Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S4 Ep 2: Dolly Alderton

Episode Date: October 17, 2018

Since reading her book, 'Everything I Know About Love', I feel like Dolly Alderton is a friend I was always meant to have. We talk oysters, champagne, a little bit of love, her real name (!) and everything fabulous in between. Produced by Alice Williams Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm a singer and I present this show with my mother who is sitting right beside me. Lenny, say hello to your fans. Hi fans. Table Manners is all about inviting someone that we are interested in over for dinner and a chat which leads to kind of anything and everything. Can we talk about food? Mostly food. It's a pleasure to do this because it's also quite...

It's a pleasure because you're spending more time with your mum. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say, Mum. Yeah, I knew that. I'm so excited to have this woman on our podcast. I've fallen slightly in love with her since finishing her book about an hour ago. I consumed it in a day. And I think you're going to fall in love with her.

I bet. Her name is Dolly Alderton, and she has written one of the best books, I think, in the past kind of few years. It's a book called Everything I Know About Love. Is this about love? It's about love and friendships and I guess being like a millennial woman growing up in London. And she's so likeable and she writes beautifully. writes beautifully. I think her writing is a cross between Sex and the City girls and Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones, and this kind of confessional, funny, witty, bright. Do you think I'd like it? I think you would be enamored by her and you probably know a friend of mine like her, you

know, and I saw a lot of myself in her apart from the fact that she is wild and a really big drinker. and i don't think i'd be able to keep up with her she talks about her friends so openly but she speaks about with such love and generosity do you want to be her friend i've already texted her to say can i be your friend okay and uh she said yes i've been up for this for a while so i feel like this is going to be the best blind date have you met her i? I've never met her, but I've listened to her podcast. So she has a really successful podcast called the high low that she presents with Pandora Sykes.

And actually she's mentioned our podcast a lot. It's about highbrow things and lowbrow things. So I think we were in the highbrow section. I'm not sure. We'll have to find out, but she talks about what she's been reading, what she's been watching, what she's been listening to.

She's 30. She's incredibly successful. She's been watching what she's been listening to she's 30 she's incredibly successful she's bright she's witty i think she's going to be the most perfect dinner party yes can't wait what have you made jess because it's at your house today yeah so dolly's a pescatarian and so we're doing um i'm doing cod with what's that sherry called manza manza mantilla manzilla manzia yeah so i got a bit of that i've roast slow roasted these um tomatoes on the vine before and i've done some shallots and basically going to put it all together with paprika sherry a bit of vinegar and um beautiful butter beans from brindisa um which i love that tapas place a bit expensive though but yeah so i've got that and then mop it up with some sourdough from dusty

knuckle my favorite bakery in dolston in hackney um i hope it's moppable and then i've griddled baby gem lettuce which is so delicious and then i've tried something what those broccoli cauliflower things called they look like dinosaurs romesco or something yeah whatever those things I've done a trapeze or trappanese I should really know an almond pesto almond tomato pesto that I'm gonna drizzle over but I mean this is a very poor man's version of a kind of towpath meal. So it's kind of bits and bobs. And then I left you to do the pudding. Yep. What are you doing? I've kind of adapted an otolenghi recipe and made a cheesecake with apricots and amaretto.

Lovely. You know what else I really love about this girl? What? She wanted to start at six o'clock. She likes an early meal, just like me. How do you know? So we can be in bed by nine. She might be going on somewhere.

Maybe. Probably. Somewhere wild. She's Dolly, she's wild. And fun. She's probably having a dinner before she goes out for cocktails. Swapping it all around.

Dolly Alderton coming up on Table Manners. Hi, my love. How are you doing? Good, thanks. How are you? Nice to meet you. Would you like a drink? I'd love one. What would you like? What are you guys having?

We've got Prosecco, we've got Rose, we've got Red. All the above, whatever. What do you want, Mum? Would you like to start with Prosecco? I was trying to be good, but I won't. I'm so happy to have you. I'm so happy to have you. I'm so happy to be here. I've just finished the book. Oh, thank you. God, she must have crammed that in.

No, babe, audiobooks are a game changer. They're the best, yeah. Oh, maybe I should do that. They're so good, Lenny. It was outstanding. Outstanding. And loads of people had told me, and then I've been that person that's telling everybody else,

and then my friend was like, for God's's sake you're the third person so okay fine i'm gonna read it i've got to read it mom it's so beautiful and um to say i'm so impressed by people that can write and that it's so it was so funny and charming and heartbreaking and that chapter on florence was just i was crying in shoreditch high street today just like listening to it it was she sounded amazing and farley and then i did this weird thing where because i was so obsessed with characters which are your actual friends yeah i had to stalk your instagram to try and find them so i could put a face to the name they all love it when people do so farley is not what i expected oh really no even though i know the first kind of sentence sentences about how you're kind of opposites

and she's brown and sensible and you kind of and small, shorter and anyway, I loved it. It was amazing and I want to know if all the men speak to you. Do you know the weirdest thing that happened?

So I changed all the boys. Did you lose some friends? Because I feel like it was very generous and it was witty. But, you know, you do talk about Hector being basically the biggest dickhead. And cringe. The thing with Hector that's weird is that this is a guy who I dated when I was 21. And he's a bit of a... I have nothing but affectionate feelings towards him. But he was a very eccentric character.

So I just wanted to write about this kind of very strange thing that we had and I didn't ask for any of the boys permission because I changed all of their details and I changed all of their names have you got a boyfriend at the moment no Jesse wants to fix you up yeah but I don't know if it's a good idea or not why I feel like it's the dolly that maybe was like the early 20s dolly when I was listening to it and I was like you're wild yeah and you can drink yeah not anymore really but like it was really I felt like I had such an affinity it's weird to say this because you're right in front of me but I I just got so much of it and I felt so kind of it was so relatable even though I've been in a relationship with the same person since I was like 18 yes I wanted to ask you about this because I saw by the way your husband is so hot

and I hope it's not indelicate to say that no I love it because he's so gorgeous very handsome I saw your um I was looking on your Instagram this week and I saw a really gorgeous photo of you and him in your sexy leather jackets you're trying to recreate the kim kardashian khania west uh wedding photo that was i know nothing about pop culture so i would never have known that i thought that was you and your husband super invented but i saw that you said happy four years plus 12 and then i was like went and did this weird maths and looked up your age and i was like jesus they must have been together since she was about 17 yeah actually maybe i kind of got the maths wrong on that. Basically, we were together from 18, we had two years off,

but I just don't count that. Yeah. And then I'm 30, I'm going to be 34. That's so magic. I cannot tell you how fascinating I find long-term love like that, particularly from a young age, because it's something I've struggled with so much. I just, I don't understand why you're single because you're gorgeous it may be her choice do you know what I had um I'm sure it is her choice but she's not met the right one yeah and

I had I think I was uh there was such a long period of my life where I was so nuts about blokes I was so strung out on men and yet so kind of unable to commit to them. And it was the thing that was kind of... I think it was something to do with going to an all-girls school, actually. Really? Where did you go to school? I went to an all-girls school called St Margaret's in Bushy and then I had two years at a co-ed boarding school. And thank God... And did you go crazy there?

Well, no, because I just looked like Hagrid at that point in my teenage life. So none of the boys were interested in me, but I was obviously completely obsessed with them. And I think it's the same with a lot of girls I know who went to all girls school. You never quite shake off this feeling that they're the kind of most exciting and scary and mysterious, completely different species. And I think that I had trouble connecting with them throughout my 20s. So I connected with them in kind of destructive and disconnected ways. Yeah, I think you look up to... Well, I went to all-girls school.

Did you? And I think you go to university and there are so many blokes around. Oh, you're like a boy in a china shop. And you defer to them because you think they know a bit more than girls do weirdly and i don't know why it is something about going to a girl's school yes and we hardly had any male teachers i think we had a russian teacher and a guitar teacher who like nearly fainted when they came in and they were so awful looking yeah well yeah jillie cooper said that in her desert islander she said that she went to an all-girls school and she said they were just so charged up on hormones and they were so starved of male company that the 80-year-old gardener would come to the grounds

and they would all lose their minds. Oh, wow. Yeah, and I think that doesn't really leave you in a way. And it certainly didn't with me for my 20s. So everything was going, I was just making bad choices with men. And about a year and a half ago I just decided to just stop just stop dating stop texting them stop kissing them stop everything and sort of get my head together and think about what what I want out of a relationship because I just couldn't make relationships work so I needed to kind of think about how to relate to men and what I wanted from them what kind of partner I want and what kind of partner I would like to be

and now I've literally turned 30 last week and I'm suddenly like thinking about men again um but I just wrote a column about this and it got mixed reaction I just don't want to go on dating apps I don't want to make this like um all about kind of your dating and why you're single but Jessie has got someone for you but I'll I mean I don't know if this is no just whatever I would love to be set up I think all my friends have run out of single men I think it happens in cycles and I think I'm currently in between cycles like between people's first and second marriages so they'll get divorced and maybe they'll free up again what I really loved was just that actually when you're talking

about love really the love that's celebrated is the women around you and I thought that was so beautiful because like and I that relationship with Farley is you know when she gets her boyfriend and you feel like she's given up on you and you said that you're like the warm-up act to the the headliner that's the guy and it's just i know that feeling and i have yeah at an intent and i probably was the farley to my well i was gonna say if you fell in love super young that probably you know you were always kind of making that excuse or apology that you always kind of when you saw saw your best mate you had one eye on your phone probably and you'd be kind of slightly apologetic for it being so long and I I it kind of really made me feel very guilty about the way maybe I'd behaved to people

some of my best mates not that it was badly but it reminded me that kind of in some forever I know it's boring but um but I think you know what it was really important but it reminded me that kind of... Because you were in Sam forever. I know, it's so boring. But I think, you know, it was really important for me with that. On the final page, I do kind of lessons of everything I knew about her at 28, which was when I wrote it. And it was important for me to point out that, you know, lose your friends to love once because all the good ones come back. Yeah.

And I've certainly been guilty of it whether it's one eye on the phone or your head not really there or your you know I've had that feeling of when you're falling in love with someone and it's so intoxicating you feel like the whole world could crumble around you and sort of everyone could yeah die in an apocalypse and as long as it's the two of you then you're totally fine and I think that I don't think that's healthy or sustainable obviously but I think to have that rush once and then to learn your lessons and realize that that is not the only love that can sustain you and you have to cram love into your life from all different areas from family through work with friends and make all those areas and all those people feel appreciated and cherished I think it's fine it's when you keep

doing it over and over again I think that's a problem but if you did it once i think that's fine but um i are you sick of talking about love um do you know what i love talking about friendship like female uh platonic love i could talk about that forever um because i just find it so endlessly nourishing and funny and complex and beautiful. I cannot talk about romantic love anymore simply because I just have no experience of it. And there was a period of my life where, I don't know if you get this with your music, where you just accidentally fall into a niche that you never really chose.

And there was a period when I was the Sunday Times dating columnist where every time I did a panel, I was billed as a dating guru I just don't know how this has happened and I have nothing left to say but in terms of female friendship you know I think that the book's done better than I thought it would and I mean you say it's done better than it like it's a bestseller it's on Penguin it's read by every person that I know in their 30s or 20s. It's become a really seminal book, I think, for young women. Can I put that on the cover? Absolutely.

We haven't even talked about food. We want to know about your name first. Is it Dolores? It's not real. Shut up! Yeah, I'm sorry. What's your real name? Hannah.

That's okay. Oh, we've got Hannah. Hold hold on so you changed your name as like a stage name no do you know what stage name i love you like lady gaga so i was it was kind of given to me as a half nickname when i went to boarding school why because um just the hagrid years it was i looked a bit like sean the sheep you know like the googly-eyed wallace and gromit sheep i bit like Sean the sheep you know like the goggly-eyed Wallace and Gromit sheep I feel like Dolly doesn't really like conjure that image well Dolly the sheep exactly oh that was cloned oh fucking hell really is that you're kidding me no it's not because I'm like a dolly bird no I think that's I know well I asked my friends I said can you think of a girl's sheep name because I was so big and lumbering I was just like can I just not be called Sean that's a nickname so yeah why didn't you put that

in the book um or did I miss that no I didn't put that why didn't you put that in the book I don't know I think is it something that you're not ashamed of but no no no I think people get some I think some people think that by me kind of adopting this nickname that it's um like some sort of you know like in Breakfast at Tiffany's when Holly Golightly sort of leaves her hillbilly past behind that maybe there's an element of that or there's some sort of shame about my past yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just not. It's just... So do people... Have people called you Dolly for a long time?

Since I was 18, yeah. So people have called me Hannah now. A couple of school friends and my parents and my doctor. What does Farley call you? Dolly, yeah. I need to talk about food because you're a foodie yeah well i don't know i think you collect recipes yeah yeah how would you describe a foodie i someone that just well you have recipes in your book yeah but she was very nora effron yeah that was kind of inspired by that because i loved heartburn's one of my favourites

I felt like that was like it felt like that feeling yeah and I think it was actually my agent's idea and I think so much of writing a book Meg Wallitzer who's a great novelist actually said this to us when we were interviewing her for the highlight she said so much of writing a book isn't about um character or plot or even sentence structure it's about creating an atmosphere it's like it's like having kind of droplets of water in the air and making sure that all the atmosphere is cohesive and I wanted I wanted first of all because it's a memoir I like the idea of the proximity the closeness to the author of this is what they were eating at the time or this was a part of their domestic life. But yeah, I like that kind of nod to Laurie Colwyn's food memoir or Heartburn, which is one of my favourite books.

Some people hated that there were recipes in there. Why? I think they felt like maybe I was telling them how to cook or something. I think they didn't understand. I think you sound like a cook when i was reading the recipes you know lightly whisk and you know and it's like that fish sounded great what's it called uh soulman yeah yeah soulman yeah that was like that sounded banging and quite straightforward but impressive this is i know but i've never made that i feel like you're quite a rich

eater like everything was kind of buttery cheese yeah yeah i think i am mac and cheese hangover mac and cheese yeah it's good for a hangover it's got four types of cheese yeah and someone messaged me saying that they made it and put quavers on top as a crust oh no yeah i could get that i know i was in there i love qu I okay so I think you're a foodie do you you cook a lot you put a post up on Instagram

the other day anchovy bites these cheese and anchovy bites oh those are gorgeous did you make them recently did you do it with puff pastry yeah no they're

I have this little very 80s recipe file where I just keep stuff from I love food magazines and that that recipe is actually my ex-boyfriend's mum's recipe

and again it's quite an 80s recipe and it's just um equal parts gruyere um flour and butter and then anchovies and olives whizzed up into a dough and then you just cut them into triangles and put them in the oven so I love when you have a glass of wine something salty are we allowed to add them to our cookbook as dollies and of course you're a pescatarian aren't you yes pescatarian and it was because of a book which book was it that you read um it was because of a book and a boy the book um was eating animals by jonathan saffron oh my god oh i love jonathan that's a great book and don't read it, Mum. No, no, no. Even if you eat meat, because it will just make you,

I'm sure you eat meat ethically anyway, but it just makes you much more conscious of how you're consuming meat. I probably eat less meat than I ever used to. I do like meat as well. I love meat. I miss meat every day. Do you miss it?

Mm. Oh dear. And you won't go back to it? Do you know, I slipped up for the first time a few months ago and it was in the most extreme way possible. Where I'd gone out for drinks in Soho with friends and we hadn't had dinner.

And then we got quite well-oiled. And we walked, I walked home to get the bus back to Camden. And I don't really remember it until I looked at my receipts the next morning and then I was like Jesus Christ and I went into Burger King Oh and you don't remember it? I ordered a Whopper

Oh I don't and I think I just stuffed it I think I knew it was so bad that I thought if I just stuff it in really fast then I won't remember it and then it sort of all came back to me in flashbacks the next day bad that I thought if I just stuff it in really fast it won't have then I won't remember it yeah and then it sort of all came back to me in flashbacks the next day okay so we have we have cod. That looks lovely.

It's cod with manzia sherry, shallots and griddled baby gem lettuce. And lots of tomatoes and butter beans, but like the really good ones from Brindisa that aren't kind of tasteless. God, that looks good. And paprika. That looks amazing, darling. I hope it's okay. And then the sourdough is from dusty knuckle which is the best bakery in hackney and that's to kind of mop it up but then i felt worried that that

wouldn't be enough and i didn't know whether you were gluten free so i did some roast potatoes you know you've like made all my favorite things amazing tomatoes are my favorite things broccoli is my favorite things sourdough white white fish, potatoes, and the hat, I'm a big shit right now. Okay, great, fine. Thank you. And then, yeah, we've got this kind of broccoli, whatever it's called, romesco with this trappanese sauce, which is kind of an almond pesto thingy.

And so here we go. Oh, I love a trappanese. Okay, good. Perfect. Thank you. A trappanese, Dolly. Mum, didn't I tell you, you'd love her? I love her.

I think that actually quite worked. I think this is delicious. That was so, so good. Thank you so much, Dolly. I'm going to steal that. Babe, you saw how quick that was for me to do. What I did do before was I pre-cooked the shallots in butter and slow-roasted the tomatoes that had so many vines.

Maybe omit some of it. No, no, they were really sweet. They were really yummy. Slow-roasting them and then bung them in. That was soines. Maybe omit some of it. No, no, they were really sweet. They were really yummy. Slow roasting them and then bung them in. That was so good. That was really, really easy. Right, I don't know what this is going to be like. This looks delicious.

Mum, this looks great. What fruit's that on top? Apricots. Oh, yum. It's apricot and amaretto cheesecake. That looks great. Who knows? And did you bake it?

Yeah, I baked it. Do you want some, darling? I want a sliver because I'm supposed to be being sugar-free. No, that it Do you want some darling? Do you want like a sliver Because I'm supposed to be Being sugar free No that is not a sliver mum That is not a sliver either Jesus

Jessie That's a mother's sliver Okay that's fine Well can I tell you I can't taste any amaretto No And there was over half a cup in. Maybe you need the half bottle.

I think you do. It's delicious. It's really nice. I love the consistency. It's very light. It's like a New York cheesecake. It is like a New York cheesecake. And it's got the almonds in the bottom of the base as well.

Oh, I just got a hit of amaretto. Did you? So, I know about your hangover mac and cheese. But that seems like quite an effort to do when you're hungover so like what would be your go-to hangover okay so here is my number one vice i think now as a 30 year old woman and it really divides people Wagamama oh that's advice I am obsessed with Wagamama why? I don't know

what's your meal? Do you like noodles? I love noodles and I know that I live in London and it's multicultural and there's so many amazing places I could get authentic noodles but I just love Wagamama I think it's like the McDonald's of like... Exactly. Noodles.

Yeah. I have a friend... What do you order? Veggie Katsu or Tofu Itami, Prongiosa. Maybe it's good for veggie people. I just crave... Did you see that? How mum you said that?

Maybe it's good for veggie people. Her type. I just crave Wagamama. Del wagon delivery and uber eats has changed everything oh yeah yeah because everything's accessible now you can get mcdonald's ubered now yeah you can yeah but like why would you not do that no i wouldn't do that what would be your desert island meal the one that you've got to have before your're before you go and also would you want it to be called The Last Supper are you offended by that no I've heard you too bicker about this

because you think it's too maudlin it's really maudlin because I've got a big thing about death penalty and very anti it so I hate to think of it my favourite game to play is What is Your Last Meal On Earth and my friends now just cannot play it with me anymore because they were like you you know everyone's,

you ask this every single time we meet up. So we love it too. I just find it so interesting and I think it says so much about a person but they're just really bored of talking about it. They're like, we know everyone's off by heart from the aperitif to the cheese course

so we're done now, we don't want to talk about this anymore. We need to know yours, definitely. But I don't like when you ask that at a dinner party and some know- all says well if i were about to die i think i wouldn't have any appetite i know just go with the fucking flow go with the flow it's not literal so i don't mind the whole okay death or desert island thing

um so i would start with glass of champagne and oysters with shallot vinegar love them do you not like she's Oh, she's going to die. She's liking them, yeah. Salty snot. I love them. They have to be icy, icy cold. And I did wonder, I'm like, maybe I just like this

because I know it's fancy, but I hate caviar and that's fancy. So I think it's not just because it's fancy. I think I do find them really sort of invigorating and refreshing.

I think the experience is exciting isn't it it's like the like you know the kind of shucking and then yeah do you push it up onto the roof of your mouth and massage it that's what when i used to do catering when i used to do catering well no like like waitressing right did you say no and there was no look you say push it up onto your... No. Mama. Look at me. Push it up onto the roof. Why are you so inappropriate?

Jesus. I'm just asking about catering. Have you got a dirty mouth? Mama. It was a 70-year-old oyster shucker who was in like one corner and he told me to do it. There was nothing sexual. Dirty sod. Okay, anyway. Up onto the mouth and then did he... So my thing is I always chew it, which I'm afraid and he told me to do it. There was nothing sexual. Dirty sod. Okay, anyway.

Up onto the mouth and then did he... So my thing is I always chew it, which I'm afraid you're not meant to do. I give two big bites. I don't like swallowing it whole. I like tasting it. Is it gritty? No, no, it's delicious.

It's like silky. It's so yummy. Oh, you don't. No, I'll massage it on the roof. Do you know what? I've just bought... I'm obsessed with eBay and this is my most unnecessary ebay purchase i'll show you a picture these beautiful french 1950s little oyster plates and would you have oysters lenny if i had you around

and i served them on those beautiful plates look at them definitely i wouldn't eat them okay so what's next that's not a a starter. That's like a... Okay. Don't worry, Jessie. Okay, good. And then for my starter, I'm going to do pasta as the Italians do it. So like a creamy, very small portion of spaghetti vongole. Okay. Oh, with clams. Lovely.

Is there one place in London or anywhere in the world that is your go-to vongole place? It's those kind... There's like a little Italian on Parkway that i go and get a vongole it's those kind of very simple rustic italian restaurants that i think do it best parmesan on seafood pasta yes and me too i think that i know the rule is the italians don't but i think they do because when i was in italy they do put parmesan on it well they always look at you in a very sniffy way if you ask for your parmesan but I can't eat it any other way I love it cheese and fish it's like perfect marriage yeah okay so that's that and then I would have probably like quite similar to what we had tonight I would have

a piece of white fish um it's interesting that on your tom carriage episode he was talking about turbot because my i would normally have said just like a beautiful piece of cod and then my editor at penguin took me out for dinner to celebrate the book called julia annan and she uh publishes a lot of cookbooks she does all the polpo books and she's a great yeah she's a great great great um foodie and she's like one of those kind of very elegant very intelligent women who whatever she says i do and when we were ordering dinner at morrow she was like you must have the turbot always order the turbot turbot's the most beautiful fish and so now i don't think i'd even eaten turbot before and then i heard tom carter say it was the most beautiful fish it's now every time i see

turbot on a menu you order it and it is such a delicious fish expensive as well yeah yeah but it's so much um it's like the kind of not rubbery but that like really meaty texture of a tuna but then with that delicate yeah white flavour. We had it for Osholengi and he had to cook it because we never cooked it before. I prefer halibut to be honest. Oh do you? But they're quite similar fish.

Halibut's flakier isn't it? It's flakier and it's slightly oilier. It's just a really great flavour. What would you have with your fish? So I'd have that grilled very simply with some lemon and then i'd have a tomato like a fresh tomato salad which is one of my favorite things to eat and then some literally some like crispy potatoes you literally cooked like a version of my last meal that's wonderful thank you and then pud and then i would do cheese before pudding yeah cheese before pudding yeah i think that's what the french do isn't it they do but you can't

keep eating it if you have it oh that's true because you like to keep i like it on the table and going for it all night what cheese would be on the board a what a what. A what? Epoisse. Epoisse. I don't know it. E-P-O-I-S-S-E What is it like? It's deliciously stinky. Smelly. Very runny. Gooey. Yeah. And it comes in a little box. It's an orange rind. Yeah.

And then I would have I just really rack my brains with pudding Yeah, me too. Maybe either a creme brulee. Yeah. Do you like panna cotta? I like panna cotta. I'm not meant to eat it because I'm vegetarian,

but as I think the Whopper incident. Oh, because of the jelly. Or I love a crepe suzette. Gosh, I never think of crepe suzette. So yeah, that's what, and then I haven't really had any booze. I think I just drink champagne from stops. You would just drink champagne, not wine. Yeah, it's a very tacky thing boo I think I just drink champagne you would just drink champagne not wine yeah it's a very

tacky thing about me I just love champagne why is that tacky I feel like it's people take the piss out of me for it I don't know I think it's seen

as being a bit bourgeois I just love I do love champagne how happy were you when Prosecco came in fashion then it was like half the price

do you know what it's not the same I don't love Prosecco. No, I don't. Do you know what my new favourite thing is? Cremon, which is like... Cremon de Bourgogne. Yeah.

It's like French Prosecco, but it's basically made in, I think, oh God, people are going to get angry if I get this wrong, but I think it's made in a very similar... I think you have scarier listeners than us, so don't worry. Oh God. I know, you're always having to get corrected, aren't you? I hope that I can say... I mean, if I said this on the high note and I got it wrong, tomorrow it would be, I think you're fine.

But I think that Cremant is made... Because the whole thing with champagne is that it's just from a particular region. And I think Cremant is made in the exact same way that champagne is made just in other parts of France, I think. So it's got that biscuity richness of champagne. Do you want more champagne? No, no, I'm so happy with my rosé.

Thank you. Okay, so you talked about Uber ratings in your book. Mine's so bad, Jessie. Well, because we, I don't know how this came to be a thing, but we compare Uber ratings. And I think it's time to get... I cannot tell you mine. Is this because of drunken episodes?

Or because you're rude to the driver? Do you know what? There's actually a video circling on Twitter that my friend cruelly recorded me when I was drunk on my last birthday about 2am of me grilling my Uber driver as to why he thinks that my rating is so bad. And I would put forward the argument

that he... When you have an already low rating, that it means that there's an unconscious bias there. I agree. But he said, how low is yours? Oh, oh, oh. What? I think I'd be a bit jealous. Go on.

4.62. Lenny, that is high. That's gone up a lot. See, that annoys me because I've tried really hard to push mine up, and I actually think it's gone lower. In fact, I know it's gone lower since I tried to be on time. I never asked to have a cigarette out of the window when I'm drunk anymore. Oh, that will do it.

Do you give a tip? No. I always tip. Oh, fuck, man. What's yours? I can't say. Hold on, yours is on yours is 4.62 mine's 4.45 what's yours come on dolly 4.36 that's not too bad you're in the driver told me that that was spectacularly low my time keeping isn't great so i cancel a few no never cancel i think that i just leave them waiting or

have in the past left them waiting here's another thing that i do which i think they probably don't like and quite rightly i live on my own yeah and um i wear quite a lot of dresses instead of separates and it's very hard to do up a zip when you live on your own sometimes if i'm going to an event sometimes because i can't so I'll just say I would have thought you'd get more points for that but maybe they just think this isn't driving Miss Daisy

do you know what I mean they're not I'm not employed by you I love that so maybe it's that maybe it's that you know this podcast you know we're going to ask you

what is your worst table manner in another person so I'm going to be boring that was person? So I'm going to be boring. That was really bad word. Sorry. I'm going to be boring. And when I go out for dinner, like everyone, I don't like someone being on their phone. But my number one thing when I cook for people, and I don't want to stereotype, but it is

normally boys, particularly certain ex-boyfriends of mine when I spend hours making something delicious and I've really sometimes like the sole mania that I write about in my book when I'm trying to when I was trying to seduce a musician I remember cooking that first at home to see if it would work so I bought two sets of ingredients bless you that's how much I want to impress him don't tell me he asked for Tabasco no do you know I'm actually No, do you know what? I'm actually okay with that. I'm fine with people, you know, I think people eat how they eat and people's appetites are what they are.

If you want to put ketchup all over everything, that's fine. Shit, I really want to know what happened. I don't, I just, he didn't do this, but I don't like when people wolf down the food that you've cooked there. Oh, don't go out with Jessie for dinner. This is where our friendship ends, I think, Dawn.

No, no, fine, a restaurant, but I think when someone our friendship ends, I think, Dawn. No, no. Fine, a restaurant. But I think when someone's cooked all evening for you, it's just certain expo friends have done it. Where Jessie was still eating. But is it because they're loving it? And they just literally hoover it up. You feel like they're not even taking it in? I feel like they're not even tasting it.

Okay. I don't love that. I don't love that. Does that make me sound prissy? No. I think for me, because that's like my language of love love and I think some people just don't really get that for me if I've like really thought out a menu and made something for someone and then it's just gone within two minutes I find that quite difficult what's your bad table man what do I do yeah I do put Tabasco on pretty much everything

you just need like the heat I just love Tabasco but I don everything. You just need, like, the heat. I just love Tabasco. But I don't feel so bad about that when I read that Nigella Lawson walks around with a mini tube of Coleman's mustard in her handbag everywhere she goes. I didn't know that. Yeah. Dolly, there is a chapter in your book which talks about you losing three stone in three months due to a breakup and a heartbreak diet.

And I thought it was very important and poignant and honest to talk about this when it's a difficult subject. You'd find ways to kind of, you know, just drink Diet Coke and eat apples, was it? I don't know. Carrot sticks. Carrot sticks. kind of you know just drink dark coke and and uh eat apples was it I don't know was it carrot sticks and like but there's a power and I I've I've I've seen other friends go through breakups and have that and it and you you you talk about how it kind of never leaves you even though you did put on weight back after and your friends were worried about you Yeah, I was just a heartbroken girl. And it just knocked me sideways. And I think I'd always had this great appetite. My family loved cooking.

My family loved eating. I was a big teenager. And then I kind of leveled out. And I was always a size 14 girl. Me too. But I sort of didn't care. I remember Sophie Dahl saying and I really understood this like I was fine like I know society probably wasn't fine with my weight but I was totally fine

I always had boyfriends I could wear the clothes I wanted to wear and I got to go out and drink loads and eat kebabs like I was always fine with my weight and I'd never really had big problems and then this thing happened that felt so out of my control and I just had never had I just lost it was just grief I just it was very um traumatic the way that he dumped me and I'd never been dumped like that before and I just had no apps I just suddenly lost my appetite and it was such a foreign feeling it had always been such I'd met i just i'd read about people losing their appetite sadness but i'd never understood what that would be like and i just couldn't eat and then i realized and then weight started falling off me and what was sad is that

i then was very ill you know it was an eating disorder it was very ill but everyone around me was just telling me how amazing I looked and every everywhere I turned there was confirmation that I was doing something right so more boys approached me all clothes suddenly looked amazing on me girls complimented me more everyone told me I look well and it was just so sad because it was the way that I worded it in the book was my health was plummeting, but my stocks were up. It was like this horrible disparity of me being in daily torture. But everywhere around me, people sort of telling me that I was doing something right. And obviously they didn't realize the extent of how ill I was.

But, you know, that's what a mess we're in with how with societally that's the mess that we're in with how we view women in their bodies and actually me writing that chapter was I'd never written about my weight before and and that particular battle and editors had asked me to write about it before and I only wanted to ever write it once I wanted to write it in my own words in a book not online and I I was nervous about that experience being published um because there are examples where it is more extreme and I think those people are probably much more of a authoritative voice on eating disorders and recovery um how did you recover um we fell in love with someone who knew that i was ill and he was the one who said to me look i can i can help you through this

and i can have patience with you for this but you have to be able to talk to me about it because i was just it was so it was such a secret i was so ashamed it. And then I went to the doctor and I went to group meetings and totally, and I've totally recovered. And, um, what I wrote, what I wrote in the chapter that you mentioned is I say, you know, that was when I was 23. So it's sort of two years of hell. And then I, and then I came out of it the other side and my weight has always been healthy since. And I haven't really crash dieted since maybe a bit in my mid 20s. But really from from my mid late 20s until now, I've never I've never had any relapse. But it is a daily practice. You know, it is. And what I wrote is that you can't.

it is and and what I wrote is that you can't if you restore yourself to health and you cultivate healthy habits and you start looking after your body again that's wonderful and you will go you will have full physical recovery but all this stuff that you learned in that time of severe deprivation where you felt like you suddenly had control and you enjoyed that for a moment you can't ever undo that thinking like you i'll never be able to forget off the top of my head how many calories are in a boiled egg or how many do you know what i mean so it's like you indoctrinate and and kind of ruin yourself a bit for life and i still love food it's a huge part of my life and it doesn't torture me at all but I do mourn the time where I just never I wouldn't have been able to tell you what a calorie was like I just didn't even think about it I was so carefree with it and I don't think that's an

experience exclusive to me I think most women I know have have battled this and a woman said to me in a in a book event once at the end there was a Q&A and she put up her hands and she said um she she asked me she said how is it now and I said exactly what I just said and I said you know I'm recovered but it is something that will you know be in my head somewhere deep in a corner forever and then she emailed me afterwards and said I found it really difficult when you said that and I think you need to be a bit more careful about how you phrase that because my sister is hospitalized at the moment with anorexia and i find it really disheartening to hear that this is not your fault that's not your responsibility it's not your responsibility and it's not your fault but also it's well i also

just said to her every person's experience is different. But I resent the latent misogyny that I feel is present in someone telling me that my personal tragic experience of being a woman, I have to make into something positive for everyone else. I don't owe that to anyone. Like, I want to tell the truth about this world that we live in and what my experience within that was as a woman and I don't like I don't want to encourage anyone to have an eating sort of you know I hope that by talking about it I bring some sort of solace or comfort for people who've gone in the same way and that they feel connected but as much as I think that the body positivity movement is an amazing thing and my god do i wish that it had been around when i was younger i also think that we've got to be

careful not to censor women of that you know this is something that still plagues people and we're not going to change it until we're truthful about it i worse than the body positive thing or the body negative i hate people who define thin people as good yeah and if they're fat they're somehow bad gluttonous gluttonous and out of control yeah that's a very damaging thing and i think that i think i do i think lots of people and particularly people who watch their weight all the time and obsess with the gym and eating and what they eat and what they don't eat i mean you're much more body conscious than I think we were. But then I remember...

Do you think that's true? Yeah. You're more health conscious. Oh, definitely. With gyms. There were no gyms in my day. People went to keep fit. I think that's a pressure as well.

Yeah, maybe. But through social media, I think... I mean, for me, who I've always been bigger um I think that especially when I went into the public eye and I couldn't fit into the sample clothes that was like a real stinger yeah and you can feel like an imposter nothing makes you feel more like imposter and I've had this with shoots when people put put put sample sizes in front of you and they know that you're not and you suddenly feel like i'm just not i've just i've got this thing now where i have to like i have to have my stylist stay say she will not fit in sample always

but sometimes i do so and then you just feel you want to like high five yourself because you fit it into it's just awful isn't it um it's something i used to do which is really bad is i did a lot of shoots for the sunday times and i've now just stopped doing this and this again this shows i'm not proud of myself for this behavior but this just shows how like deeply ingrained the sense of shame around around our bodies is is is kind of deep within us is i used to say i'd go a size down to this i'd say a week before i'm a size down than what i was because i would be so embarrassed about size 14s you know being really see i go bigger and so that now i do but i think then i think it would i just felt like oh they can't know that about me.

And then I would go, and then obviously none of the clothes would fit, and I would sort of sit in the blue, just like in a complete state. It's like, how dare anyone, and it's not their fault, it's the culture we live in, but how dare that I'm made to feel that,

that I'm somehow doing femininity wrong that I've messed up you know on the course of womanhood growing up you know you talk about that your your mother would give you recipes for your 80s recipe book yeah what was life like in the Alderton family did you eat together was your mom a good cook my mom was a great cook um she was like a home cook there was a lot of roast chicken there was a lot of stews um she's a really instinctive cook she taught me that there are photos of me standing on a chair with her kind of teaching me how to do victoria sponge from the age of like five i loved cooking i found it such a kind of magical process and it saddens me i don't have loads of memories of us eating together my parents were both massive

workaholics what did they do what do my well my dad worked in finance and still does and my mum um was in publishing and I remember we'd have there was Sunday lunches remember we'd have Sunday lunches um but during the week I mean I don't remember us eating a lot together I remember I think my mum was really good actually she was like of the 80s you can have it all lie um and I think you know she tells me so many stories of like how she tried so hard to be the perfect mother and also be the breadwinner and also be kind of queen of the office and she says that she would like there were so many times where she would come you know rush home from work to say goodbye to the nanny and then

read us a bedtime story. And then she said the next day she'd wake up and there would be like a court shoe in the freezer because she was so tired the night before she, um, but my mum, it was a real lesson to me if I'm ever lucky enough to have children that my mum really, I think she was quite absent in a way when we were kids but she tricked us into thinking she was there all the time so our weekends were magical we always were creating together or going on trips or going to the theatre there was like this little angel marionette theatre in Islington that I remember going to every weekend um or cooking together or painting together whatever and then she always she would take us half way to school

in the car then the nanny would meet us and take us the other half and then she'd always be at home to put us to bed so I don't have loads of and it would probably upset her to hear this I don't have loads of memories of us like around a table together growing up but I remember her being super mum

and only when I look back now I'm like oh she just was really clever with being so present and brilliant when she was there yeah she was knackered yeah was your dad a good cook no my dad can't even do beans on toast all right but my mom's like me she loves loves cooking she loves the process of it she loves hosting i think basically people who love, I think Nigella Lawson said something to this effect, that people who love cooking and hosting are basically just secret control freaks. Oh, really?

And I think that's me. I think that's me. Masquerading as a relaxed, generous person. I'm not. I'm not a secret control freak. I'm just a control freak. I'm always happy when people do stuff but i'm bossy

dolly thank you so much for being on this this is one of my favorite favorite podcasts and you've got such a good thing going on here so thank you so much for having me thank you for your brilliant book thank you for the brilliant podcast and thank you for the brilliant podcast. And thank you for being an excellent Table Manners guest. Thank you. Didn't I tell you that you'd love her? I absolutely adored her because she was so intelligent and so warm and charming. And she's so gorgeous to look at as well.

I couldn't go over her eyelashes. I kept looking and staring at her. And I put my glasses on because I wanted to see if they were false eyelashes or not. But they weren't. She was just a gorgeous girl. Wonderful woman. She is a fantastic writer. And I think she's such a brilliant voice for so many women.

She is a fantastic writer and I think she's such a brilliant voice for so many women. I love how honest and open she is about everything. I didn't think she was wild at all. No, but you have to read the book. Okay. She was a bit naughty in her kind of younger years. But that's okay. But it's fine. That's what you're supposed to be.

And I wished I'd been a bit more as fabulous as her. She's fabulous. She's fabulous. She's fabulous. So, yeah, that was an absolute pleasure. And I have to say, and I don't really like eating my own food, but I felt like that was quite a winner tonight. That was wonderful food, darling. I think you're much better cooked than me.

Thank you, Mum. I don't think I am, but... I think you are. I think you're more inventive. We're the yin and the yang to each other, aren we yes darling and you're a millennial just got that word millennials are inventive i've decided all right okay thank you so much dolly alderton for being on our podcast i can't wait an absolute doll yeah for being a doll if you haven't read her book please read it it's everything i know about love if you haven't listened to her two podcasts she has the high low that she presents

with pandora sykes which is just very exciting fun interesting commentary and uh opinion on events topical it's very topical and then love stories which is about people's love stories and love she must be so sick of speaking about love but she I don't know how she fits it all in I know and she walked here

I can't get over that I know walking from Camden yeah I'm tired I'm going to go and do the washing up I'm going to help and

do you want to say goodbye to everybody mum? bye everybody the music you've been listening to is by our friends peter duffy and pete fraser