Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S8 Ep 3: Jess Phillips MP

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

This week we welcomed Birmingham-bred Labour MP Jess Phillips for brunch. Brother Alex hid upstairs (as he does when one of his favourites is downstairs) whilst we ate Turnip and Sweet Potato Fritters with Fried Eggs on top and an Ottolenghi Apple cake.We talked about watching Scandal whilst writing her second book 'Truth to Power', getting the blue tick on Instagram, her 'instagrammable' husband, home made Rhubarb Vodka and her son and his friends updating her wikipedia page to say that she ate Quavers in the bath. She'd stock pile toilet-roll for Brexit and her Karaoke song trumps Liam Payne's in a big way.Enjoy this, it was an absolute pleasure to have her over xProduced by Alice Williams Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi and welcome to Table Manners. Today we've got a guest that I've wanted to be on our podcast for so long. I feel that I've got a big affinity with her. She's a Brummie. You're not a Brummie, but yeah, carry on. I went to Birmingham University and my mum was a Brummie. Cool. I think her constituency is very near where my mum was born. She's quite vocal, not that I am, but she's a force to be reckoned with. She stands up for what she believes in and she makes me feel proud to be a woman. We have the Labour MP, Jess Phillips, on Table Manners today. We are very excited.

She has a new book out, Truth to Power. It's her second book. And she's managed to fit us in after a Good Morning Britain episode this morning. We need to go and start those fritters because... I don't want the sizzling. I don't want another Loyal Karner with the latkes situation. No. But quickly, what are we making today, Mum?

We're making turnip and sweet potato fritters. With parmesan? With parmesan. Pecorino, actually. And then serving it with fried eggs on top and some slow roasted tomatoes. And some pesto that we found in the fridge because we were supposed to do it with like a basil oil. I think that's almost basil oil. And then your brother has broken away from his studying to make an apple cake.

It's the Ottolenghi one from Simple and it's really, really good. And Alex doesn't speak to anybody. So the fact that you've managed to tell him to make a cake in the morning, it shows how excited we are about having Jess Phillips on. I told him to make it a little later, so the kitchen smelt delicious. You keen bean. Yeah. I've made something that I don't think is worth really, but that's fine.

I'm sure it will taste fine. It just may not look beautiful. That's totally fine. Right, I'm making you a tea. I'm almost a Brummie. Oh, are you? My mum was born in Birmingham, in Bordley Green. Oh, that's literally on the edge of my constituency.

Yeah, I know. It's like Peaky Blinders. Yeah. That's Bordley Green. I know that's literally on the edge of my constituency. Yeah, I know. It's not, it's like Peaky Blinders. Yeah. That's Bordesley Green. I know. Well, I think it is, yeah. So my granny lived next door to the pub

in Peaky Blinders. So, and also I went to university in Birmingham. So you're basically a Brummie. I really am a Brummie. The thing about Brummies is we will basically

let anyone be a Brummie. We're very welcoming. So were you born and brought up there? Yeah. I live literally three streets from where I was born. Is your husband a Brummies is we will basically let anyone be a Brummie. We're very welcoming. So were you born and brought up there? Yeah I live literally three streets from where. Is your husband a Brummie? Yes. And your kids are Brummies? Yeah born and bred. We're like true bloods. We don't we've not in any way sort of changed the genetics. We've kept everybody truly Brummies. Stronger or that? Which one do you want? Okay all, I've got to put this down because my daughter's on this frigging chair. Jessie moved in with me a month ago

or three weeks ago. Yeah. Feels like three months ago. I was going to say, how's that going? I mean... It's okay. It's fine. It was not great for what...

Last week was not a good week. My husband decided to fuck off for two weeks to go to LA and you know, I'm still resentful. No, Jesse, you need to explain. He was working. Yeah, he was working

but I mean. Can I just say I'm just living hateful. But she's got, so she's got a three year old and a six month old. Yeah, that's shit. Yeah, it's fine.

I mean, you'll be out of the fog in about four years. I wish I could present it better than that. No, you wrote a brilliant guardian article about don't have a january baby yeah it is so true yeah well tell tell everyone why it's so brilliant um so i had my first baby in may um and even though it was horrendous and depressing when you wake up at

five in the morning if the sun is up i know it you feel much much better about the world you're right so you can put the baby in a buggy and go for a walk can't you you can get out of the house and you can stretch your you're so right and then i had my second baby on halloween and so when he was like yeah two months old it's the midwinter and i'd get up in the morning and it would feel as if I had eight hours stretching out before any light came. And I would just sit in like a groove in my sofa with the baby, just waiting for the light to come up. And then you can't go out in the day, can you? I couldn't go out and just sit in parks with my mates.

All the bloody layers. All those layers. And then as soon as they poo all the way up to their neck you've got to undo all the bloody layers and kids become like a starfish don't they like so many clothes on and it just was so depressing having a baby and I found it I found having a baby my first baby really hard because I was young and I didn't know what the hell to do and having your first baby is a massive culture shock. But I actually found my second baby even harder

and it was entirely because it was the winter and I just couldn't do the things that would protect me. But don't you think maybe it was because you also had another one? Maybe. And you were knackered. Because I'm finding at the moment, well, I feel like I've got two weeks worth of lions um saved up from him being away for two weeks so but that hasn't really we haven't like put that into action yet because i seem to be what the gratis yeah

yeah lions and loose um so it was it was really funny seeing in that article that you know your husband being like it's your turn you're like no no no i've been up all night no it's your turn um i would just blatantly lie in the morning i'd be like i've been up all night he's like well that's funny because i have actually been up all night and you were fast asleep and uh yeah my husband was a night shift worker at the time. Oh, God. No, that was good because he was on call often and he would be in our house. And so he would just get up with the baby. I mean, because my second baby, I mixed fed him

so he could have a bottle for that exact reason. And so his hours of being awake were... He was used to being up all night, but then he would have to sleep all day. But, yeah, I would just lie and say, and we'd have this horrible fight every morning, like, it's your turn, it's your turn. And you can't shout at the baby,

even though you want to be like, you're such a dickhead. I know, I know. I mean, the amount of times I wanted to just be like, this baby is such a knob. I definitely said, whispered in hushed tones, fuck you, in the middle of the night so you can't do that so you have to just shout at your husband and i would we're just tearing shreds off each other in the middle of the night in the freezing cold and at the time

you know we live in we lived in a victorian house and it's freezing why didn't you leave the heating on? Because, I suppose, money is the truth. What were you doing then? Were you working? Yeah, I was. Women's aid. No, I started working at women's aid when Danny was about six months old. So I was working at a charity for refugees at the time, I think. But I was on maternity leave, but not for very long.

But, yeah, it was just grim in the winter and and it is much harder having to I remember there's a thing I don't I'm gonna say some really bad science now um where the way women women's auditory senses are different to men's and if there is more than one noise it's like I hate like people talking and playing music on the train or something I find it really really horrendously distracting yeah and there was one time my son my older son he's three he was three and a half when Danny was born and he was just going can I have a hot chocolate can I have a hot chocolate can I have a hot chocolate just over and over again and Danny was screaming and I can I have a hot chocolate, can I have a hot chocolate, can I have a hot chocolate, just over and over again.

And Danny was screaming and I'm trying to sort out the bottle or something in the kitchen and I just fainted with Danny in my arms. I just literally collapsed with the sensory overload of it. I used to faint loads when Danny was little. He was 10 pounds, 10 ounces. And so my body had been through. And then I got sepsis after he was born. Why?

I had MRSA in the hospital. And so then I got sepsis. So my body had been through like a massive, massive trauma, like a genuine trauma in the actual clinical sense of the word. Was it a C-section you had? No. So I had a natural. But afterwards.

Did you get MRSA then? When they sewed me up. clinical sense of the word was it a c-section you had no so i had a natural but afterwards when they sewed me up this is a bit gruesome when we're about to win when they sewed me up and that's an important yeah yeah 36 stitches i think i had oh my god did you tear or did they do it at all yeah mom i tore yeah had an episiotomy oh yeah true no i think i tore because he came out really fast. And he was huge. He was huge. And afterwards, the midwife, the Jamaican midwife,

said to me, you should never have been allowed to give birth to this baby. So I was like, well, it's a bit late now. It's done. But, yes, because he was massive. And his placenta was six pounds. How dare he do that to you? His placenta was six pounds.

Every day, I remind him of the trauma that he has caused me. Six pounds placenta was six pounds. How dare he do that to you? Every day I remind him of the trauma that he has caused me. Six pounds placenta! I know they don't normally weigh it, but they were like, check it out, this is a massive placenta. I was huge. I couldn't drive after seven months because I couldn't fit behind the wheel. Did you eat the placenta? No, I did not eat the placenta. My mum, all of us were born at home um apart from me because i was in some sort

of distress because i'm awkward um but all my brothers were born at home and uh yeah they used to have to like burn the placenta in a bonfire in the back garden but no i did not eat the placenta or have it turned into capsules but can i just say that has totally broken through that is cut through because my friend marcella who is literally from one of the most working class bits of birmingham she had a baby recently she did and she yeah she had them made into pills yeah just literally like if they are getting people from the alan scruff project to turn placenta into pills that has had total cut through i did not do that I did not eat that I would have been eating it for weeks no more percent please no um was you so did you grow up in quite a I don't know why I'm saying this I had a baby at home but like quite a hippie family yeah yeah quite hippie um although like not hippie like posh yeah holistic um I don't really know how to describe it but yeah they were like hippie like

they would we had lentils in jars oh yeah i don't know this is essentially sort of uh the only sort of marker that i can think of and like my parents were part of cnd and my mum was really into uh like the nct and they were long before it was really trendy and middle class they were they there was a part of some sort of getting vegetables from the market collective it sounds like your husband yeah yeah yeah that's jesse's husband was born in the cooperative oh a women's cooperative next door to a male co-operative. Oh, that's amazing. And they went backwards and forwards, clearly, to be able to have babies. So my husband was, I mean, I'm not going to say co-operative, was basically born in a commune in a big house in Birmingham

where loads of people just lived together. And his first cot was in a tyre. Oh, wow. And then they managed to get a council house. But, yeah, so it's a bit like that very hippie-ish but sort of working class hippie-ish which is I'm not sure a thing that really exists so much anymore but was definitely a thing back then so what were you eating on a kind of school night was your mum cooking no my dad did all the cooking because my mum went up in my all of my memory my my mum was at work she went back to work after she'd had me I was obviously the tipping point she'd

stayed at home for 17 years and was like this is enough um so my dad used to do the cooking in the evening and my dad is a brilliant cook and there was like always about 10 of us to feed every night so we I mean my mum did once apologize to me for feeding me exclusively cheap mints throughout the bse crisis she's like if anyone is gonna get this you are gonna get it we're definitely cruising for kreutz jolts yakov's disease um so we ate a lot of like curry and dal. And because my dad taught in a part of Birmingham, in Hansworth in Birmingham. And so he, throughout the 60s and 70s, he taught lots of the kids who were settling from the West Indies and from India. And so he'd learned to cook. Two men had taught him, two Sikh men had taught him to cook.

So my dad could cook amazingly cheaply uh lots of delicious food like really amazing delicious curries and um like you know uh pakora and stuff that is just essentially vegetables and flour and it makes an amazing dinner but it's really cheap if you're feeding a lot of males but we ate like exact classic things that everybody eats we ate a lot of shepherd's pie my mom used to have to make like three shepherd's pies and in my memory my dad just got one all to himself i don't know whether i've just totally made that up like he was a giant so what was your mom doing um what was her job uh at the time she'd so she'd just gone back uh to work when i was little and she worked for an organization called rosper

she was a secretary um for prevention of accidents yeah the accidents royal royal i don't know what the o was i don't know what the o is because it was back in the day when like people used to like choke on the eyes of teddy bears and things and they still exist yeah and so they do risk assessments when i was little we used to have to take part in like poster campaigns so i remember i was the first person ever to have a pair of fisher price skates that you could put around your shoes uh these plastic ones there's a photo of me and my brothers have got old-fashioned ones and there's a photo of me and i've got these plastic fisher price ones because we were testing the safety of them and there's another one where it's us in a big van and it's about doing up your seat belt and it's me and my brother sat in the

cab of an enormous lorry and it was like the poster for safety and um so we used to just get drafted in because she had a load of kids need Need some kids. I've got one of all ages for any eventuality. I've got a kid that will suit your needs. So, yeah, but when I was little, that's what she did. She still... No, she died when I was 28, 29. That's young to lose your mum. Yeah, but she was quite old when she...

Well, not by modern standards. How old was she? But she was 34 when she had me. That seems, but it's young now. It is totally young now, but she'd had a baby 10 years previously, 11 years previously. How old was she when she died then? She was 61. That's too young.

Yeah, she died of cancer. But my, so my older brother, my oldest brother, so he was in his 40s, like mid 40s when she died, which I can't help but feel slightly sort of envious of that. That is a more reasonable time for you to lose your. Yeah, he had her longer, yeah. Yeah, although to be fair, because I am a gym slip mum myself and had my children young. Did you? She knew my kids, whereas my brother's children had only just been born and my other brother has since gone on to have two children and she never met them at all how old are you and so I got that side so how old

were you when you had your first child 23 that is young but now it's young but my mum had her first baby when she was 23 and that but then she was considered old you got pregnant quite early on yeah in your relationship with your now husband. My now husband, yes. My current husband. It was your only husband. Your first and only love, I guess. No, her first husband. Introduce Sam, you say.

My first husband. But yeah, I mean, I was listening to your brilliant interview on Elizabeth Day's How to Fail and just talking about that and how it was like what three weeks in or something yeah so yeah about three weeks in of us actually being together yeah I found out I was pregnant and but I had known him for a long long time although I you know I don't know what I feel the need to caveat that as if to say I'm not a horrendously reckless person but it wouldn't have made any difference whether I knew him actually or not. I would have made the same decision.

But yeah, we'd been friends for years and years and years before that. I don't really know how. It's just where we live. Everybody's just friends with everybody else. It made me laugh when Elizabeth was talking about your husband being Instagrammable he's fit he's really fit because I didn't know

what he looked like have you and I'm not going to lie I went on I went on your Instagram which I'm really bad for why you're not

verified I feel like that's ridiculous that you're not verified we need to get a blue tick sorted for you I don't know we were having a argument about this in the pub

yesterday was my mate Alex and I was like she was like why aren't you verified I was like I don't even know what it is we'll sort this for you don't know we were having a argument about this in the pub yesterday was my my alex and i was like she was like why aren't you verified i was like i don't even know how what it is it's verified it means you've got a blue tick you don't have that yet mom that's okay come on um but you've got like freaking 18 000 followers you should be verified you're you're gonna be the future prime minister you should be you should be verified um but yeah and then i was like right what's all the fuss about this husband then and like people fucking love him and it's a total

shock to everybody who has known him for a long time why is he so hot just he has not seen a photo in his old age it's annoying how that happens to men fuck them them! He was bang average most of his life and was not well-kempt. But as he's got older, I think because we had our kids really young in the sort of prime years when people become adults, we were like, you know, scruffy and not well-kept. But because our children are now older

and we have time to like go out and exercise and eat well and do look after ourselves and go and have nice haircuts while all of our friends are knee-deep in nappies now he has he takes a cracking photo now yeah he does he really does he's had a beard he's very very dark skinned and he's completely white British, but you would not know that by looking at him. He looks sort of Turkish or, and lots of people mistake him for being Pakistani in Birmingham, lots. He's got a very, very black beard and very black hair.

And for white people to have completely black hair is quite uncommon. So he, but because it's now trendy to have a beard my husband has had a beard since the age of 12 and fashion has just come back round and found him again i wanted to know though you're saying you know nowadays you get to have your hair done i've seen you've got a nice manicure and i this is i hope she doesn't come across no i get it i would have the nice manicure every week I do think that it's and I

this doesn't I don't want to sound condescending because I can't fucking stand it when they go you've got two children and

you've got this how do you do it all how do you brush your hair no but like I just feel it must be so

full-on particularly at the moment you're promoting a book yeah you have a family you have got your bill you've got your bill through yes i got my bill through yeah so yeah i've got to keep doing that as well yeah you're scaring boris yeah you know it's um it there's so

much going on and and i remember you i i watched you um in parliament you were talking about um you were talking about the fact that you were just like this is so ridiculous that brexit is like it's stopping us being able to actually do our jobs yeah but i just you seem relatively calm at the moment and i really appreciate you asking giving us two hours because but your day started today at 10 well uh 10 past five in the morning because you've already been on good morning britain Yeah, and I went to bed at one. Why? That's my own fault. Well, I was signing, I was at a book signing thing until about 20 past 10

and then I went out for, hadn't had any dinner. Then I went out for dinner and I was, because I don't get to. You don't look tired. No, you look great. They put a lot of makeup on you at Good Morning Britain. And they did my hair. But. It's always nice.

I run on empty. I am always much better when I'm empty and then I need to take some time to like recharge but I am very very good in a sort of crisis situation I am good at basically having like three hours sleep and then just getting back onto a treadmill uh I'm happier that way I like working very very hard my mind wonders if I don't and one of the reasons I suppose that I ever got involved in politics is because I didn't want to stop after my mum died and allow it to take over my life and so I just throw myself in when things are bad I work hard when did you become an MP uh 2015 I'm always because I I look at you as somebody who says they've taken drugs and says

that that you know um it's so open that there's no skeletons in your closet and that's what's really refreshing and I think that's brilliant you know you don't have to do a Michael Gove and be like oh by the way they uh did a line back in 84 god I wish he'd do another one I was about to say something that would be almost certainly libelous so I won't say it but um but anyway so I kind of feel like you know people you resonate like I mean especially for women um you're kind of every woman and i i hope that sounds i hope that doesn't sound too gross but i think it's no but it's it you're so relatable and i think it's really refreshing that you put everything out there because then you don't need to hide from anything it was a protection to be perfectly honest. It was, uh, I made the decision. So there's a horrible,

I had a horrible, uh, experience. It must've been about six months before, uh, my initial election in 2015, where my brother had a psychotic episode, um,

drug induced psychosis. and I was, he was like roaming the streets in my constituency uh and i was having i was like i must have looked like an absolute lunatic but i was like having to drive alongside him slowly trying to get him to get into uh my car so i could take him to chapman road chapman road which is the psychiatric unit, the nearest one. And I've done this a number of times.

But I, and I had to stop the car and sort of try and wrestle. And he's like six foot three, my brother. And when somebody is having a psychotic episode, they obviously don't have reason. And he's sort of attacking me in the street. And I did manage to get him in the car eventually but at that moment I rang Caroline who is one of the people who is

sort of like worked in politics for years and is my one of my good friends and I said I just I can't do this to my family because this is just too awful that if this incident happens in three years time if i've been elected you know that's not fair that my family's life has to be laid bare and this will ultimately be used against me and so i was like i'm gonna quit because it's not their conscripts my family it's not so much my brother uh although obviously it is him as well but at the time I to be perfectly honest I had very little sympathy um but like my dad having to see like stuff written about his son in the newspaper or stuff like that and so I was like I'm gonna pack it in and she just was like well you you can pack it in Jess if you think that that's the case but don't you think that people like you should be in parliament don't you think that people who can understand who've been through hardships and and that day I remember

I was in a cinema complex my kids had obviously gone to see some film and I was sat outside on the phone to her and um I just made the decision to always just be upfront and honest to protect myself so that you can't have like a gotcha moment um and just to be honest and if people don't like it and don't want to vote for you because of it then you just have to live with that has it ever bitten you in the ass never i mean oh well i don't know because i don't read it all it might well have done um well at least you haven't been touching anybody's leg no i've not i've not groped anyone but i've never accidentally groped somebody and not remembered it. Did you see what Katie Hopkins, that awful Katie woman,

she wrote, I'd rather be grabbed in the pussy than have a prime minister who was a pussy. She needs help. I know, I mean... No, she needs to... She's like Piers Morgan. Yeah, she does it for attention. And she had a big picture with Boris. Oh, yeah.

Did you have Piers on today? No, no, no, he wasn't on today. Would you have done it if it had been Piers? I probably would have. I've done it before with Piers Morgan. Has he been a dick? Is he rude? To be honest, he's not a dick to me

because I stand up to him and he's perfectly, you know, he'll try. And actually, I don't want to let him off the hook, but I also don't want to make out like, oh, he'll try and have a go at me and I'm much better than him, so he can't. That's not what I'm saying at all. Is that actually he says it because...

So that people stand up. And actually, as soon as you stand up to him in face-to-face... He's a bully. He will essentially just go... He will give you respect. But what happened to him? He used to edit The Daily Mirror

and he was adored by people who worked with him. And he just turned into a monster. I mean, as... I I go on Good Morning Britain relatively regularly and lots of things, and I find that the make-up people are always the people with the best gossip. OK, yes. They always know who's, like, an arsehole and who's not. What do they say?

Well, they say he's really nice. Yeah, it's pantomime. It's pantomime. Yeah, they're like, honestly, he's one of the nicest people're like honestly he's one of the nicest people so jess is boris one of the nicest people you've met no he's not boris is genuinely not one of the nicest people i've met but to be to be perfectly fair to him i've never had a proper conversation with him really no so he's frightened of you well i think he is that's that's kind i think i think he wouldn't want to take you on i mean i think he likes to be that's kind i think i think it is kind i think he wouldn't want to take you on i

mean i think he likes to be surrounded by people i think that boris uh versus me if we were to put it in those terms is that the trouble for boris johnson is that his shtick of being honest and authentic looks uh tarnished if he stands next to me and he cut it's very hard for him to boris johnson to claim that i'm the establishment and he's not if we're stands next to me and he cut it's very hard for him to boris johnson to claim that i'm the establishment and he's not if we're stood next to each other talking and so i think that that is uh tricky for him but um i don't know if he's nice or nice well actually if uh i actually i do know whether he's nice or not he's not nice because all of the stuff that is coming out about one thing i don't like about roshan johnson is just not honest i don't i don't mind if people don't agree with me or have

different politics i absolutely don't mind at all i just would prefer it if they were just honest about it and i'm sure we could find a way through having said that i'm sure that me and boris could sit down in a room together tomorrow and find common ground that might be able to get us through the Brexit thing. But it would mean both of us having to accept that we would lose votes from our base, from the people who would cheerlead for us. And I would be willing to try and find a way through. you know what, I would be willing to try and find a way through. But Boris Johnson is not willing to do anything that will affect his base because at the moment he just wants to throw red meat to his base in order to help himself.

And what about Corbyn, though? Do you think Corbyn... I mean, I could do the same with Corbyn, yeah. What about Corbyn with Boris? Oh, I'm not sure that they could find any common ground. They can't even sit in the same room, I don't think. I mean, they almost certainly will have to on lots of occasions. But yeah, I'm not sure that they could find a common cause. Not because they couldn't, but because both of them, again,

it's this problem of you've got to be seen to be speaking to your base. Whereas I think we've all got to try and speak to the country now some would argue you could argue that jeremy corbyn in his position uh let's say ambiguous to be kind ambiguous position over brexit is it potentially trying to do that i just but to be fair it's not necessarily well it's not it's not working at the moment. It's just, has it been mental in the House of Commons? I'm going to put another fritter on. Has it been mental in the House of Commons at the moment?

It has. Now that you're back. It has. And yesterday when we were doing the domestic abuse bill, we were actually debating a piece of legislation and people were standing up and saying their piece and people were intervening on them and saying i agree with you but have you thought about this and then there was that and i there were two women uh in parliament who was sat in the debate who had come in on by elections and i said you know that this is what it used to be

like we used to have bills and we used to debate them and we tried improve them and then we'd get them on the statute books and some people would vote against them on perfectly reasonable grounds and but they would go through and but it has been mental because since these two women for example have been there it is just urgent questions it is statements from the prime minister it is question answer question answer there is absolutely no reasonable back and forth uh to a position that stuff has still been going on in the background around other things but it has been it has been combative and it has been mental there are two ways but do you think that brexit has kind of brought a sense of camaraderie with with the women in parliament yes that's definitely true um for all of the disunity that

it can cause it has definitely uh brought together political parties so for the first time in my uh time in westminster i watched political leaders from different platforms from different parties standing together and saying you know we have common cause about this because the country is more important than our political parties and that that felt really really really good but then you go immediately back into the punch and judy of it it's annoying right let's talk about food i hear you're a bit of a foodie i love it so do you love cooking it um i i actually do love cooking i am just not very good at it okay and my husband i used to be better my husband is an amazing cook is it and so

god bloody instagram he's perfect he's a god he builds furniture oh my god can i marry him jesus he can fix the lights he can cook um and so my husband really uh likes cooking and is a brilliant cook and so uh i don't cook very often it has to be said i've been de-skilled by my husband but also i can't ever reach the heights that he can he could we could make the exact same thing and his would be amazing okay so so what's his like creme de la creme uh i mean there's just he's sort of weirdly obsessive uh and so he will have one thing that he practices over and over and over again in until it's perfect so we had a whole era of fried chicken oh where he was just making the perfect fried chicken burger with and he i mean he went

to the when he when it was burgers what made it perfect? In the end, just like, you know, the, I suppose. Not having it, probably. To be fair, I missed the fried chicken era. But when it was the burger era, I mean, he went to the lengths where he would make his own plastic cheese. He would buy chemicals and things and make his own plastic cheese. I love him. He is like Heston Blumenthal. He's proper, like we've got a sous vide.

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, like, you know. Do you ever use it? I use it to make rhubarb vodka because we've got rhubarb in our garden. So that's the only thing I've ever used the sous vide for. That's a brilliant use of it. So I do use the sous vide, but it's really heavy when it's all full of water.

How do you make rhubarb vodka in a sous vide you just put your vodka water um and uh like tons of rhubarb some sugar and some star anise and maybe some orange peeling and you shove it in the sous vide for like four hours and then it's done and then like do you have to leave it for a bit leave it to cool overnight and then strain it. Perfect. So you can like have the bottle the next day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got bloody hundreds of bottles. I should have bought you one. Is it like, is it Christmas gifts?

It's, maybe I will give it out as Christmas gifts. Although I'm always like, you should have bought me something. No, he's, he's an amazing, amazing cook. But the things that, like everybody, we have things that we make every week like we have like six dinners when you're cooking for a family yeah you just get into like the rotor of it's sort of like 10 meals that we eat on a sort of seven day rolling uh so it's not like we always have although we always have pizza on a month and uh it was a monday night but now because i'm not there on a monday, we moved it to Thursday night.

And he makes his own dough and everything. Oh, God. So it's not like a takeaway pizza. Oh, no, no, no, no. We make our own pizzas. Do the boys like cooking? Absolutely love it. Both of my sons are amazing cooks.

So my son's just started doing his GCSEs and one of the ones he's doing is food tech. Oh, nice. And he's absolutely, both of my children could cook a roast dinner from scratch. And one of them's only 10. And my 10-year-old son is a brilliant, brilliant cook. So he makes amazing chili, makes amazing like chicken and chorizo sort of paella. They are really, really good cooks, my sons. And my youngest son is really brilliant at baking as well.

Because my mother-in-law, my husband, he gets it it from her she's like a weird hobbyist uh not weird if you're listening to this you're not weird um and she she will like take up a hobby and do it obsessively for six months and then move on to the next one um but um she's a brilliant at baking like she should go on the bake-off but you went on the bake-off didn't you yes i did go on the and i won i won it oh shit i didn't know that sorry not like the big bake-off just the celebrity one so i only did one episode i didn't win like the whole thing what was your showstopper uh i so we had to make a cake did your husband make it no i definitely my mother-in-law gave me the recipe and she came around and basically taught me to make it.

And so I made, you had to make yourself represented in cake. So, but it had to be you and you had to be made out of cake. You couldn't just be like, put like an icing you on the top. It had to be the structure of you. So I made a big cake that was um cardamom and fennel cake um and it was like fennel seeds yeah fennel seeds ground up in the icing and uh it was me like and then it was me made out of the cake with a big speech bubble that said smash the patriarchy because it also had to show your hobby and I was on with other of the cake with a big speech bubble that said smash the patriarchy. Because it also had to show your hobby.

And I was on with other people who were like a comedian and like a runner. And like, you know, although to be fair, Big Nasty was on it with us. And he didn't make the show stop because he didn't turn up for the second day. But, you know, they have like, you know, things that can be really put into like an obvious hobby that has like props yeah whereas like feminism and uh politicianing politicking um doesn't really have like a a thing that you could obviously uh put on so i just put like a big i made a big speech bubble out of cake um did you do like a face yeah and what were you made around cake out of cake out of fennel yes and then i covered it in like marzipan and icing and i did my face and i stuck some hoop

earrings in it i love this um but i how has it affected your boys and your husband with you being kind of more and more in the public eye and being kind of such a leader it is sort of weird in that how it doesn't really affect them that much i mean it will affect them it will affect that it would be wrong to say it doesn't affect them at all it definitely will um but it they are i don't know if it's a Birmingham thing. I often put it down to a Birmingham thing, is that we are a sort of... And it's funny because for me to say this, I realise how ridiculous it sounds.

We're sort of an understated people. I recognise that I am not cut from that necessary cloth, but there is essentially a sort of shrug about being from birmingham and if birmingham had a tourist tagline it would be like come if you want and so both my husband is so i think somebody once described him it was uh blake from the observer he said that when he read my first book, my husband came across as the sort of strong dad who sits in the corner and reads the newspaper and looks up every now and again. But when the chips are down, he's the strongest person.

It's a bit like that. So they don't really pay any attention and they don't get flapped by it. My older son hates it when people speak to me in the street if he's with me I just think it because he finds it boring because he's heard that for that person it's the first time they've had that conversation for him it's the nine millionth usually about at the moment is about brexit okay never never ever my kids have had incidences where it's been tried to be used at my oldest son anyway not my where it's been tried to be used at

my older son anyway not my younger son um had been tried to be used against him in the playground by idiots and stuff but to be fair he's just like you don't know the half of it you think what you read in the newspapers is bad she can be much worse and they they updated my wikipedia page my son and his friends to say that i eat quavers in the bath it's like the weirdest trolling ever no whether they took it off it took like 10 minutes for um it to be like taken off by wikipedia i didn't even know it had happened and then i think somebody called him a digital vandal when i talked about it uh and then i uh because they said they took it off because there was no citation and that he wasn't a reliable source which he took immense umbrage with he's like i live with her i am a reliable so although having said that it is

not true i do not eat quavers in the bath what is your favorite uh chris chris to eat in the bath i don't eat chris in the bath at all i I like quavers. But for a bath, they would be awful. They wouldn't hold up to the steam. They're for the floaty light. No, you're so right. My mum, like, hoards Wotsits. I love Wotsits. Do you know what?

I love a Wotsit. I love the cheesy fingers you get. The cheesy, yeah. And I especially like a packet of Wotsits that's been left open all night and has gone stale. They're slightly soft. Oh, I love that. That's my favourite. So I will open a packet and Wotsits has been left open all night and has gone stale. They're slightly soft. Oh, I love that. That's my favourite.

So I will open a packet and leave it in the cupboard and then eat it the next day. Wotsits are fabulous, Jessie. Table manners. Do you think you've got good table manners? No, not really. I'm always the most mess at a restaurant. You know, on a white tablecloth, I'm always the dirtiest. I don't know if that's... I think I'm enjoying don't think yeah i don't think that's a bad thing my husband is very very

particular about table manners he doesn't pick me up on it but he's really funny about my kids and i actually find uh that tiny bit tedious like he's like that he will pick them up on like sitting up straight and how they hold their knives and forks and eating too quickly he you know every day at dinner is a trot through the acceptable table manners but where yeah my dad definitely used to do it to me when I was a kid but there were so many of us around quite a small table that essentially you could get away with anything i used to like chew up food i didn't like and like spit it into a thing and then like hide it or go and pretend to put it in the bin and things i definitely didn't have good table manners as a child but one thing i would say

that i am really strict about is that we eat at the table every night that i am in my house we will sit down and sit around the table Are they interested how your day has gone or do they almost want you to escape being an MP at dinner time? I mean, I think that you've given them a level of empathy that they don't actually have. They're just not interested. If something has happened, the other day, I think it was when my office was broken into,

you'd think that that would be the leading thing. Are you all right, mum? Is everything all right? My son, Harry, was like, I know it's been a bit shit, mum, but you were trending second on Twitter in the whole world. He said, you were only beaten by Area 51, which apparently is relevant again. on uh so which apparently is relevant again um and um yeah so no they don't really but i do that thing of asking them how their day has been which is almost the worst i mean it doesn't matter how old your children are they cannot answer the question what did you do at school today oh my

god okay fine because i've been trying to do it to my daughter it's a waste of time and i thought maybe it's because she's only three. No, that will remain the case for the rest of her life. Jess, I've made turnip and sweet potato fritters. Excellent. Well, kind of. And do you want one or two eggs on top? I'll have two eggs.

Only if it's no trouble. It's no trouble. I don't know why my brother is actually hidden hidden because my brother's made you this apple cake. He loves you so much. It's an Otolenghi apple cake because honestly, and he loves you. So this is kind of what he did when Jay Rayner came here too, where he just made something and hid.

But yeah, he will come down soon. And he was like, I hope you've researched her because she's really incredible. And I was like, yeah, I've researched her. God, fuck off we are asking everyone um what they would stockpile for Brexit this feels quite um yeah yeah right so because Brexit is happening do you think actually Brexit is happening I think it probably will happen yeah but no no I don't think no deal will happen. I feel quite confident of that.

Well, I haven't stockpiled anything, but where I live, where I've always lived, buying things in bulk is the totally standard practice. So I live in a very multicultural community, and where I live, nobody buys olive oil in anything less than like 50 liters like people have cans of it in their hand and rice in enormous sacks and chapati flour in enormous sacks and things so uh i i definitely am going to be all right down my street for a good while i don't need to worry there's going to be a lot of uh you know chickpeas and food but what I would definitely what I would stop are toilet roll

do you think we're going to have a problem is that going to be a situation it might be have you heard something Jess Jesus I haven't heard about loon roll yet I haven't heard anything I don't have like an insider track

but you know you don't want to be running out of that Jessie okay drinking water But, you know, you don't want to be running out of that. Jessie. Okay. Drinking water. Why? Is that water going to go to shit? We have only six weeks.

I mean, I may be saying bad science again here, but we have only six weeks supply at any time of clean, the chemicals that we put in our water to make it clean. They come from Holland, I think. And we can't store them at the rates that we need them. Sorry, it's not so funny when you ask me that question, is it? I think this is really tasty, Mark. I think it's really tasty. Autumn.

What's the juice worth the squeeze? I don't know, but I'd like to see whether your husband would be able to perfect a fritter and let us know how to do it, because that took for fucking ever. Did you flour the outside and did you make them in long in advance and put them in the fridge no they never told me to do that yeah but that they won't tell you to do that but it will always form better if you make it in advance and put it in the fridge i'm sorry jess you said you don't cook i just thought you just given us some fucking education. But I sit and watch other people cooking. Are you going to run for Prime Minister?

I mean... Not today. Not today, yeah. But I would consider running, yeah. When do you think will be the time? You don't get to run to be the Prime Minister unless you're in a weird situation like the one we just had. You run to be the leader of your political party.

Oh, yeah. Well, would you... OK, when are you going to go for the leader of a political party? I mean, that's entirely up to the members. I probably wouldn't win. However, I would I would consider running definitely. But there has to be a vacancy first. Because I just I don't know. I feel like there's a, you know, Corbyn had momentum. I feel like you've got all the feminists. Literally momentum with a big M and a little M.

you've got all the feminists literally momentum with a big m and a little m but i just um yeah i just feel like something's brewing and and i i think it's so refreshing and wonderful um to have somebody that is so normal that that is kind uh and i agree with you i think it would be refreshing but it has to be about much more. It has to, personality politics is one of the problems, I think, in politics at the moment. So it has to be about, as well as somebody with sincerity and trust and integrity.

Those are all incredibly. But you have all that. Yeah, no, I don't doubt that I have all that. And that's what people saw in Corbyn, certainly in the beginning. But there has to be a broad plan for the future as well. So I'd say that needs some work. OK, fine.

Because it has to be about people's lives, not just because people will trust me. Because it's very flattering and I'm very pleased that people feel that way about me. it's very flattering and I'm very pleased that people feel that way about me, but it would be wrong for that to be the only platform to stand to be the leader of a political party, because you should stand to be the leader of a political party because you think that you can change people's lives for the better. Now, I do think that, but it has to have slightly more meat on those bones. So a work in progress is what I would say.

But it is a work in progress. Yes, a work in progress. And when would say it is a work in progress yes a work in progress and when you say it's a work in progress does that mean that you um have people around you okay so okay so you haven't got the team yet no no no i don't it's not like there isn't like a sort of defined okay oh yeah nothing in politics is like west wing or scandal okay got it i do you like scandal i literally love it me too i love it. Do you like Scandal? I literally love it. Me too. It's my very, very favourite.

I mean, it went a little bit off-piste when she was kidnapped. You thought she'd gone to bloody Iran and she was actually in a box. Yeah. I mean, it went off-piste on many different occasions. However, I loved it. Salma, who works in my office in Birmingham, whenever she does anything, she'll text me and just say, hashtag handled.

Last Supper. Whenever she does anything, she'll text me and just say hashtag handled. Last supper. Starter, main, pud, drink, go. Okay, starter, I would have something that was like crab, like fish. Because I don't really cook fish. I like crab. Yeah, I don't really know how to cook fish very well so um like a crab cake yeah crab cakes yeah I love soft shell crabs I made delicious absolutely delicious so I'd have crab some sort of crab starter and then for the main again I'm going

to go fish which I find really odd because I don't really like fish that much but my absolute comfort food and my husband funnily, because it has been a bad week, he said he would make this for me at the weekend. And I didn't even ask him. He was just like, I'm going to make it. He makes this Gowan fish curry. Oh, it's lovely. Oh, yes.

It's so good. And it used to be when we first had Harry and we had almost no money and we lived on very, very sort of basic rations that he would occasionally make this as like the treat like he would go and buy like cod loins and make this curry and it is just it tastes to me it tastes

like my marriage to my husband to me fishy slightly fishy and not consistent but it yeah it is absolutely and it's like so because of the coconut and everything it's like so comforting like soupy and delicious something something so nice about soup isn't there soup is so comforting um and so i would have that but for pudding i don't really eat a lot of

pudding but if I could have if they could have anything and it was there was no object I would have my mum it's so charming I mean? I mean, it's rude. It's, I would have my mum's treacle tart. She used to make just a sort of really basic treacle tart. She would make the pastry from scratch, which people, I never do that anymore. Life's too short to make pastry from scratch. Agree. But she would make pastry from scratch and there would always be a little bit left in the fridge for ages, which was always the the view that we were going to make jam tarts that never got made and then it just

went hard and got thrown away um but um she used to make yes treacle tart with a proper like where you twist the pastry on the top so um i would have that as my pudding i would really like some of this. This looks amazing, this cake. You've just... You said when you were talking about your last supper that it's been a really shit week. Yeah. I thought it seemed quite positive

when we were in the House of Commons yesterday. Oh, yeah, but that was... I haven't seen my husband since then, so... So... But over the weekend, after the sort of death threats and people trying to siege the office, as you put it, it's just been really tiring. after the sort of death threats and people trying to siege the office, as you put it.

It's just been really tiring. But it has been very positive this week and going around and talking about the book and telling people to speak up has been brilliant. This is your second book and can you... Well, how long did it take you to write? Because I don't understand when you had time. Seven weeks it took. That's very quick.

Yeah, but also I didn't do it like all day or anything i just did it in the evenings and i'm stuck in parliament a lot for a long lot of hours so like most people will go home from work at like seven yeah but i will get stuck in parliament with no meetings or anything to go to waiting for a vote for hours and hours on end uh and so yeah that's when i wrote it and also just in the evenings at home and at the weekend. That's when I'd be watching Scandal. I mean I can write whilst watching Scandal. I can manage both of those things. So what can people expect? So the book is trying to help people feel both inspired,

but also have the tools to stand up for themselves and stand up against what is essentially a rising tide of... Horribleness. Yeah, dissent and despondency. Lots of people feel more activated than they've ever felt before in their lives at the moment. And people know what words like proroguing mean and understand about amendments and congress and different inquiries people are much more clued in but at the same time they are also very at risk of shutting

themselves off from the world because it's just too much and people write to me all the time and say i just want to do something but i don't know what that something is uh and so you know instead of responding to the thousand people who've said that to me via email individually i thought i'd write it down in a book about how people can help and the book charts the story of six people who have spoken truth to power one way or another um and tells sort of each of the sort of stages of doing it and the things that will happen and how you'll feel, um, through their stories and through different things that I have done,

uh, to try and help create a situation where people feel like they can get their voices heard and that, that nobody matters any more than anybody else, regardless of where they are in the hierarchy. And that we can try and just make the world like slightly more palatable i don't think that you know my book on its end is going to make the world slightly more palatable but it'll do a little bit so what one of those case studies within the six stories who can you

give an example yeah so um zelda perkins is the sort of book opens with the story of zelda perkins is the the sort of book opens with the story of zelda perkins who was a 24 year old pa to harvey weinstein and long before um anyone was standing up to him this was back in the early 90s the it charts the story of how she literally walked up to him and challenged him on the fact that um he had attempted to rape her colleague so her colleague had claimed um i have to say for legal reasons and you know what the sort of fallout of 20 years of being silenced for her of speaking truth to power but her bit is about how do you find the courage to do it to do something like that and the idea trying to get rid of the idea that people are it's a cat oh it's the cat hello cat uh trying to get rid of the idea that people are somehow magical and the

only kind of people who do this are a certain sort of person that she was a 24 year old pa did you speak to all these people oh yeah i met with them all and interviewed them all um and so they're all a bit erin brock of it yeah yes except in fact i cite erin brock of it And did you speak to all these people? Oh, yeah, I met with them all and interviewed them all. So they're all a bit Erin Brockovich. Yes, in fact, I cite Erin Brockovich. I cite my mum as being like Erin Brockovich in the book because my mum sued a huge pharmaceutical company in like 1981 who had made a drug that made my nan's eyes and lots of other women.

It was a medication for angina which it turned out they didn't have but they don't do enough research into women's presenting heart disease um but they and it made my nan's tears dry up so she stopped her being able to see and um so my mum sued them when she was pregnant with me uh and for millions and millions of pounds in fact this sapphire here this ring which I had remodeled was given to her by when in the will of one of the women she got a payout for oh sweet yeah so my mum was like Erin Brockovich can I just ask you one thing do you have a karaoke song on a karaoke night turn back Time by Cher. Oh! Oh! And where would you turn that time back to? The 90s?

Just basically like 1997. Yeah. 1998, when I was wild. And I already had Tom, so I don't have to lose him, because he was already in my life. And politics was on an even keel. Things were just getting better, weren't they? Things were just like on the up

and everyone was a bit positive. But if you weren't in politics, would you go back to working? At women's age, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know whether I ever will go back to working in women's age, but yeah, I miss it. It was really good fun.

Thank you so, so much for coming round and being such a wonderful guest and good luck with the new book. Thanks for having me. I feel like good fun. Thank you so, so much for coming round and being such a wonderful guest. And good luck with the new book. Thanks for having me. I feel like you don't need any luck. But yeah, wishing you all the best with everything. Thank you. No worries.

Thank you. Mum, I loved Jess Phillips. I want her to be my friend. I just think everyone would want her to be a friend. She just is a real woman's woman. She was such great fun. She has that wonderful combination of being serious, sensitive, but also great fun she she has that wonderful combination of being serious sensitive but also great fun I feel like I should do a little bit more with my day now thank you for listening the music you've heard on table manners is by

Peter Duffy and Pete Fraser table manners is produced by Alice Williams