Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Chat and Chop - with Jamie Oliver

Episode Date: October 10, 2022

Fresh from their Times Radio debut Jane and Fi welcome you to their new podcast series, Fi debates the best way to approach starting a new job and the truth is revealed about Jane's "favourite" tomato curry recipe.Joining them today is the chef and campaigner Jamie Oliver to talk about his new book, One Pot, how families can continue to cook good food during the current cost of living crisis, stopping the government U-turn on health eating for children, and of course…whether or not he is a member of the anti-growth coalition.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Off Air with me, Jane Garvey. And me, Fee Glover. And we are fresh from our brand new Times Radio show, but we just cannot be contained by two hours of live broadcasting. So we've kept the microphones on, grabbed a cuppa and are ready to say what we really think. It says what they really think. That would be great, wouldn't it? That's an idea for a podcast. Get the management in and just do the debrief. If we could just read their minds, we'd be well away, wouldn't we? Anyway, we are, it says here, no, we really are unencumbered and off air.

What did you think of day one? It's quite odd, isn't it, Jane, being women of a certain age. People of a certain age. It could be either gender. We shouldn't milk that too much because we're not that old. But we've come to a new place to do a new job. And it's been a while for both of us since we've done that. It's quite some time. Yeah, and it does feel new, but I'm already feeling much lighter of

heart because it's begun. So, Asma Mir, who does the Breakfast Programme here, she warned us about the, what were they, hard-court away junctions. And I've had anxiety dreams about that. I think we negotiated our hard-court away junctions relatively well. It was the other parts of the programme that went completely belly up. But listen, it's the first day. It is. But it's all the furniture of a live radio programme that obviously gets an awful lot of getting used to.

And you just don't want to mess those bits up because then it does slightly throw you for the rest. But we mangled our way through. We can only get better. And we probably will. There's obviously no guarantee of that. But it's very right. We had some welcoming emails.

We also had a bit of abuse, which is also, you know, how it used to be doing live radio. It's all come back to me. I've very sensibly chosen the little TED chair. So you don't see it. I didn't see all the social media stuff coming in. A couple of people took exception to the fact that there'd been a bit of a love-in,

which I think perhaps we both felt was, you know, a bit much in terms of our arrival. Well, we're here now. Let's just do the job and everyone can forget about any kind of a hullabaloo surrounding our arrival. Because trust me, we don't rate ourselves that much, do we? We really don't. I found it rather difficult to essentially perform myself

for people. But yeah, it'd be nice to get just stuck into the job. Low expectations has always been our thing. And to be fair, it's served us pretty well so far. So we don't want to divert from that at this late stage in the game, do we? Do you think there's anything different being slightly older in how you approach that first day in a new job though so I think there just is and I can't quite put my finger on what it is because it might just be down to the experience of life

the fact that you know in your 50s you probably have an awful lot else going on around you it's not just work that you focus on or I don't know what it is but it is it is different did you find it different it is different I mean I think work now has a particular place in our lives that you're right probably isn't as big a place as it might have been 20 or 30 years ago but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy it when you're here because it can be quite good fun enormously so meeting that many new people as well is quite strange. And learning to time when you have that mug of tea and how you plan your consumption of beverages around your live broadcasting. So comfort breaks definitely need to be sorted out.

Well, you've just got to time the trudge from the studio to the lavatorial facilities. Yeah, but I did it reasonably well today. I think I'll just be a bit more careful tomorrow. I very much hope so. I dread to think what would happen if you weren't. We've got a very simple format for this podcast, haven't we? We do a little bit of chat. I think we're probably quite wide-eyed with adrenaline at the moment.

So we'd better not say too much else. We're going to play out the best of the programme, which will probably be the big name guest who's appeared on the programme. And we'd very much welcome your emails. And if you've joined us from the previous ship, we'd welcome emails in exactly the same vein, actually. If you just want us to talk about different things,

join in your conversation about different things, we'd really like to hear from you. So it's janeandfee at times.radio. Nailed it. Well done, because I was struggling for that. Yeah. Jane and Fee. Sorry, I got a sweep from management, Tinta.

Maybe they were trying to poison me. Jane and Fee at times.radio. Yes, that's it. Join in. So we have a couple of emails. So Helen, Helen, Helen, Helen has sent an email that really strikes fear in my heart hello as a long time

fan I'm looking forward to your new show and podcast I've really enjoyed Jane's Chemistry with Rhianna Dillon on the Radio Times podcast and I was wondering if the radio show could encompass a weekly TV review slot with her shall I just go and wait outside during that

Rhianna will be chuffed though she's a very talented young a weekly TV review slot with her. Shall I just go and wait outside during that? Rhianna will be chuffed, though. She's a very talented young broadcaster. She's a very talented young woman altogether. Well, we'll certainly bear that in mind. Thank you for that one, Helen. Karen says, I can't tell you how disappointed I was last night hearing that Fortunately was coming to an end until this morning.

Thumbing through my times, I find you are now on for twice as long, four times a week. I am so happy. The app is downloaded and I'll be tuning in to cheer you on. Can't wait. Exciting times ahead. Karen, thank you for that. That's a very cheery message and we're very grateful for your support. And I hope you enjoyed our first attempt today.

I mean, it will get slicker and it will also stay a bit ragged, if that makes any sense. Yeah, I think so too. I feel that we ought to have a badge we can send out to people like Karen. So far we don't. We'll raid a budget somewhere. This one comes from Linda. Hello, I've been listening to you both for quite a long time.

I was young or youngish then. I know the feeling, Linda. I listened to you last week and I could be completely wrong because I often fall asleep before the end these days, but I could have sworn that Jane went on. She went on. Very went on about Nigella's tomato curry and how she'd made it and it wasn't a success. She did, Linda. I just stopped for lunch and I was reading the Times as I do every day when suddenly you two pop up in Vision, presumably promoting your new show. And Jane answers a question about her favourite recipe. And guess what? It's tomato curry.

This time, it's a raging success. And it's only a day since it was a complete disaster. What is the truth about Nigella's tomato curry? And good luck to you both with your new show. Now, Linda, you're not alone in having noticed that. I didn't feel it was my place to pick Jane up on that. But which is the authentic version of the tomato curry? Or have you made two? I just needed a quick answer to that question about a recipe. So I could only come up with

the last thing I cooked, which was the tomato curry. But was it bad? It wasn't as good as I'd been hoping. It was edible. Like so many of my meals, it was edible. wasn't as good as I'd been hoping. It was edible, like so many of my meals. It was edible. And it's been, that's a compliment I've actually had to tuck away over the years that people have said. They've literally come round to my house and said, well, that was edible. Thanks for inviting me. No, nobody has ever said that. Some of the people I know have. So yes, Linda's quite right to pick me up on it. It was an inconsistency. I mean, some would say it was a flat out lie. Look, this is show business. Sometimes these things slip through and people like Linda are simply too astute.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Show business just takes no prisoners with the truth. So I think you should do, in time for Christmas, a whole new cookery book that's called Jane Garvey's Edibles. Well, what could go wrong with that? I mean, I think maybe we should have suggested it to Jamie Oliver. I could have given him some. I mean, I spend a lot of time cooking for vegetarians and vegans, and I just seem to, on a loop, just make lentil bolognese, because you can disguise it as any number of different things.

Stick a chilli in. It's chilli. Stick it in a cottage pie. It's mince. And then make a soup as well. I mean, all these things are possible. You look absolutely enchanted. Yeah. No, I sympathise. I think that is one of the hardest things, is to have something that has a different consistency

when you're cooking for the vegetarians or the vegans. I don't want to be rude about your vegetarian cooking because I believe it's very nice. Yeah. Welcome back to Off Air with Jane and Fi, with me, Jane Garvey. And me, Fi Glover. Now, if you missed our Times radio show today,

you won't have heard our conversation with the chef and campaigner, Jamie Oliver. He joined us from the Cheltenham Literature Festival to talk about his latest cookbook, One Pot. But which pot, Jane? Well, it's not the only question we wanted to ask him, given the current cost of living crisis, his recent Eat and Mess campaign to stop the government U-turning on healthy eating for children,

and, of course, whether or not he could ever be considered a member of the Anti-Growth Coalition. Morning! Afternoon. Afternoon. You've done so many interviews, you don't know where you are. I was listening to your show, kind of engrossed in what I'm going to talk about. That's very kind of you, Jamie. So the idea behind one, I mean, I almost feel a fool for asking you to explain it because it's a kind of self-explanatory title. But you tell us in your own words.

Oh, it's pretty simple. I mean, I tried to look at the way that people are shopping, consuming, living, the things they're juggling and try and write my most user-friendly cookbook. Ultimately, it's one, mainly not just because of the one cooking vessel, a pan, but our hatred of washing up, keeping the ingredients low, sort of quick preparations, and just trying really to create a cookbook that's relevant to now. Contrary to what maybe lots of people think, things change quite a lot quite quickly. The way we're shopping and living has really changed as well since COVID,

so I'm just trying to stay useful, I guess, is the way I'm trying to do it. Would you agree that there's something just really weird going on in the world of food at the moment, where there's an enormous gap between the top, which is the Instagrammable food with the gold leaf and maybe even the kimchi and the kombucha and the 75 000 pound burgers or whatever it is and then the real real hard need to understand how you can make a shopping basket last a whole week to feed a family yeah for sure i mean i think in any, whether it's art or music, there's always extremes.

And to a degree, social media allows that to sort of search and track more. And people follow people for different reasons, of course. But ultimately, we are animals of habit. Our basket doesn't really change much,

about 4% every week. We pretty much buy the same thing this week as we did a month ago and the month before that. So what we say and what we do are very different things and the only truth actually in the whole food industry is basket data so in a weird sort of way for me when I'm writing this kind of book because you know obviously different books do different things but I try to write recipes that had the ingredients that you normally buy most of the time anyway. So I'm just trying to constantly take away reasons to not cook and just pick up the phone and get a takeaway.

So you'll know all of the criticism that has been thrown at you in the past. Did you feel that when Liz Truss made that comment at the Tory party conference, she was taking a direct pop at you with the buy one, get one freeze? Not really, no. I think the newspaper decided to put me in there to make it a little bit more of a conversation piece. But I think Liz's strategy is to sort of take away, you know, anything that, you know, involves...

Look, when you're trying to progress public health and look at the masses and try and, as they would call, level up, it involves lots of different specific things that might help people and it involves having to fight the food industry and lobbyists. So I think she doesn't want any stress of that at the moment because that's like too much work. That's pretty much why it was brought up. But I mean, look, I've been doing it a long time,

so I'm kind of used to... I think it's the seventh prime minister that I've worked through, 13 head of education so it I think I have to take a long view at it and she didn't mention me specifically but you know for myself and a lot of the um I guess charities and NGOs that fight for public health you know we we stand together always but um it's a funny time right now and um obviously you have to react to what is relevant and useful now and certainly that's cost of living and the cost of ingredients and and for sure cooking can definitely help you if you can cook and if you have access to cook um so you know never in my career have we ever um i've always costed recipes for the last maybe 10 years just to make sure the

books are roughly within the sort of you know a mixture of all the prices that look normal but now we're costing energy 12 pence for this 10 pence for that five pence for that so um i never thought i'd ever be doing that so that's just a showing of the times i guess is there ever an argument though jamie for just pressing pause on on something like the buy one get one free which I know is you're only critical of that when it's unhealthy food but if you are a mum or a dad who who is really really struggling to make ends meet you want to buy something that your kids are just going to eat you haven't got the luxury of trying to get them to eat broccoli three times or whatever it is you just need them to have a full stomach don't you so if you're talking about just putting these

things off while we get through a crisis point very very possibly it was never both the press and and and uh the businesses didn't like that one even though the science and the data proved that they made you spend more eat more and waste more more. But all I would say to you is, do you want to have a pizza for 60 pence or two for £1.50? It's a mechanic. So look, it's not me that's inventing. It's a very specific mechanic that people don't want to understand. So what people want is cheaper food, not cheaper deals, making you want to... That's the point of it.

So, I mean, look, so much so that the biggest supermarket in the country, Tesco, haven't been doing this mechanic for quite some time now. And as they represent the people, that's probably because they have it in the interest of the people to have better prices on the whole, not sort of specific mechanics that are being shown to lead people the wrong direction and make them ultimately less healthy, less well off and waste more. So I think it's just something that the media has struggled to articulate because it's not a one liner. Do you think, Jamie, that in order to improve public health, someone and the prime minister said she is prepared to be unpopular, but she doesn't want to be unpopular on this front. Someone has got to say uncomfortable things about the way perhaps too many of us eat what we eat, the amount we eat.

And that's kind of what you've been trying to do, isn't it? I think for myself personally, when I did school dinners campaign, you cannot do that job properly and not be emotionally moved by the free school lunch kids and what that represents. And currently there are 800,000 kids in this country between the free school lunch kids and universal credit. So just to give you some context on that, to get a free school lunch in Britain today, your family has to earn per household just less than seven seven grand right annually that's all so that's how hard up they are that's how vulnerable they are and there's an 800 000 kid child gap between that and universal credit and and we've known for a long time and been talking about and can campaigning for a long time i'm talking about five years since its creation, that this is an unfair gap.

And I guess if you spoke to any teacher or any lunch lady or manager, this is where you're starting to hear narrative now about kids coming to school starving. It's always happened in pockets. And for any democracy that any of us could respect, we always want to catch the most vulnerable. So free lunches do that, but it's not enough it's not wide enough and and and certainly now more than ever with everything that's going on that's what we're campaigning for currently there is no question in your mind that some people need proper clear messages about how to cook and what to cook look if we're talking about truth in food this is something that look the biggest the biggest industry on the planet is food uh it's it's it's it's pretty tough out there the con you know just

getting truth you know whether it's you know we haven't we haven't even agreed on color-coded front of pack labeling to help busy parents yet why because they don't want you to know yeah uh you know if you look at it i mean if you i if you look at, say, the sugary drinks tax, the companies made more money by reformulating it. It's the biggest sugar reformulation ever in global history. And what it did was not just get them to reformulate their products, but widen their portfolio, which in turn gave the public more choice, which in turn made their businesses more sustainable,

which in turn made them more profitable. So this narrative that doing good is not good business is actually incorrect and, for what I can gather, wrong. So what we need to do as a nation and as a government is make sure the people that are geeky and clever and care about public health and communications and labelling and truth and ingredients and things that should be banned because they're toxic, from pesticides to additives. You know, you want that to happen. You want your child to be in the presence of that nation. What you don't want is a passive government

that keep rattling on about nanny states when kids need a good nanny in their life. And when you go up in an aeroplane and you're up there at 36,000 feet, you want regulations and controls in place to make sure the rivets don't pop and you don't fall out the sky. And it's exactly the same with the three meals you have a day. So Jamie Oliver is our guest live from the Cheltenham Literary Festival this afternoon. Thank you for answering all our political questions, Jamie.

I think both Jane and I can hear in your voice a sense of real fed upness. I don't know whether that's a technical term. Well, look, it's just... Is it Cheltenham? I'm at Cheltenham doing the Literary Festival. I haven't been here for about a decade. It's all very lovely down here. And I've done my gig.

And look, from one side, part of my job is jazz hands and cooking and chopping chat shows. But I think over the... The way I look at my job is I work for the public. And, you know, buying a cookbook, which is essentially my living, it's not a like, it's not a view. It's like a proper vote. You even have to pay for it. And that responsibility of talk, I mean, a lot of the things I've campaigned for over the years isn't things that I've necessarily come up with or even driven.

It's the public that have asked me to talk about the things that they're worried about and they care about so it's an incredible ball and chain that I have to wear and I do take it seriously I love it and it sort of is the best and worst thing that I do but not yet have we ever seen a government that has put child health when have you ever seen a government put child health first on any election and um so it for me i'm just one of many charities and ngos around the country that spend hours every week looking at public health data and spend hours looking at how um you know working with you know people like trestle trust and food banks and and and looking at what do people need and how bad is bad so i think we're all quite aware by now that things are quite bad,

but you do want a government that takes this thing seriously. Shall we do some of the jazz hand stuff? Jazz away. It's turned out to be quite a bright, sunshiny day here in London town, but it was very gloomy this morning, Jamie. Yes, it was. And I was flicking through your recipe book and I came upon pick-me- up chilli fried eggs

which I can make according to you that's the only hangover cure that I wrote in the book and you've been magnetised to it I do not have a hangover this is our first day on the job don't be so mean I don't yeah but it genuinely was the hangover cure that's why I wrote that recipe but yeah go for it

do you still like cooking so when you wake up on a miserable monday morning isn't there a bit of you that just that just thinks i'll deliver rude tonight i don't want to have to cook very rare hardly ever and i just think look it's it's the one thing that is like has given me a living it's my safe place i use it to to invigorate me i use it to cuddle you know to food to cuddle me I use it for therapy I think food can be anything you want it to be and it's your choice to make sure you use it in the right way to suit you in your life and I love it I traveled the world and seen you know similar like similar families with similar jobs but reacting and living in completely different

ways with food and especially now you know when we're talking about cost of living and stuff like that, it's like, I've got so many years behind me where I've seen similar challenges in different countries, and seen how food can really help and lift and even on tight budgets. So I mean, I guess the reality, I mean, for a lot of people now, we don't learn to cook at home so much or at school. So, you know, it makes my job quite a strange one. But ultimately, I think cooking is incredible life skill and superpower. How old are you now, Jamie Oliver? Oh, bless you for that. 47. Thank you very much.

47. You're looking good on it. Thank you. If you were to go back and do it all over again, are there bits of it you'd do differently? God. I mean, I think no. It's been an extraordinary honour and privilege to surf this world in the public eye.

I think the best stuff has been the hardest stuff and the most painful stuff. And think dare I say it um and I've and I've really been on a personal journey you know trying to put meat meat around the bones of what I was back then um coming out of school and the sort of experiences that I had at school um where I struggled quite a lot. And having worked with thousands and thousands of people in teams, I just feel like I'm getting, I'm, you know, feeling quite rounded at the moment, just as a person and as an employer and feel like I've got a good 10 years to give before I'm knackered. I feel like, you know, I do i do i do and there's good work to be done and you know um you know it is all part of the same noise i mean i use tv and publishing as a lever and a tactic to try and

empower people to buy stuff do stuff to it and create beautiful meals and hopefully memories um but as from our earlier conversation like people forget that the biggest business on the planet bigger than arms bigger than oil bigger than city trading is food and therefore why should we not presume that there's many many powers out there trying to you know empower market you into living a certain way and and and you know i think that's where where it gets really interesting so it's quite a a big job remit but i love it i still love it and and and you know I think that's where where it gets really interesting so it's quite a a big job remit but I love it I still love it and and um and I'm still trying to make myself learn new things yeah there is a I mean I take what Fi was saying earlier about you Jamie

and that you do sound you sound a bit worn out but you also can't resist getting a little bit political particularly about the food industry because I think when you ask a question, I'll go. And you can have whichever flavour, Jamie, you want. But it's the profoundly consistent incompetence by government to bake in public health that makes all kids, especially the most vulnerable, do better at school, be more empowered when they leave school, live healthier, more productive lives and and um and what they're talking about now which we've been

working on for years which is kind of leveling up you know so i think what's really interesting is um you know when you're talking about british productivity that that isn't just a kind of business conversation there's a the health the health conversation having a more productive britain a healthier britain a britain that costs the nhs less and allows us to be more creative and you know you can talk to you know i've had conversations with like the most senior economists in the country and you say is british child health part of britain as a gdp and then profitability and and and the answer is a massive yes that was jamie oliver talking to us from cheltenham about his book

one pot which is available now what did you make of what he had to say, Jane? I really felt for him during that interview. I felt he was quite emotional and frustrated, actually. He was frustrated. He didn't look like a man who, well, he wasn't his usual TV-facing, buoyant self, was he? No, not at all. Far from it, actually.

But I thought it was very interesting when he just talked about the number of governments who he has campaigned. Yeah. How many education secretaries did he say he'd work with? Well, I think seven. Yeah. It's just ridiculous. Where he has tried to say exactly the same thing. And I defy you not to have heard the frustration in his voice about it. in his voice about it.

And I suppose maybe it is just quite a difficult gear change to then make in an interview to go into, yeah, I'll talk about my chilli fried rice, which looked like a very lovely recipe. He didn't really talk about it, did he? He didn't want to go there. He also, I thought it was very interesting, he referred to his TV shows as chat and chop. Chat and chop?

Which is not a way I've ever thought about television cookery shows, but now that's the only way I'll ever think of them. And he just sort of said it in a way that suggested that he'd been there and done it and felt slightly bored of that as well I don't I don't know perhaps I'm wrong perhaps we're reading too much into this well we might be and he might just have had a very long day doing back-to-back interviews it's a biggie the Cheltenham Festival but also I think the point to remember uh you've done loads of these I know I think it's incredibly difficult

to do an interview about a cookery book it's always going to be about the person who's written the book or something else to do with food because i mean i defy anybody to come up with 12 really fascinating in-depth questions about recipes about recipes and there is i have done it and there is nothing worse i'm afraid than actual cooking on the radio. It never works. It's utterly ridiculous. People get incredibly frustrated and I don't think the listener, I'm going to say, I'm going to put it out there. I don't think the listener gets a lot out of it. I would agree with you there.

The sound of onions frazzling in Studio 6CE. That is as good as it gets. Yep. Does not improve from there. No. Well, it's the one sense, isn't it, that has really very little involvement in food? Hearing. Hearing, yeah, right. I know it might be important and people might write in and say,

you know, if you can't hear the spit of the fat, your food won't taste as good. But I'm not sure that it's really in there at number one, is it? No, it definitely is. So, look, it was lovely to talk to him and, you know, I hope that we allowed him to say what he wanted to say about food in this country at the moment and he is right on one thing and that has been the same through all of those successive governments this country

has not tackled childhood obesity just a simple fact you know we are one of the it hasn't done anything about obesity full stop um and i think it is partly because no government wants to be seen as interfering in the private lives of citizens. I kind of get it. This is a relatively free country. We are free to make our own choices. Some people have their lack of choices forced upon them by a lack of income and a lack of opportunity, I guess. But I think it would probably say even more reason to give them help about how to eat better and healthier and possibly cheaper. But even as I say that, I sound like a patronising old moo.

So you've got to be very careful. So I understand the difficult path he treads, actually. And poor guy, he did seem to be up against it today. Perhaps we're underestimating the impact of being interviewed by us as well. Maybe that was a factor. Who knows? You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. The producer is Rosie Cutler and the executive producer is Ben Mitchell.

Now, you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this but live, then you can Monday to Thursday, 3 till 5 on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye. jeopardy thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon goodbye