delivery is happening.

Okay, so my maximum number is two, and I panicked about it for the entire day. Yeah, well, it was Monica. It was me. Oh, I loved it. It wasn't really a dinner party. It was a roast. It was lovely.

It was a rote, yeah. And I think I even talked about it on the podcast about how happy I was. It was gorgeous. But it is a huge area of stress for me because I have space now, and all I've ever thought in my life is like, all I've ever thought in my whole life,

is like, okay, I don't have space right now, when I do have space, I'm going to be Nora Ephron. I'm going to be endlessly entertaining. And I haven't done it yet. So please. I've been over twice. I'm having a great time eating food at your house. Training wheels for further guests.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're an excellent guest. Thank you. So what are your sort of opening gambits with, so how do you start, how do you prep for having people over? How many people do you have? I think six. Six.

Go on so many. Six is a nice number. No, six including me. Okay. Right. Me and a partner or a roommate or whoever and then two, four other people. Okay. That's a lovely amount. Yeah, I think it's really nice.

Okay. More than that is too many. Okay. But just another couple or just two other people is a lot of pressure on each component of the dinner party. But if there's six of you, you can kind of get a group vibe going. So you say if you just invite one other couple, then it has a sort of swing as element to the experience. You will be fucking. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And then that changes the menu a lot, obviously. Yes. Of course. Finger food. Buffet. Buffet.

Things that don't, it doesn't matter if you go cold, if it goes cold because you want to phone. Because it's served on your body. It's on your body. Yeah. Okay, okay. This is good.

So, okay. Six people. And my biggest tip that I stole from a New York food writer named Allison Roman, who wrote a couple cookbooks. One's called Nothing Fancy. And the other one's called Dining in. Both of them are Alison Roman.

I think she was briefly canceled. I think she might be okay now. I only found out by it through the cancellation. Yeah. And I was like, oh, she does that. Well, it's too late now. And now she's back. She's back.

What was the cancellation for? May I ask? A series of sort of insensitive interviews. Oh, dear. Really not ideal. Not ideal. Ultimately, food-wise, she has never missed. Yeah.

Can we separate the art from the artist? I know. I know. So I would say, if you can find the books, perhaps secondhand. Would that be okay? Yeah. If you accidentally buy one. that's okay.

If you are looking to have people in our age demographic over for dinner, you could not find better recipes there. The perfect amount of slightly impressive, not very hard. Great, great, great, okay. One of her tips is having a martini bar because you can batch make martini. She was like, have a welcome cocktail basically at your dinner. Okay. Give everyone a martini.

I'm like the training wheels are already off. They are all. I'm down a hill. What's in a martini? Okay, it's literally gin and vermouth and ice. Okay. That's very achievable. It's so easy to make.

Everyone thinks a martini is very complicated. It's not. Okay. You just mix an enormous amount of gin with a slightly smaller amount of vermouth. Okay. Where you can do half gin, half remorse for a 50-50 martini for lower alcohol. Okay. And that's people aren't like blasted before dinner.

Okay. But I think you kind of want them to be. It's more fun. Ideally. And then you just have it in a jug. A cold jug. A cold jug. A cold jug.

How do you keep it cold? Yeah, where are you putting your cold jug? bag of party ice and put it in your sink. On your sink. I can't think about using the sink, good Lord. What if I need the sink to wash the pans? You could put it in like a big pot then. Oh yeah, like a big, you know.

Like a cooking pot thing. You know how really posh people have like a big bucket? Yeah. Where they put their eyes? My dream would be to own one of those big silver cauldrons that posh people have for their eyes. Yeah. Your mop buckets full of eyes. Then inside that is a job.

You can pre-chill the martini in the freezer in a bottle. because it won't freeze solid because it's alcohol. Oh, God. Yeah, of course. Yeah. I was like, in my head I was like, we won't even mention putting it in the freezer, of course. No, alcohol doesn't freeze solid.

So you can just put it in there. Okay. And then it'll be very, very cold. Okay. And just leave it in the freezer while you're cooking. That's one. Yeah, great. Martini is for everybody.

Martini is for everybody. Or like you could do an old-fashioned or something, depending on like the time of the year. Unfortunately, it's just going to be martinis. Because you've said what that is, sounds fine. Yeah. And all fashioned is just bourbon and shes.

And sugar. Okay. Cocktails are very easy. Okay. I've had a lot of British people over for dinner over the last couple years. And every single time we serve them a cocktail, they act like I invented the martini as a concept. They can't believe they're encountering it in a home. Okay.

And then they text me for the whole next year being like, oh, me and me and Paul are having cocktails in tonight, inspired. And you're like, guys, you can have pleasure in your life. You're allowed to have it. If I may, I do think an old-fashioned isn't, it feels very New York. It feels very, like, to be offered... Do you guys don't like...

No, no, it's not that we don't like, but I'm just saying, does someone offered... It's very exotic. It does feel incredibly exotic. Twice someone has said, oh, I'm having an old-fashioned if you want one out, and I've been like, oh God.

Could possibly... Spat so much all over Monica's nose, all over her headburn. It does feel like that, doesn't it? It's got cherry on the top, like, but you're allowed to have nice things, guys. Yeah, you're constantly telling my British friends, like, it's okay to enjoy your time on the tour.

Okay, please. Okay, huge. Welcome cocktail. Welcome cocktail. People listening are like, we just don't have a lie. Like, this is really, I don't know. I think we speak. I feel I've been out to people's houses, and I would say,

apart from at your house, I don't feel like the cocktail, the immediate cocktail bar is a staple. No, it's wine, isn't it? An area where I've gone wrong in the past, which is just before Christmas, I had an American friend, but also stand-up comic Sarah Barron, who lived around the corner from me around with her husband. No dinner, just drinks and bits.

An area I felt safe. When asked her favorite drink, she also chose a gin martini. And I was like, unless you're asking for strawberry daquiry, I am out. I don't know what to do. But I was like, okay, I got to get the things. So I got the gin and the sweet vermouth. It was quite hard to find. Drive Vermeuth.

That's where I fucked up. You mean dessert martini? I got, because I was panicked, I didn't know what to get. And then I cycled with it home in the front of a lime bicycle. We went over a bump. It smashed. It was all over me.

Then before they arrived, my mum called and I was in the shower, and she was telling me a very long story. And I had to be like, Debbie, I'm covered in sweet vermouth and broken glass. I haven't the time. But then I ran out and I managed to find dry. So it turns out it was for the best, the universe was like, you don't need this sweep of a move. You fucked it.

It smashed it for you. It smashed it for me in the basket. And then, but then also when she arrived, I was sort of just like, here's all the bits as opposed to make it yourself, as opposed to being like, here it is for you. So I think that was quite overwhelming. And here's the deconstructed stuff. Make it. Here's the deconstructed stuff.

Could you be in charge? And then so she took on the mantle of then being the bartender, but it would be better, I think, if I had been less sort of stress. And also... Sounds like it was a big day, to be fair. But now I see it would have been so much better if I... It was the pre-made element. It's like, it's already in the freezer.

You know, it's cold rather than being like, there it is. Because I think you do it. You don't want to be stressed making stuff, but you also don't want them to be stressed watching you make stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? We're looking for ease. Ease. And I did not bring that.

I brought an element of broken glass. Okay, so we've got our cocktail in the freezer. We're focusing on ease, relax. You don't be afraid to light some candles. I think get into it with like lighting. If you have a cool tablecloth, that's like a nice sort of grandma thing I've gotten into recently. It's like a fun tablecloth. Gorgeous.

Are we talking cloth? Are we talking wipe clean? Probably. I can see it's cloth fine. I think it's sort of a laminarite, white, white clean. I don't know if that's, you're bringing the other than you was. As I said it. Like a crash.

I heard it out loud. Child's trash. But I was like, but I'll spill so many things. I was like, you're, it's fine. But you've been to my house and spilled on my tablecloth loads. It's been fine. Yeah. It's been absolutely fine.

Yeah, okay. That's what they're for. So, yeah, like, set a vibe. That's really enjoying the white laminate. All the lights on on a white laminate tablecloth. And then just the individual parts of the drink that you want. And being like, making it out. You're having the world's most intense myth.

Yes. You can do it yourself as well. Okay, okay, right. The lights are low. The cotton tablecloth is out. Yeah. I'm cool. Yeah.

There's music playing. People arrive whenever. they can have a martini and then you guys had this in your last episode salty bits obviously it's the only thing anyone wants before. Salty bits before dinner. Yeah okay. Like crisp is the right direction.

Olives and twiglots and pretzels. Olives, there's something so chic about olives. A stuffed olive? I'm like, okay. Yeah. What am I a salt? Yeah. You know? You are. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, it feels good. I worry that part of my problem is a number

of the very chic things, an old-fashioned, are a thing, a taste a flavor that's not my personal wheelhouse, whereas strawberry daugries is, you said that so casually, you were like, well, I'm sorry, Sarah, but like, if it's not a strawberry dachry, I don't, I wouldn't be able to make a strawberry decorate. I don't even know what's in a strawberry decorate. I don't want to take your thing, your thing. But no, no, no, no. The experience of being hosted in someone's home in their like preferred style of cooking and feeding and entertaining is what's nice about having, okay. Yeah, because you don't have to try and pretend to do. You just have

wine out. You have like one dacharya, and if it's not, nobody will drink a strawberry and be like, oh! No, if anything, martinis and old-fashioned way more intense as a flavor. You're having British people over and they will not tell you if they don't like something. They'll just quietly suck it back or they'll put it down somewhere and then leave it. Yeah. And you'll find it. I'm just thinking, my favorite drink, in fact, Monica and her partner came and I made an extremely sweet drink, which was my drink of choice at the time.

it was bright pink. And, sorry to name him, but Mono's his person, name is Stephen, which I say only because Stephen refers to the drink as a drink called Stephen's Bachelorette. Because it was so outrageously sweet and fizzy and Barbie pink. I thought, delicious. But actually, truth be told, he did drink it all. It was a nice drink, and I still called him Stephen's Bachelorette. It's my favorite drink.

But I was thinking, oh, how embarrassing. But actually, everyone did drink it. Well, this is the other big thing is that, like, if you don't worry about it, and you're like, it's just fun. We're just having fun. If it goes really wrong, we'll order pizza, and that will be fun in a different way. Yeah, okay. Thank you.

So much more calm. Next thing. I'm so happy. My big dinner party thing is big hunk of fish. Big hunk of fish. Big huge salmon. Don't fuck around, like, making individual whatever. Just get, go to the fish guy and get, like, a huge.

thing of salmon and then just like slice up a bit of like citrus and cover it in olive oil, salt and pepper. Yeah. And then fresh dill when it comes out and that that's fine. Is it wrapped in tinful in the oven or no? It doesn't have to be. Okay, it's just going in. It just goes in. Okay.

You just leave it in there. What are you doing with your big hunk of fish? And any bits on the side? Oh, yeah, yeah. Hasselbeck potatoes. If you want millennial women to lose their shit in your DMs. Yeah. Post a picture of Hasselbeck potatoes.

I've never seen anything like it. It's just basically a roast potato, but you do little cuts all along the top of it so that it gets kind of like ridged. And then you put butter in there so it get those edges all get crispy, all the little sliced cuts. Oh, nice.

But it's literally just potatoes that have been in your oven. I'm going to show you a picture because I feel like you have seen it on Instagram. Oh, yeah. And it's just, it's the easiest thing in the world. It's so easy. Gosh, much more. They cut so much deeper than I was expecting.

Yeah. They sort of look like bugs. They look a little bit like bugs. But it's fun though. So delicious. And people really like to eat them. And it just feels like a fence. Again, it's like you'd make fish and potatoes on your own at home.

But this is like fancy version where you're like garnishing it with dill and you're cutting little ridges into it so the butter can get in more. Wow. And then like little zesty salad or something. Oh, God. Yeah. You can really do this. You can know you can.

Yeah, we could do a little zesty salad. I could do a zesty salad. We could be people who made a little zesty salad. Yeah. Your go-to vegetarian choice? Oh. Like, I think a nice pasta, a nice pasta with like a garlic bread. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. Garlic bread is, again, so nice. You probably would never make it on like a random weekday. Like from scratch for sure. You're going to make it from scratch? It's just bread that you shove garlic butter into. Yeah, see, I was like, I'm not going to make the wiles. And get the garlic bread.

The really fancy, expensive one. But is it just half a baguette? And then... Yeah. And basically it's exactly what you did to the potatoes. Yeah. You just cut ridges in it and then shove herbie butter in. Oh shit.

So I... You don't slice the baguette in half and then butter and garlic it. You can. Oh, okay. But you also just cut into the thing. You hassle back that. Jesus Christ. I've seen people with like, big, you know, like you get like a tiger loaf or like a sour

thing and they like cut, what's that? called like a grid almost with the knife and then they put like cheese and butter and garlic it's and then it's like tear and share and I've always been like that feels achievable and I've never done it when do you tear and share is that with the hunk of fish with the people oh with the people no it's when everyone's gone with the people but like is that a starter yeah it would be with your main I think with the main and then it's just a tear and share oh my god yeah and it's just nice in the middle of the table okay oh mamma me I think I've said this in the last one.

Maybe because it's like picking your thing that you're intimidated by and making sure there's like one. So it's like rather than be like, okay, so I'm going to learn how to make an old fashioned. I'm also going to like make it, cook an entirely new main that I've never done before and do garlic bread that I've never done it before. It's like, do, so you do your favourite pink drink that you, Stephen's butt. And then like a meal, like whatever meal you've already cooked people. So you're like, okay, I know how to make that.

And then maybe try garlic bread. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Rather than try to do everything and one new thing. The goal is for no one to be stressed, including you. You know what I mean? Like you don't want your guests to be stressed, but you're like, I also, like, don't make like a carbonara, something that's insane.

Is that insane? Carbonara is very hard to make because you could scramble the eggs very easily. Right. I went to a dinner party at my friend's house and then just we all just had to sit at the table while she and her boyfriend had such a long, loud argument about how to cook the carbunera. Oh, no. And it was just like, we were all just quietly. You know what I mean? Yeah.

And I don't think that would have happened if they had gone with a classic big hunger fish. Yeah. Or just like everyone's so much happier to eat scrambled egg pasta. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, probably could. Scramble pasta sounds like nice. I see now I don't do egg.

I just put cream cheese in a pasta bowl and just call that Carbinar. But I see that's not. That's probably, that's probably called something else. But it's probably not Carbranara. That's just Bachelorette. Tess is Bachelorette. The theme is. Just pop a bit of that.

Okay, so I see that I was like, Carbonara, that's easy, but I'm doing my own thing. An Italian one. Okay. Any more tips for any more situations? Let your friends bring dessert. Just don't even bother with dessert. That's so good. Absolutely not.

Because dessert is the easiest thing to buy from somewhere and have it be nice. Okay. You know what I mean? Like they can pick something up on the way even. Yeah. Like most, most like little shops will have something nice you can put together. Even if it's like someone brought just a big pile of really ripe cherries and some bars of chocolate once to a dinner party that I had and I was like, this is insane.

That's lovely. But also adds an element of like, and now this is the contribution. We're all picking the, you know, we're making this an unique experience. A shared thing. Yeah. Yeah, we were all part of it. You know, it's a good way to make it a shared thing that you guys do not have in this country. And it's really weird because it's a huge part of Canadian and I think North American

dinner party culture. The guests helping with the dishes. Oh, wow. Is that a thing? it's just what you would do. So if I came over to your house, I would clear the table. And then you would be like, no, no, sit down. And I would be like, no, please.

And then I would start doing the dishes or I would like maybe like rinse the plates or help and put them in the dishwasher. So nice. It's very, very normal to help with the dinner party. And when British people come over, it's like you're running a restaurant for your friends. Which is fine. But culturally different to what I'm used to. and for the first couple of times I was confused.

Yeah, and also when people do, so if someone did get up and start doing the dishes, I'd feel bad and feel like they felt they had to because I'm not competent, weirdly, genuinely, yeah. So I think that it's like even... That's like a way to say thank you. Yeah, it makes sense, but... Yeah, I assume, I mean, I'm not as Canadian as you,

but I think I have a similar thing. My dad is Canadian, and so when we were small, that was very much. And then when I did at other people's houses, it was very poorly looked upon. That's quiet. That is not like it. Badly on the host. Yeah, the host doesn't like it.

I think it is that of being like, how do you? I would never even have thought of that. This restaurant is functioning. Yeah. I didn't think that exact thing. I've sort of made it sandwich more. I just sort of felt I would, I would feel confused and scared.

Like, I wouldn't know how to feel. I'd be like, why are they doing the dishes? Yeah. And then I'd go, I guess it's me. Yeah. And I'd quietly be like, oh, awful. I'm so fascinating. I'm telling our guests to do the dishes.

I just think it's nice. And also, it means that the dinner party can kind of enter a more casual post-dinner mode where everyone's kind of up and moving around. Yeah. And you're not just sitting at the table or like your guests are there and the host is in the other room doing the dishes. Especially if you don't have a dish, I've never had a dishwasher. So if you don't have a dishwasher, it's like, then you're just like, oh, don't worry, I'll just be there. There's 16, I'm going to be fine.

There's about 16 bowls. I'm the professional pot wash in the kitchen with your huge big hose. And you can make it nice, you can bring out like an Amara or something. I would. I would. It's like an Italian digestive liqueur. Oh, cool. Got it, got it, got it.

Like Amaretto. Amaretto or Amarro. Yeah, exactly. You know, and then like whipping people up a bit conversationally. Oh, go on. Yeah. I think like my friends and I in Canada, like our dinner parties are just us sort of screaming compliments at each other over candlelight. And then eventually,

crying out of love. Yes, that sounds very good. Wow, that's very British. And usually we try, we often will come up with like a business idea. Yeah, yeah. We'll be like, we all got work together. Honestly, we're all so we have so many different talents in the room, we've got to try.

It's like just insufferable, like, I can't believe we've never worked together before. It's like, we work in very different, it's like very different unrelated industries. We always talk about our company. What would the company do? What's the company called? Everything. Doesn't have a name and it does, loosely consulting. Okay?

Yeah. And every dinner party that gets two out of hand, the company comes up and we start making things. My school friends very quickly returned to a concept called the fraternity. We went to an all-girls school. The fraternity is, sometimes known as the empire, is an attempt to do exactly that. No one knows what it does or what its possible purpose is. Solidarity is. It's bonding.

It's saying that you would trust that person enough to work. with them and that's a lovely compliment. Yeah. Without actually following through and realizing that you can't. You have nothing to offer as a group. Yeah. With a particular group of our friends, I would say it's a natural hop step and a jump to the immersive quest.

Parlor games. Oh, yes. But also like how would we run them on a professional level. Oh, I see. Yes, yes, yes. Isn't that too? Yeah. I mean, it's a hop step and a jump to the parlor game, sure.

But then I think the company chat version is like an acceptable extension of trying to whip up a conversational frenzy, I feel. We did this. You came over for dinner and I think it was your question. I do like when someone poses a question to the group and everyone has to answer it. Which is dorky, but like if you guys have already had a martini and several glasses of wine and a big hunk of fish, probably feeling really up for it. You were like, okay, dream, like describe your dream life. Like what day, where do you live? What's your day like? What's your day like? What's your dream life? And then we got to hear about everyone's dream lives. My friend Catherine has a much more intense version where she just goes, What's everyone's core wound? Oh, no, Catherine.

Which that's my, I would get on that level very fast, but I wouldn't bring that out around. No, but it's hard to bring it back. If you've gone core wound, you're staying core wound for the rest of the evening. Yeah, you have to commit to an intense vibe shift, I think. I think it wasn't both day. It was like your ideal job. And I think my thing was showing that I wanted to be cast in the Game of Thrones spin-off for six months and live in Budapest with loads of friends. Oh, that's so nice.

You also did Dream Life and again, it was living in Malibu in a big house with. Loads of friends. It's a lot of focus on a lot of friends and we do lots of pranks every day. Not pranks, but like bits. Activities and games. We get up to things. Yeah. You love getting up to things.

I love to get up to things. Again, this was very deep lockdown stuff. So I was obsessed with getting up to things. Yeah, of course. It was like, I guess my dream life would be I can go outside and feel safe. Yeah. It says any people involved. I've seen my loved ones in more than three months.

Yeah. Okay. That's very helpful. I feel like it was bossy. No. That's exactly what we need. You've come on to tell us about how to do it. And you did do that in like a loving, caring way.

But also I think what a really important thing is like the shift of like do whatever you think is nice. You know? And it doesn't and it can be your dinner party as opposed to trying to impress people. Like do whatever you think is achievable. Yeah, it should be a nice night for you too. It should be a nice night for you too. Yeah. That is the take place.

That's really key. I don't get a takeaway. Because it's a nice night. Yeah. That's a nice night for me too. Yeah. You're big uncle fish. Do we miss anything?

No, I think that was it. This just says butter and it's underlined. And what does it mean? I think it just means don't, like now's not the time to not use a lot of butter. Really, really strong. Now it's not the time to not use a lot of butter. Also, use a lot of butter. Use a lot of butter, baby.

Also cook onions and butter right before people get there. And then everyone comes in and goes, it smells amazing in here. Right. And they just throw them way. That's not part of it. It's really good. Launch those straight into the bin. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, onions and butter, a bit of garlic in your pan. Oh, lovely. But it's nothing. It's unrelated. You could be making, it could be for something. You put it, you put the hunker fish on top of it. Yeah. It can be a jude for the hunk of fish.

Beautiful. I'm going to try the hunk of fish. I think you should, yeah. Honestly. I'm so excited. Right. I'm so excited. I'm really excited.

I feel really good. Yes, me too. Like I'm, okay. It's like very hard to actually fuck up a dinner party with loved ones. Think about Bridget Jones's famously bad dinner party. Everyone still had an amazing time. Yes. She served blue soup, omelet and that orange thing at the end.

Yeah. And marmalade. Every course disgusting. Yeah. Best lovely evening. Yeah. Anecdo. A lovely evening.

Yeah. What's your main take? You didn't want to listen to the couple arguing about the egg. No. Eat the egg. Yeah. Just eat egg pasta. Yeah.

Serve them scrambled eggs and spaghetti, but I have a great attitude. about it. Yeah, having a great attitude. Never apologise, never explain. There's the meal. To the royal family. There we go. That's Kate Moss, actually.

Is it? No, that's nothing tastes as good. It's the real family. It's always either Kate Moss or King Charles the first. King Charles, Kate Moss. Anyone can make it. Yes. No, I see how I did it.

Yeah, yeah. I think he's done the opposite as well and said that Charles said nothing taste is going of skinny. I have done that. I have done that too. Or Gandalfealth. It was the tuberculosis that had gone to his head. Yeah.

hard time. On that note, yeah, by Monica's book. Oh my God, buy the book. If you just want, if you want just an excellent read that you honestly will probably read in like a day

because you just can't stop, it is the one. It really is. And congratulations. I honestly had to put it down so many times like this. Yeah, same. Same.

I was like, oh, she did that bit so cool. It was like, God. Yeah. God. It's just brilliant. It's really nice book. Have you guys got a podcast

on how to take a compliment because I'm like, going to get a rash. Monica's on the floor in the fetal position. You're supposed to be Canadian and be good at this. Get in my kitchen and do my dishes. Yeah. Yeah, you work really hard and you made something really nice and it's speaking to people because it comes from a very,

it came from a place. You took the pieces of your broken heart and made them into art. King Charles I first. What's your Twitter and Instagram handles, Monica? I'm so sorry, I've absolutely forgotten. Just my name at Monica Heise. Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening. We will see you next week. And we'll discuss. If you've managed to take any of these on board, please send us pictures of the big hunker fish. I would like, please. Just send us the big hunk of fish in the post. Send us the hunker's in the pose of the gods. Send us the candle.

Send us the tablecloth, cotton, not wipe clean. Yeah. Colored bits. Get your vermouth in the fridge. Yeah. Freezers. Get things cold. Have a lovely, lovely dinner pot.