Table Manners with Jessie and Lennie Ware - S9 Ep 19: Joe Lycett

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

This week we welcome the joyous Joe Lycett onto Table Manners. Cheering us up from his living room in Birmingham, the TV presenter and comedian talks to us all about how he became a comedian, his mum's faggots and mash, writing sitcoms in lockdown & his affinity for ‘stodge’. Formerly known as Hugo Boss (it's a long but excellent story), Joe cracks the cheesiest of jokes (courtesy of his big sister) and admits to having Eminem as his karaoke song. This was just what we needed, thank you Joe! X Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello everybody, I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here remotely with my mum to present our beloved podcast Table Manners. But before we get going, we just wanted to acknowledge the tragic events that have been happening in America that have kind of woken up the world to the inequalities faced by black people and people of colour. And we recorded the next episode before these tragic events happened and we both mum and I stand in solidarity with the protesters in America and worldwide and we really hope that change will be coming very very soon but we must keep on striving to make that change happen so back to the podcast um this week we have Jo Lycett. Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and we are still in lockdown.

So this is Table Manners Special Circumstances and I'm here with my mum at lunchtime. Say hi mum. Hi darling. I'm feeling very happy today. Why? Why are you feeling happy? Because my garden's looking nice. I've got, because I'm here all the time, I'm doing a lot of watering. And I've realised the way to have a nice garden is to water. Oh, shit.

Move over, Monty Don. We've got a new bitch in town. Yeah. Watering plants does help them grow, Mum. It's amazing, really. If you water them, they're really happy and they flower and smile back at you and I bought all sorts of fertilizer online as well as my American Dirt book in German I did buy three brooms this week as well by accident I thought I'd only bought

one but I bought one of those I bought two and then I bought another one and then I bought one of those Amazon. I bought two and then I bought another one. And then I bought a new kind of sweeping up one. I've got a lot of brooms. I've got a really nice recycled washing bowl. However, it kind of defeats the point when you order two accidentally. So Amazon sends you two different deliveries. So, yeah, that was stupid. Yeah, I'm pretty happy too, Mum. Good, darling. I'm glad you are.

But I know you're happy. I am happy. I love the place where we live and I keep on being that extra neighbor that's like hello singing down the road to people no I'm not actually singing don't worry like I'm not actually singing down the road but how's your local park darling it's so nice and my daughter is definitely my daughter because she loves to have a chat with strangers just as much as me I don't know when do you tell a three and a half year old that they shouldn't say to everybody that they like their dress straight away yeah straight away that you shouldn't talk to strangers yeah I know that's kind of a crucial parent role okay cool noted um so I had some really nice messages

from people I've been doing loads of promo for my album and I was kind of chatting to Australia and a shout out to all the Australians that actually listen. There are quite a fair few, mum. They're liking the record, but they're also really loving the podcast. I mean, you're an idol over there, mum. So I reckon we should book in an Australian

down under Table Manners Bash. Let's go, darling. Table Manners Australia. Oh my god just mum the food there is just the best in the world honest to god. Anyway um who have we got on today mum? We've got on a fabulous man who could be considered to be the new Esther Ransom. I hope he knows who Esther Ransom is. He's quite young, though. I don't know how old he is. But he's a comedian. He's also a voice of the people, I would say, with his Watchdog programme. He challenges real swines who are scamming people and acting wrongly in the most funny way.

He dresses up in different costumes to challenge them. He's really, really funny. And he's also on The Sewing Bee. I mean, he does a lot. He dresses up in different costumes to challenge them. He's really, really funny. And he's also on the sewing bee. I mean, he does a lot. He writes books. He does stand up. He won an Edinburgh Fringe Festival award as best newcomer. He takes on big international corporations. He is funny. And as grandma would say in his spare time, he's a teapot. The brilliant Joe Lysette is coming up on Table Manners Special Circumstances. Oh, sorry. Sorry, I'm just about to do a massive intro for you, Joe. My husband's decided to put the kettle on because he's already not let me go in the living room.

Just running the water. Some water. I'm getting some water. It's hot. Okay, bye. Go, go, go. Thank you. Joe Lysett, thank you so much for doing Table Manners.

What a pleasure. It's so nice to e-meet you. I've been a long-time fan, first-time caller, and I'm thrilled to be part of the podcast. How are you? You sound like you're quite busy i mean you're on the tv a lot at the moment and then you're also doing voiceovers and you're doing i mean how how is lockdown treating you well i'm actually not that busy because all of the stuff that's on telly was

filmed ages ago like sewing bee that's going out now i filmed that last year um okay there's a series i make for channel four a consumer series that's all finished so the only thing the voiceover thing is literally just to kind of keep my keep me busy keep me doing something because uh actually there's nothing else going on so you're the voice of dragon's den well uh there's a new series which is like a kind of a lot of people are making best ofs because they can't make original stuff so they're making a best of dragon's den and actually i mean i haven't watched it for ages but i watched it in the first episode and it's really good there's so much good stuff i love it it's such

a great i know so it's a sort of it's sort of uh well it is a best of it's i think it's six episodes and it's just the best of but it is it's literally just a little gig for me to kind of keep keep my hand in and so you do you talk when they go up in the lift yeah that kind of thing oh i love it that's exactly when they come down in the list and they've sold them to fuck off yes say yeah yeah basically yeah i um i sort of lament lament their failures or celebrate their wins essentially who's your favorite dragon oh what a question i love deborah deborah is great she's more of a socialist than i thought that i thought dragon yes she really is yeah she's kind of very on the side of the people yeah she's very vocal yeah on social media about yeah her sort of which is good it's good that she um promotes that because

i imagine a lot of business people are not like that. Well, I know they're not because I take on quite a lot of them in my TV show and there's some bad eggs out there. You're fabulous. I love it. And I love it when you dress up. It's so exciting.

Do you think, say for the teeth, are you the new Esther Ransom, Joe? I mean, I think including the teeth, Helena. Do you know who she is? Yeah, I do. So I didn't watch That's Life because that was slightly before my time, but that was a bit of a kind of inspiration for the producers of the show was That's Life. And we've sort of done a kind of modern, mad version of that programme.

It's much more fun and more comic. I mean, I've only watched the one episode but yeah i think it is i think we've straddled the line well i mean it's hard to tell it's sort of because you are taking on serious issues so you want to take them seriously but also i've watched a couple but your obsession with that airbnb bloke the gorgeous handsome what was his name mr lynn finn finn Finn Finn was he actually handsome he was well a bit yeah I mean ish ish for a gangster it's been a tough lot a dry lockdown for my mum well likewise god my standards have dropped massively so I'm with you on that one um yeah

he just got a nice chiseled jawline and that's yeah that's all it takes sometimes tell us the story about the airbnb so actually this story we've been developing for two years because we started on it when we made the pilot and basically we found that there are a load of people on airbnb uh in fact it involves one of your former guests on table manners i know we uh we discovered that lots of what like high-end properties in london including i think the the first time we caught him uh he was advertising the most expensive property in london as one of his own and we contacted the uh the people that manage the property and they were like we have we don't rent this out we have no contact with this guy but it was all up on airbnb

and you could pay him i mean it was tens of thousands of pounds to stay there for a couple of weeks stay and what he would do is he would persuade you to pay off the platform and then uh and then basically you would vanish essentially actually that no that was a different scam he does he's slightly different he would what he would do is say the boiler's broken he says the boiler's broken sorry i got the there's two different sort of types of scam he was one where he would say oh sorry boiler's broken um i'm moving you to a very similar property and then the similar property would not be similar at all and a lot uh less um lux and one of the properties that we discovered he was advertising was ellie golding's house so uh obviously Ellie Goulding one in central

London yeah yeah big house Jess big hits mum yeah big hits big house Jesse no um so we rented it and uh then a day before he said oh the boiler's gone as per and um moved us to a different one and um yeah so then then we took it to Airbnb essentially and we took our findings to their big, shiny new headquarters in Dublin. It was good fun. It's a really fun programme to make, but it's so full on.

I mean, I find myself particularly wearing costumes. I was sat in a box dressed as Hermes, the Greek god, outside Hermes the company. And I was there for about two hours because we were waiting for the CEO to arrive in his car and I was in the box and I thought I could have just developed a panel show why am I in this box you know I could have just done oh what's your favorite person called Chris show and that would have been so much simpler just turn up to a studio but it's been I mean the big talking point that and this was during lockdown so I remember

you speaking to Amol on um radio two oh yeah and this I I was definitely in lockdown by this point and he had you on but it happened maybe a couple of weeks before you changed your name yeah by depot to Hugo Boss but you're now back to being Joe yeah yeah so for about was that a right pain in the arse or not yeah it's not? Yeah, it's not a simple process. And actually a lot of the places unfortunately rejected me. My favourite being the DVLA who said that my signature, which was a cock and balls, was not acceptable. So they wouldn't give me a driving licence for that reason.

So yeah, Hugo Boss was probably the biggest story i mean the whole series hasn't gone out yet but it would surprise me if uh any of the stories got as much press as that did because we weren't expecting that much press joe was it just because you loved boss beer is that how you came you came across it because we came across it because they emailed so there's an email address for the show okay it wasn't that you loved boss no i didn't know who they were and in fact i only took i only tried the beer once we were filming. So I had, you know. Was it worth the fight?

It was worth it. It's a beautiful, delicious beer. Okay. Oh, is it? Yeah, a nice crisp beer. And yeah, so Hugo Boss basically told them to stop using the word boss, which is just so petty. So I changed my name by deed poll to Hugo Boss and then everything sort of I I predicted that the Birmingham Mail who write an article about every time I fart the Birmingham

Mail seems to because there's nothing else to write about because you're a Brummie I'm a Brummie yeah yeah I'm yeah speaking to you from Brum but I don't have the accent no you don't went to grammar school I went to university in Birmingham and my mum was from Birmingham. Yeah. Oh, wow. Which part of Birmingham was she from? She was from, oh, Small Heath. Really poor.

Oh, yeah. I mean, she's been dead a while, but... Well, I mean, it's got culturally now, Small Heath, because JK, the grime artist from Small Heath, so he talks a lot about Small Heath. I lived in King's Heath. I'm literally speaking to you from King's Heath. Are you? I lived above the optician shop.

What a small world that you lived in King's Heath. I love Bram. Yeah. No, well, me too. I'm still here. And I have a pad in London, but I just love being in Birmingham. It's particularly in lockdown. The pace of everything here is, you know,

I gather that in some of the cities that i suppose we've been harder hit by the the virus and we've got bigger numbers but um yeah you have uh we are largely sticking to the rules and if you drive through birmingham it's quiet you know there's not a lot going on whereas i gather in some cities they're just sort of carrying on as normal from what i've heard it's just people driving around doing whatever so I'm proud of Bram we're doing a lot of um we're quietly getting on with things which is classic Birmingham basically are you one of a big family I've got an older sister and she does have a bit more of a Brammy accent is she funny she is funny but she doesn't intend to be she's like uh she loves a cheese joke she loves um, you know, those sort of classic,

what cheese do you use to entice a bear? Come on, bear. You know, those sorts of jokes. I didn't know that one. That's an excellent, I love that one. That's sophisticated stuff. Yeah. What did the cheese say to itself in the mirror?

Hello, me. That's my level of humour. Yeah, she loves a cheese joke. But yeah she's she's adorable i i love my sister she's but she's funny in a kind of sometimes she doesn't realize why she's been funny she doesn't know it yeah so i'm sure this is a really annoying question and i'm sure you've been asked it before but like who told you you were funny and when did you i mean i think being a singer's a weird job being a comedian is a weird job too right yeah yeah when do you make that commitment to being like right i'm gonna bloody make people laugh for the rest of my life i'm fucking jokes like yeah you really

are committing yourself to being funny aren't you i know god it's such a burden such pressure such a pressure don't know how I manage um I well this is the thing I didn't think I was funny at school I didn't I don't remember making an effort to be funny I remember afterwards like at university the first few years of university of trying to make people laugh at parties and be like the fun funny one at parties and that that side of my personality now I do stand up is almost entirely gone I'm now quite shy at parties and sort of I to be honest I don't like a party I like to sort of have a dinner with friends but a party's too much for me and um I uh I don't remember being funny but I was in I found my yearbook and I was nominated as the funniest student so I must have been doing did you win I

won yeah I was I was okay you won okay phew yeah god if I hadn't won Jesus imagine if you were like you got bronze yeah I went to school with Eddie Izzard he won um no so um so yeah I don't remember at that stage being funny but I must have been trying and I I've always been silly and I've never really taken life too seriously and so I think that kind of often translates into being funny, I suppose, just being daft. Do you have any rituals before you go on stage or did you have any that have changed? You know, do you avoid any particular food? So when I started, I couldn't ingest anything i pre-show the idea of eating or drinking anything seemed um like ridiculous to

even try because i just felt like i would vomit it straight back up and uh and as as you get better with i imagine you have found the same when you first start performing you're so like thrown about by the nerves of it and the adrenaline is all new to you and you don't really know what to do with it and then I just found as the years went on that I learned to channel it a bit more and I could kind of actually when nerves start to kick in before a show I really quite like it it's sort of like oh here we go something's gonna happen and uh and I quite like that little buzz um so now I mean sometimes I'll be on tour and I'll be finishing off a Wagamama's pot of something or other seconds before I go on.

Does every comedian start with doing stand up? No, I mean, there's all sorts of different ways of approaching it. There was and is a kind of sense of you have to kind of earn your stripes in the clubs. But actually, there's a lot of brilliant people who haven't done that. I meanicky gervais is an a classic example he never did the clubs particularly as a stand-up and went through the kind of more writing uh you know sitcomy route and then annoyingly went to stand up later and was really good at it without having done the clubs so but there is this sort of respect that you get from other comics if you've played the Comedy Store in London on a late show

and all of those things where you learn to be kind of funny in desperate moments. But, you know, when Jessie said, I want to do singing, I mean, I was very encouraging because I love her voice and I'm very pushy. But did your mum and dad, when you said, oh, I'm going to do stand-up did they say well that's a good job what do I mean you know I think they would rather have you been a lawyer or a dentist there was never that no mum and dad have always been so supportive and just let me kind of follow my thread essentially and um they've they've been brilliant but I remember when I said I was going to try stand-up

that mum was quite excited by the prospect. And I can't remember what dad's thoughts were on it. I mean, he kind of kept his thoughts kind of quiet at that point. But yeah, there was no resistance. They weren't like, oh, you shouldn't do that, or that will be hard or whatever. It was just like, cool, go for it. Do your mum and dad work? Yeah, so they've retired now but um my dad was a teacher and my mum worked at cabris so she um of course she did yes in bourneville did that mean you got loads of chocolate oh god i wish jesse it was um they had a chocolate shop where you could buy kind of dodgy looking cream eggs and that kind of thing miss shapes miss miss shapes yes so she's sometimes the odd box which is essentially what all stand-ups are um and i uh i remember that

there was a rule that they could when they were in the factory they could eat whatever in the factory but they couldn't take it off the premises basically okay but it was really like cabri old school cabri was a brilliant company because they set up essentially. They were Quakers and they set up. I mean, the whole of Bourneville is all built around supporting the workers and looking after their workers. And it was a brilliant company to work for back in the day. Then it got bought by Kraft, the horrible cheese company. And now it's just like every other company, essentially, just global wankers.

So when you were growing up, your dad was a teacher and your mum worked in the chocolate factory. Yeah. So was she a great cook, your mum? She was a good cook. For whatever reason, I got a real craving at the start of lockdown for faggots and mash. Oh, wow. I've never had faggots. Oh.

What are they? There's bits in them that you probably wouldn't want to ever look at no a whole is that what your mum used to cook well sometimes yeah I think it was faggots mash and then probably some sort of veggies and we had quite sort of classic like British dinners like that we'd have fish and chips on a Friday we did we we did a lot of those it wasn't um adventurous stuff that we sort of all do now it was british proper food shepherd's pie those kinds of things and uh always always delicious but for whatever reason that was the food that i needed to comfort me was faggots and mash and i think it's the last time i had

something similar was in um what's that restaurant on dean street is it the Dean Street Townhouse I think it's called that and they do a meat and potatoes and it is just like really rich beautifully cooked meat and then mashed potatoes and it's such simple food but it's so good with like a rich gravy I love that sort of thing has your mum been making food for you while you're in lockdown are you cooking for yourself or have you got anyone else cooking for you no I'm home alone cooking for myself and I love it I've really got into it I mean I've always enjoyed cooking and as I say I much prefer a little dinner party to a party party and so I when I have the time I love to invite friends around and friends from different groups and mash them together and make some ridiculous dish. And so I've been experimenting and I'm doing all the things that everyone's doing.

Banana bread, sourdough. Oh, you've made your own sourdough? All the things that we're all doing. Have you got a sourdough starter? Yeah, I've got a starter, baby. Yeah. Did you start your own starter? Start and finish.

Oh, wow. Well done. I want to know what you're cooking when you're allowed to be near people and you have people around for your dinner parties. What's been one of your showstoppers dishes that you've done? So I make a very, very nice chicken and white bean stew with chorizo. And it's really, it kind of works all year round. It's very Spanishy. and it's really uh it kind of works all year round it's very Spanishy but it what I love about it is um the chorizo really makes the beans really kind of rich um you use cannellini beans which are a

firm favorite of mine and then you just make the stew very slowly on separately to the chicken you just roast the chicken quite simply with rosemary and thyme and everything smash it together I mean I'm salivating just thinking about it smash it together right at the end and it's just so lovely and so um it works well because it's light but also it's got that kind of hearty feel about it so it could work as a nice autumnal dish and what would you serve it with a bit of fresh bread if you you know just to sort of soak up the um and then and then some veggies or whatever but to be honest you don't need much with it because you could roast a few other bits alongside your chicken or you could do some broccoli or something like that, some greens.

Are you the type of person that does a starter, a main and a pud? Or are you more of a kind of starter main or main and pud? So me and my friend Caitlin, we haven't done one for ages. We used to do these dinner parties that would... We'd normally cook for about 10 people. And we would uh we would base them on we'd find the day of the party and we'd then look on wikipedia for somebody who would have been 100 years old that day but it would be someone obscure so we did like a hundred hundredth

birthday party for the austrian mountaineer herbert ty. And because we found that he was, that was the day he was born on. And then we would do like stuff that was relevant to Herbert Titchy. I can't remember what we did on that. I remember we did one for a guy called Little Buster Forehand, who was a blues musician from New Orleans. And we did loads of, you know,

stuff like Mama used to make, that kind of stuff. Oh my God, amazing. And we did loads of um you know stuff like mama used to make that kind of stuff so like oh my god amazing and we did cocktails and um everyone was trashed before leaving the main course and it was that was great fun so we've done we've done stuff like that which is fab that's a great format for a tv show I feel like you should be making that happen I think I've made enough television for one lifetime I need to to lie down. But you're right. You're right. Have you got any new projects coming up? I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing,

like sewing being whatever, if they'll have me for a little while. And then I'm writing more prose stuff, actually. So more, well, like sitcom-y stuff and drama-y stuff. So I'm just sort of seeing where things take me, really. But I'm finding it quite hard to write in lockdown. I spoke to a really good friend of mine who's a writer and I said like I just ideas don't sort of come to me at the minute in the way that they used to and she said Jo we're living through a catastrophe if you're right if you're writing your best work you're a psychopath and I thought that was so brilliant and so helpful because because it's absolutely

right that like whatever you're making is good enough right now it's just because the whole what I'm remembering is the whole reason I got into stand-up and the whole reason I got into anything is because making things is so reliably and it could be food it could be jokes it could be painting it could be whatever or music of course it's the most reliable thing that I found to bring me solace and contentment and happiness and god I'm really leaning on it in lockdown and in this time but it's I think that's why everyone's so into baking and everything at the minute because there's something so soothing about just creating a thing yeah and particularly if you can eat it. Oh, great.

Do you have good table manners? I can put them on if required. Yeah, I think he does. And generally, yeah, I think so. But if I'm eating on my own, it is literally... In front of the telly, shoveling it in. It's a horror show it's like punching it into my mouth there's no decorum it's just fistfuls of whatever is in front of me straight on in when you're on your own you just let stuff just drool down you just

think fuck it and the next spoon goes in oh I love it I love picking apart a chicken as well with your fingers and just shoving bits of chicken. Like Henry VIII or something. That's it. Or like you're in Game of Thrones. I like it. Yes. And then I was talking to a friend because I decided I normally quite like washing up. And I've got to the point of lockdown where I'm over it.

Because every meal is at home. So there's no like picking up a pret and you just throw the thing away. It's like every meal you have to wash up afterwards and i've decided it would be so fun if i i'd love to be the sort of louche character that just has a like kanye for food i have a new plate for every meal so i just finish finish what i've had and then just throw it into the neighbor's garden just toss the plate i'd love god the dream imagine yeah i want to know what your um we ask everybody this you'll know death row meal or last supper no hold on last supper death row meal or desert

island meal you take your pick starter main pud and drink of choice okay so i think it would all be uh stodge a lot of stodge there's a starter that they do in a restaurant in mosley you'll know mosley helena yeah um called zindia it's a brilliant restaurant and actually if if i'm gonna die and i can go to one restaurant i'll just go there because is it an indian restaurant indian streetery basically so you can have lots of little plates that go on forever so it would stall the death as well i could be there all night um but there's a one particular dish they do which is a samosa char which is just heaven what's in it it's um very beautiful crispy samosa and then the char over the top is um like a chickpea curry essentially but then there's like

a sort of yogurty something on top and then some pomegranate seeds at the finish i'm not a big fan of pomegranate seeds so that's the one thing that I don't like about it. The rest of it's great. So I'd have that as a starter. Maybe if I can have two starters alongside it, I'd have the, they do these little soy ticker bites, which are like little chicken ticker bites, but they're made with soy

and they're actually juicier and more flavoursome than chicken. I don't know how they do it. There's some sort of vegan wizards, but that is delicious. Then for Maine. Are you going to eat from the same restaurant for your main or are you going somewhere else well the thing is with the thing with that is it wouldn't be one course it would all just come fine you know what i mean so i wouldn't have a starter and then a separate main i'd just go because they also do it's these salmon ticker bites which are beautiful and these lamb chops oh and

they do these um trio of dosa which are like um these sort of pancakes filled with you can have them with chicken paneer or i think it's lamb i think the other one is um and they come with all these lovely dipping like dals and things um so i'd have a lot of that so are we on are we on to pudding then now yeah i suppose we're on to pudding for pudding i normally i just love a bowl of cereal i think boys do more than girls lots of boys like cereal i do love a bowl of cereal i mean which one to be honest i'm not that fussy i used to here's here's a ridiculous fact when i went to school i used to have uh before i went to school for my breakfast i would have six weetabix and a pint of full fat milk that was my breakfast and then i couldn't work out why i was basically shitting through the eye of the needle

weight problem i was so job yeah and and shitting so much like that you know when you're having that much fibre it's absolutely absurd how much you're shitting I would also have two Whisper Golds at break time that was before lunch fucking best, Whisper Gold do you remember when they brought them back yeah and they didn't stick around for very long there was a campaign, I know there was a campaign

and I used to see it when I was pretty high at festivals and they'd have the bring back Whisper Gold like a oh I thought I saw it it when i was pretty high at festivals and they'd have the bring back whisper gold like uh oh i thought i saw it but um but whisper gold such a great great it's an it's up there i think it's one of my faves uh well i know it's one of my faves do they do they not do it anymore i don't think so bloody craft oh is it is it oh bastards because it's cabris isn't it's cabri whisper gold so it's cereal and then well I don't think it well it would have been but I made in lockdown well a friend of mine made it for me and

then I've since made it it's a vegan chocolate brownie that's made with chia ground chia and miso oh yeah loads of sugar goes into it but the miso so this is it I made some for mum and dad and took them to them and mum loved them because they're really rich, and dad hated them because they're really rich. But the miso gives a sort of caramel, salty flavour to it, and then you've got the richness of the dark chocolate, and then so much light brown sugar goes into it, it's absolutely a heart attack.

But it's so gooey because of the chia, it's got that lovely texture, and then when you cook it, it just sort of crisps the top up. It's one of the most glorious. And I made a big block of it. And other than the stuff that I sent to mum and dad, I ate it all in about three days. Which is why, in lockdown, I have put on just under a stone. I think everybody has. Thank you, sourdough.

Thank you, brownies. You look gorgeous. Have you had your lunch yet? I haven't. I had quite a big breakfast. I did a big frittata. Oh, yeah. So I will...

What was in the frittata? What was in it? Sausage. Not gruyere. Manchego. Mushroom. Onion. And a little bit of sun-dried tomato.

Oh, nice. Wow. It was really nice, actually, yeah. And I managed to get it just that little gooey bit in the middle. Oh, yeah. Because that's the key with a, you don't overcook it. You just allow just a little bit of the egg to kind of ooze a bit when you cut into it.

Joe, do you ever do karaoke? Yeah, I do. What's your karaoke song? It's Lose Yourself by Eminem. Ooh. Because I don't know off by heart the first and second verse but i do know off by heart for whatever reason i don't even know why the third verse and so you start off and you're kind of reading the screen and everyone's like oh okay you know you can rap a bit whatever and then

suddenly on the third verse you go off screen you're like no more games i'm a change what you call rage tell this motherfucking room barb like two notes cage and people go oh my god like people lose their mind because they think they think that you actually knew it all along but i didn't i just know that little bit i like the performance i like that that the jeopardy yeah and that we haven't had anybody that provides such jeopardy in a karaoke song but that's brilliant i just um i wanted to know because you you you live in london sometimes but you're in birmingham at the moment so where do you like to go out when you're in london um and are there any food places that you kind of adore so i think the best restaurant in the world

is a restaurant called 40 maltby street which is uh in the under an archway near Bermondsey, basically. It started out as a wine, they just sold natural wines, and they are a great champion of biodynamic wine, which is mad. When you actually look into how it's made, it does sound like total madness. It's to do with, you have to bury an ox's head, the skull of an ox certain depth beneath the grapes and they harvest based on moon cycles and it sounds like a kind of cult thing but whatever they do does produce a very distinct what they call of the

farm sort of smell and very um simple um crisp flavor essentially and it's the if any bottle of biodynamic wine is pretty much delicious if it's um if it's well done and um they do a lot of them there's a there's a brilliant winemaker called jerome jure who i would great name die for a bottle of is a brilliant name um he does some lovely wines and they but they said they started us doing just like they had like a ham that they'd have on the side and then maybe some cheese or whatever and then it started to develop and now it's a different uh different menu every and they're not open all the time they're only open on saturdays wednesdays and fridays i think it's a different based on what they found essentially what they've got um that sort of come to them, that's inspired them.

But they normally do something like a fish and then normally do something quite sort of fresh, like a nice salad. And then there'll be something sort of brothy. Right, so I've moved to South East London. Oh. And they're doing bloody deliveries. Maltby Street are, 40 Maltby Street. Well, it looks like we have asparagus and cheddar tarts and glazed pork collar ham available for collection today you fucking changed my life Joe this is amazing and it will be it'll be delicious Jessie honestly but the atmosphere

there is so good we I would go there if I was gigging in London I would go there for lunch and I would basically stay there drinking wine with friends for as long as i could and then i would go and do a very drunken show in the evening really took my career seriously at that point um and um yeah they were happy days but it's a lovely atmosphere in there beautiful wine great food you will not regret whatever they're selling will be delicious i'm gonna i'm when lockdown finishes and you're in london please will you ring me up and tell me and we can go together yes we can spend 48 hours together if you want to and we could just chat and you're in London, please will you ring me up and tell me and we can go together. Yes, I would. And we can spend 48 hours together if you want to.

And we could just chat and you can teach me about biodynamic wine. I'd really like that. Jessica, you're a married woman. Purely alcohol friendship and culinary friendship. Yes, a culinary friendship. You seem like you know everything about wine and good spots so you my kind of guy well i i've been very fortunate that friends of mine are very good at finding the best places and then i just follow them um so i kind of yeah it's not i i'm not the one that's sort of

going through the magazines reading about all the papers we're finding these places i just say where we're going today and i don't I don't choose but the Maltby Maltby Street has I've been to a lot of really nice restaurants and I've been really fortunate I've eaten well over my life and I've never found anywhere better than than there it's my top oh wow let's go great don't you owe me a Mother's Day present Jeff oh there we go all right mum and Christmas okay you're gonna have a long time oh i think the line's gone they have a street market there as well on a saturday and sunday um because we filmed sewing

bee around the corner from there which was such hell because there's such long days that every lunchtime i'd be so tempted to go around the corner just have a glass of wine in motley street and then i couldn't because you know i really want a glass of wine you've really uh i've won you really kind of i'm going to i'm gonna have a when this finishes i'm gonna have a crisp cold beer that's what i'm gonna have in the sunshine oh yeah well it is finished and it's been such a pleasure to meet you and chat. Likewise. I'm a fan, so I'm really, I was so thrilled to be asked.

And what a delight it's been. I'd like to come to your stand-up, though. Yes, well, you'd be so welcome. Do you think you'll ever do stand-up again? God, I hope so. I'm going to start by doing little gigs because that's my favourite thing. Oh, I'd like a little gig. Well, come along to a little gig and i won't heckle i promise i love a heckler so let's see who wins What a guy! He was lovely.

Oh, I really loved him. A bit in love now. Yeah, I knew you were. You were really trying to pull out all the Brummie references, really trying to seduce him with your Brum knowledge. Jesus, Mum, chill out. I was trying to connect, darling, just connect in the best way I knew how.

I'd like 48 hours with Joe. What a wonderful guy. He was lovely. He's a foodie boy. Oof. And a wino. What else would you want in a man? Yeah.

Imagine being locked down with Joe. And he's funny. Yeah. Why isn't he married already, for God's sake? Don't know. It was such a pleasure to have Joe Lycett on. god's sake don't know it was um such a pleasure to have joe lysett on i mean there's so plenty more we could have talked about with his ever evolving career of kind of just doing everything so clever jesse i know and thoughtful and and really interesting and kind of matured he kind

of seemed older than his years so i was surprised he reminded me of Chris Sweeney a bit too yeah what a joy you can catch Joe Dysart on the sewing bee at the moment and you'll be able to hear him in your ears for the dragon's den and also Joe Dysart's got your back it's on tv at the moment and what a guy loved it and I'm gonna go and have a drink now I think I was supposed to be having a few more days off. I was supposed to not drink till Friday. It's Friday tomorrow. That's okay. Have you not drunk all week?

No. I think we finished off some rosé on Monday that needed to be finished off, you know. Darling. Yeah. I'm very excited. Why, Mum? Because you know how I love to hear you sing. Yes.

And the tour is happening next year. Finally. I'm coming on tour with you, darling. You're absolutely not. I've tried to get tickets. They're not out yet, Mum. They come out this Friday on my website, jessieware.com. What time?

It's an early one for you, Mum. It's 10 o'clock. Darling, that's not early. 10 o'clock, jessieware.com. You can go and get my tickets for my UK tour for my new album. Thank you to everyone who is listening to this podcast. We love making it for you and we haven't asked for a while. So please, if you fancy subscribing or rating us, you know how it goes.

We only accept five stars. And just review us. We'd love to get your feedback. Well, one of us would. As long as it's nice there we go otherwise it will make me cry and that would not be nice no it won't make her cry it will make her aggressive and then alice and i will have to hear about it so please just do positive notes or you know constructive criticism if you like us a little bit then you could give us a vote at the British Podcast Awards.

Please go to thebritishpodcastawards.com and vote for your favourite podcast, Table Manners, which you'll find on the Listener's Choice Awards. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Jo Lycett. Thank you to Mother. And bye, everyone. The music you've heard on Table Manners is by Peter Duffy and Pete Fraser. Table Manners is produced by Alice Williams.