Piers Morgan, Broadcaster

0:00Speaker 1:Ruthie's Table four is now a book. Paul McCartney, Michael Kay, Kamala Harris, David Beckham, Tina fey Elton John and many more. It's full of stories, beautifully designed, and a celebration of the way food connects us all. It's available now wherever you buy your books. Ruthie's Table four brought to you by Sky and Montclair.

0:26Speaker 2:I've probably interviewed three or four thousand people in my life. My sort of calculation after all that time is if you have the unconditional love of one parent, it's enough to power you to the top. It's much harder if you have no unconditional love from anybody and the ones that make it from that background, of that environment. Really, I'm all struck.

0:53Speaker 1:Everyone knows Piers Morgan as a journalist, editor and fearless interviewer, but I know him also as a person who loves food, Having spent his childhood in the pub his family owned in East Sussex. We can describe in detail what makes a great restaurant. Peers and I have different professions, but we do have much in common. His ingredients are words, mine or olive oil and basil. We both work to strict deadlines, opening hours for me and news to be reported for him. Most important though, for both of us, is the hunger for a story, whether talking to someone in the studio or at a table in the river cafe.

1:34Speaker 1:We're here together on a beautifully sunny day to share our stories about food and family, the world we're in. What could be better?

1:47Speaker 2:Thank you?

1:48Speaker 1:Well, it's true, it's authentic.

1:50Speaker 2:I think we should start by telling me what to do. Well, I don't want to interview you, but when you mentioned the pub, my Fami, we do have this umbilical cord which is your brilliant manager, Charlie pullin the River. He's been with you how long?

2:06Speaker 1:Probably twenty seven years.

2:08Speaker 2:So Charlie's family and my family were the best of family friends down in this East Sussex village area, Fletching and Newick. My parents ran the Griffin in.

2:19Speaker 1:But you you bought it from No did he back from you?

2:24Speaker 2:So so we sold the Griffin into the Pullen transformed it. My brother Rupert became their manager and his fact he's going back soon, which is a nice little symmetry to the whole thing. Charlie. I know Charlie when he was and all his brothers and his family, his mum and dad, and so I've always whenever I come in here, said Charlie, pulling.

2:44Speaker 1:Now he's devastated.

2:45Speaker 2:Back to the village.

2:47Speaker 1:He's devastated that he's not here. But what was it like growing up then? What was it like being in having the pub?

2:55Speaker 2:What do you love about it? I loved the egalitarian nature of a pub in those days. Country pub was very simple. Everyone would go in so in our area we'd.

3:05Speaker 1:Have the lord of this is on a Sunday or is it every day?

3:09Speaker 2:We were in there, so I would see, you know, you look through the door and you see the lord of the manner and the local carpenter. And it was very egalitarian. It didn't you could.

3:19Speaker 1:Rule them during the day, but then you drink together at night.

3:22Speaker 2:Yes, exactly, and it was And what I liked about it was as long as you could stand, you around and have a conversation, everyone was kind of the same. You were in there, and all types of people from all backgrounds. And I remember being about six or seven and the school, my local primary school in Fletching the village, sending back a warning letter to my mother that I was smelling of alcohol abitual thing in later life, but six a bit of it. It was because I used to earn pocket money by doing the bottling up, so all the empties had to be refilled. Would remove the empties, go down to the cellar, bring up the full ones, and I would get fifty p fifty pence an hour, a dollar a dollar for about an hour's work. But of course it would leave you entering the cell stinking of bit. So I'd arrived at school age six, and they'd be like, this kid has a problem. Years old.

4:17Speaker 1:They were call social services or something. Yeah, that's it. But did you like that? I mean, did you.

4:23Speaker 2:Think it seemed very like I look back on a very innocent, very harmless and that was that was his life.

4:30Speaker 1:And so you were. But you did have a tragedy you now of your father?

4:34Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought when I was I was one, so I was very very young.

4:37Speaker 1:Yeah, and your mother was doing my.

4:40Speaker 2:Mother was she was just at the time twenty years old, pregnant with mine. Yeah, she was pregnant pregnant with my brother, who became an army officer, and it was incredibly traumatic obviously for her and the family.

4:52Speaker 1:How did he die?

4:53Speaker 2:He died. He had a condition involving ulcers perforated and then now it'd be easily treatable. Back then, in the sixties it was a killer, and it was very sad. He was in his early thirties. I never knew him, obviously, but my dad came along, who swept up, you know, my mum and these two young boys, and he's been my dad ever since.

5:16Speaker 1:And did you so that what was he doing? What was his job?

5:20Speaker 2:He was actually running nightclubs in the south of France. He gave it up. He gave it up to come and take care of us, which when I look back on it now, was an amazing sacrifice to make. He was in his mid twenties.

5:32Speaker 1:Love, your mother must have been.

5:34Speaker 2:She was quite something. Something is quite something.

5:37Speaker 1:Yeah, she's still.

5:38Speaker 2:Yeah, they're both getting strong, bothies looking very.

5:41Speaker 1:Glam You remember food that you're ate as a kid.

5:44Speaker 2:Well, they were both great cooks in the paper, both great and remain great cooks. So whenever I go down, we have amazing ros or we have amazing dinners or amazing fry up breakfast. And it all came from when they ran the pub. They used to do seven days a week.

6:00Speaker 1:Did your parents your stepfather and mother have other children.

6:04Speaker 2:Yeah, brother and sister Kemelo.

6:06Speaker 1:So there are four of you going up, all in this village or in the puberty. They all of them have a relationship with the food in the past.

6:14Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, my sister's are very good cook My brother became the manager of the Griffin It so he was supervising the restaurant and is now going back there actually, so that pub has been a huge part of our family's life for a long time. But yeah, I've always been I've always been gravitated to. This is what I love, the River Cafe. I'm not just saying that because you are the River Cafe, but I love the simplicity of so much of what you do. It's beautifully cooked, but it's nothing like I don't like going places where it's overly fancy, you know, all sort of million tasting to any of that kind of thing. I like coming here.

6:50Speaker 1:I say, the worst two words in the English language are tasting menu.

6:53Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I like. I like just the simplicity of what you do, beautifully cooked, and that's the magic. Thinking River Cafe.

7:01Speaker 1:Were you exposed to we did you come to London? Did you go to Greek restaurants or Indian restaurants?

7:07Speaker 2:When I came I came to London, I was about nineteen.

7:09Speaker 1:But before that did your parents No?

7:11Speaker 2:Not really? Yeah, and did you think you a broad? Before I ask you?

7:14Speaker 1:Did you go abroad?

7:15Speaker 2:We didn't have a lot of money, We weren't poor, and we never I don't remember ever being deprived. But when I look back, I don't think my first foreign holiday, I was probably about sixteen. Our holidays were shrimping on Hastings Beach and I loved it.

7:29Speaker 1:Because your father was in south of France, he came back.

7:32Speaker 2:And he became a publican, and so they ran the country pub. And then yeah, my dad then ran a food, fine food business. He was the intermediately we go to markets and get food and game and poultry and fish and stuff for hotels and restaurants. He did that for many years, run his own business, did fantastically well, and now he's I called him a professional gardener. Spends most of his time in the garden, which looks unbelievable. They are very creative, talented people, my parents, who love their food, love entertaining. It's always been the bedrock of.

8:07Speaker 1:Art and we were politics part of your discussion as well.

8:11Speaker 2:Did you talk about it. I'm the least opinionated member of my family. I'm glad to meet the other one. Well, I'm actually being completely serious. They're all highly opinionated, but we try to steer clear of too much political Yeah. I think it'd be fair to say there are a few flashpoints we avoid.

8:30Speaker 1:Yeah, And Mike Blumberg talked about his family growing up. In his family, he said that they had an assignment, which was and actually the Bidens were that way as well. Apparently there's Irish family that at the dinner table everybody had to kind of one person would be chosen to say what they'd done that day. And he thought that was really good because it would make you think what you were doing that day. It was just something that I would want to report at the table.

8:56Speaker 2:Well, I remember Rupert Murdoch has been a great mentor of mine to whenever they have meals as a family, they would just choose something in the need to debate. And I do that often with my kid. I've got four kits thirty two down to fourteen, and we often will just debate stuff that I encourage them. I said, Look, we live in a weird world where people feel they can't express themselves freely. They can't express their own opinions about stuff. I said, you can't be you can't be suppressed in that way. We live in a great, thriving democracy and you've got to be brave enough to say what you think, not worry about whether people like it or not. And I said, there's too much censorship that's gone on. I do a show now called Piers Morgan Uns for a reason because I want people to watch it and understand when I say things. I have no paid master on my own boss. This is my freely held opinion. You may not like it. If you have a better opinion, then you can change my mind. Great, I'll listen to it. I'm very happy to change my mind if facts change or you present a more compelling argument.

9:57Speaker 2:But this idea that we can live in a democracy like ours or America and you feel too afraid of consequence and backlash and intimidation and frankly bullying on social media to say what you really think. I think it's a really tragic symptom of modern time.

10:14Speaker 1:You could also argue, if I were going to from a person maybe of a different that we've had this in fascist countries for a long time. We had it in Argentina, we've had it in Chile, We've had it in you know, Soviet Union, so that it's always been there. It has been part of those cultures, you know. And so that's also someone something that we always wanted to fight, wasn't it? The censorship imposed government democracy?

10:43Speaker 2:So free speech has to be the bedrock of a democracy. Yeah, the freedom of speech and expression. In America, you have the First Amendment. It's a very powerful tool which comes under attack a lot. And there's a lot of hypocrisy about the First Amendment, where people one rule for their side and not for the others and so on that I think you've got to be intellectually honest, you know. I try and be intellectually honest. People may not like what I'm saying, but at least they can trust that it's an honestly held opinion. And I'm not saying it because I want to appeal to left or right or anybody else. Because I don't want to be boxed into any of those places. I don't want to be partisan.

11:17Speaker 2:I don't want to be seen as biased. I want to be seen as somebody who will get everybody on, have hopefully stimulating debate from people who care passionately about issues, and let viewers decide.

11:28Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that I we'll talk more about because I do want to learn more about being an interviewer.

11:33Speaker 2:But I do think you take me skill.

11:35Speaker 1:I do think you listen, you know. I do think that watching you as I do very often, that you know you're quite you get these two people together and that there's that battle, but you ask the questions, but you do listen, And I think that is something that tribalism.

11:53Speaker 2:Tribalism has become a big problem where I think people they don't care if facts change that are reflect negatively on their side. They will stick intransigently to their position. You know, some people's idea of free speech is that you agree with everything that people say. If they're saying what you want them to say, that's not free speech. Actually, it's the ability to listen to someone saying the complete opposite to what you believe and accepting they have a right to believe it.

12:20Speaker 1:But we also make choices, and you must make choices as an editor every day. You make choices about what you going, who you're going to have on your show, what you can, and that is a freedom I think that you can say.

12:31Speaker 2:I had a conversation last night with my team. We did a debate last night about Iran, and I felt that although we had attempted to book a fair debate between two different sets of people who had different views about this, actually it felt in the moment throughout the hour debate it skewed a little bit three to one, and I said, I'm not happy about that. We had three people who were broadly against the war, and we had one former British Army officer in favor of what's going on. I said, that doesn't work my show, and we had a long chat about it. I said, it's always got to be fair. The whole point of what I do is if it's one against one, or two against two, or three against three, whatever it may be, it's got to be fair. And you can't have the viewers watching your hang on they're ganging up on this.

13:16Speaker 2:That to me, is not what I want my show to be about. I want it to be a fair and spirited debate between equal numbers of people that have in you about something.

13:26Speaker 1:I can quite often tell the people who've been brought up at love and think there's a quality of people that have had that confidence with you.

13:36Speaker 2:I've probably interviewed three or four thousand people in my life of all different types. You've probably met eating in a restaurant. But I was interviewing on the Wimbledon News when I was a young journalist, trainee journalist. But my sort of calculation after all that time is if you have the unconditional love of one pairent, it's enough to power you to the top. It's much harder if you have no unconditional love from anybody. And the ones that make it from that background and that environment have really I'm all struck about them, because how you barrel through life coming from a place of no unconditional love anywhere is incredibly hard to fathom. But I think if you have one parent, at least prefer me to one parent or a grandparent, whoever it may be. But there's someone that looks at you and says, I absolutely believe in you, and you can go as another game a postcard and it had a flock of seagulls and a hippopotamus fine with them, and it just had a headline ambition knows no bounds, and it's still on my desk, and she gave me that when I was in my teen years.

14:48Speaker 1:I have one which was never give a party without margaritas.

14:51Speaker 2:That's a good one. I actually brought one with me because I was checking no checking River Cafe moments in my life and I found on something which I thought was great, and it was two lines, but it was the memorial you did here for Ed Victor, who was my wife, Celia's literary agent, and we used to go out with him a lot, and he was one of the live's great men. And you had a lovely party here. And there were two things that came out and from people talking about him. One was Dylan Jones, who was of GQ great friend of mine, who quoted Ed as saying, I perceive life as a long highway littered with green lights, which I thought was a brilliant phrase, and it really appealed to my eternal optimism. You know, you are really glass half full of glass. Your first thought of any difficult challenges, either positive or negative. And people rarely stray from their natural reactions. They tend to be pretty negative or pretty positive. And when I get a negative burst.

15:53Speaker 2:I'm always trying to say, come on, unless you're actually dead or terminally, there's a way out of everything, as I prove it over the years. But the other thing which I really liked was ed Nigella laws Yes, once asked how I was and what I began to tell him. He stopped me and said, Nigella, if somebody ask you how you are, they don't ever actually want to know.

16:16Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I remember that too. Yeah care, Yeah, somebody asks your heart, they don't really care. I don't know, they don't really care. So coming from this life of feeling that love, having the pub this you know, Dyllic, you know, I mean your mother coming out of a tragedy. I can't imagine the tragedy of having being pregnant and having a little child and then and then growing up here. What happened when you left, I mean when you left that community, when you came to London and use was it London that you came to and how did that?

16:50Speaker 1:Did you live by yourself?

16:52Speaker 2:Did you I went to journalism college in Harlow in Essex and lived with the family there, as we all did.

16:56Speaker 1:On the family you knew.

16:57Speaker 2:Or local family, which lovely to me.

17:01Speaker 1:What did you learn in journalism school? That member?

17:05Speaker 2:Well, what I learned the basics of journalists, which really helpful, Like shorthand. Now nobody uses short hand anymore. It was an invaluable tool. Sure, hand's actually great. I can still do it a little bit, but now everyone uses recorders, so it's a different thing. I think I learned. The one thing I learned about my whole journalism career was embedded from that early training, which was it actually plays into my brother's unofficial regimental motto, the regular way the matter.

17:33Speaker 1:Yeah, we have to write all these.

17:35Speaker 2:You'd like it applies, it's the seven piece seven p's planning and preparation like that prevent piss poor performance.

17:49Speaker 1:Oh did he make that up?

17:51Speaker 2:Non official? I like it, Yeah, And that was instilled into us. You can never do enough preparation.

17:58Speaker 1:That I agree with.

17:59Speaker 2:I think I say the same, the same before a big interview with anything.

18:03Speaker 1:But I know that when I have to do something that I am nervous about and everybody says, relax, it's going to be fine. That's I went on Jimmy Fallon, Yeah, and I was so wound up about.

18:14Speaker 2:How I was going to do.

18:15Speaker 1:And the worst advice that people would give me on the day was just be yourself. And I don't know how to, you know, I didn't know what I was supposed to do with that, and so instead I just kind of locked myself in the room and read every page of the book and worked in and then then he came in and then he was amazing, but you know, it's warm, and gave me a hug and we're going to do this. But it was having done that that I could then relax. But everybody's different, so.

18:39Speaker 2:I don't think you can wing it in a kitchen, in a newsroom, on a sports field, yeah, they'll all tell you. I mean, my favorite athlete sportsman are people like a very good friend of mine is not Christiano Ronaldo, who's a football.

18:54Speaker 1:Player, is a friend of yours.

18:56Speaker 2:Very good. Yeah, And it became the most random thing where he messaged me one day. He's the most followed human being on Instagram at all. Isn't six hundred and fifty million twenty five er sent more than about other human being on the planet. So he's probably the biggest start follow him.

19:11Speaker 1:He probably needs another person probably does.

19:13Speaker 2:Yeah, you get on you but he loves his food. But he he just came from absolutely nothing. His dad had died when he was very young. He'd been in the Portugal a girl of war and he turned to drink afterwards. And it's very sad for the family. And never really saw Christiana become the superstar, and he was and that really moved me. On the first time he interviewed, he got very emotional. But he contacted me. It's the most random connection through Instagram. He messaged me one day out of the blue. I've never met him to say he loved my crime documentaries where I sit down with the American serial killers and psychopaths, and he wanted to talk to me about them. So he ran me the next day. We had an hour and a half conversation about psychopaths. But actually he actually contacted you. And now after that we become good friends and messaged each other.

20:05Speaker 2:At the time, I've done three big interviews with him. But he is the absolute templar, I would say of the seven Bees. He is somebody that leads nothing to chance. Everything is incredibly well practiced. Everything he does, he's the first in last out. He's in his forties now, he's still breaking rec now still in the pursuit of greatness, of immortality. He wants to improve all the time. All he cares about is getting better. And he's forty one years old and he's broken every record, everything in the game.

20:36Speaker 2:I love that. And I interviewed Novak Djokovic recently, same thing, greatest tennis prayer of all time, same mentality, you know, could remember he told me about being in Belray when NATO attacked and the bombs were reigning over the family home and they had ten equivalent of ten pounds to spend on food a week. And now he's the greatest tennis player that's ever lived in worth gazillions, but he's ever forgotten. I mean, they both talked about hunger and how the one thing Christiana said he can't give his own son, who's now playing for Portugal age fifteen, is a very good player. He said, the one thing I can't give him is actual hunger. And he told me this fabulous story that when he was twelve he was so hungry. He went to the Sporting Lisbon Academy in Portugal age twelve and very gifted player, but he was starving all the time, and eventually him and his mate used to walk down the road and wait outside the back of McDonald's and two ladies who worked in McDonald's would take pity on them and give them burgers. And he was telling me the store and I said, you haven't know you ever seen these women? He went, nice,

21:40Speaker 2:I'd love to meet. We watched this huge hunt for these two. We never found them, so we assuen m it'd either died or moved away or whatever. And then the last time I saw Christiana in read last year, he suddenly said, Pierce, he said, I met one of the McDonald's ladies. I went well, he said, lisbon Airport. I was walking through it. She came up to Michigan, went on one of the McDonald's lady and he said, he's going to go and take care of them. And what a lovely story.

22:06Speaker 1:You know, it goes around comes around. Now that you have that connection. When you went to work, the first job was it.

22:14Speaker 2:My first proper job was the Stretum and Tooting News in Tooting.

22:17Speaker 1:Broadway, that local newspaper.

22:19Speaker 2:And then I went to the Wimbledon News.

22:22Speaker 1:And that was that was it.

22:25Speaker 2:It was a Wimbledon higher than the strategy I was moving up in the world. I got to it was right in the middle of Broadway. It was it was carnage to start with him in the crime alone in that area then was rife, so it was it was a very interesting beat to cover. So I had to go to the police stations and sit down with the police once a week and what's happened on your patch? I loved it. And then I went to the Wimbledon News and then I remember my first big scoop was I infiltrated security at Wimbledon Tennis. We had a tip if you go through that fence between this time and that time, they don't guard it, so we went through with the photographer. I ended up getting into the Royal Box where a famous England cricket legend called Colin Cowdrey was there and served me a gin and tying, not knowing who I was. And then I went down to the players dressing room and was actually in there with some of the top players. This is back in the in the early eighties and we speak John probably and they were all like, what are you doing here? And I was like, oh, anyway. We then did a big exposed the front page exposed Wimbledon's security scandal, which got picked.

23:34Speaker 1:Up, managed to breach the security.

23:37Speaker 2:We did them a massive favour. Could have been a terrorist anyway. They responded by banning me for life. The chairman was a guy called Basa Huddingham to buzzer Baser anyway, he sent me a letter banning me from me all in the club for life. I don't think they enforce it. I've been, you've been back, You've been to the big graces. I'd actually done them a favor of.

24:00Speaker 1:The thing, you know, talking about models and speeches that I was reading because a friend of mine is giving commencement address in the States and Federer do you know that he when he gave his speech at Harvard for commencement, he said something like, you know, I am one of the great tennis players. I will say that, you know, but I just want you to know you can look at all the games that I've won, and then just look at all the games that I've lost and how many games I've lost. And his whole point was that, you know, failure is part of the deal.

24:32Speaker 2:So much more so the ones your friend when you're successful. Yeah, I've had great times of success and great plummeting falls, and I've actually much preferred the falls. You worker, who probably would turn up at your funeral your proper mates are. You realize how important family is because they're always at like a ring fencing protective umbrella. And also the value of a local pub. Back to the pub, Back to the pub where everyone Back to food?

25:04Speaker 1:Did you ever you know when you were in this world of when you're on Fleet Street?

25:08Speaker 2:Was that two shifts in Fleet only?

25:12Speaker 1:That was the news of the world.

25:15Speaker 2:I was The Sun's show business correspondent. I did the show Wow.

25:20Speaker 1:Did you go? Yeah? What was that like? Did you go for dinner? Where did you eat?

25:24Speaker 2:In those days we had unlimited expensive cast I flew around the world first class or business class, stayed five stars. That was the biggest selling paper is selling four million copies at the time, and it was a fantastic life. I went to interview the biggest stars in the world.

25:41Speaker 1:Would you do it over food? Would you do what did you learn about people interviewing them in the restaurant?

25:47Speaker 2:Would you alcohol? Loosens, tongues? It's quite surprise there wasn't a couple of the gronies.

25:54Speaker 1:In another matter, you would drink. You said, no, we did. I don't think we have to worry about listening.

26:01Speaker 2:I don't think, but I think if you can get people that I actually would prefer to have a social encounter with somebody the day before I may interviewed him, so you establish a rapport. I remember Bill Clinton. I interviewed him after he stopped being president. But I interviewed him for CNN, and it was going to be a live hour long thing, big bad. I've got one thing, and he we decided we had a little drinks the other night before and I met him for the first time and we had a really nice chat for about half an hour, and I just felt like we've got a bit of a connection. So when we started the interview, and it was a to show you how brilliant he was as a politician, because to meet Bill Clinton, I was thinking about the greatest politicians of my lifetime. He'd be right up there, unbelievably smart, but had brilliant political antennae.

26:54Speaker 2:Brilliant politicians you can buy in both the politics and the m yes and intelligence. And he's very well read. But he I said to him, Bono had come to town for the It was the Clinton Global Initiative, and he was going to do something the next day, and he'd done a stunt where he'd imitated Bill Clinton and it had gone viral on social media. And I said to Bill Clinton, have you seen this? He hadn't seen it, played it to him on my phone. He went, that's actually pretty funny. I went yeah. I said, if you money chance, do a bono impression. And you wanted to start the interview tomorrow By unleashing it on the world, I can guarantee everyone will go nuts and it will go viral. And he wanted publicity for his initiative is weak, so he said he didn't say anything. He just went the next day, is sitting there, We're going live in twenty seconds, is giving no sign of doing anything. It found me there, there's John Glenn, the astronaut, Barbara Streison's and the audience's Hillary's there, Chelsea's there. It's an amazing star studied crowd in the room. Plus it's been beamed to millions around the world. And then I opened up,

28:04Speaker 2:not knowing what he would do. So it's like this could have been excruciating, and I said, President Clinton, it's great to see it. And to finally get to interview, I said, and I want to start with the thing that everyone is talking about surrounding the Clinton Global Initiative and obviously leading people to think of something serious. I said, it's this, and we played it on the big screen and it was Bono doing his impression, and I said, do you have a response, President Clinton? I had no idea what he did, so it was like the most like, come on, give me something, and he just stared at me.

28:34Speaker 2:So you had a suit and he just stared at me, gave me nothing, give me nothing. One second, couple of seconds, three exact, which is three seconds of painful thing. And then he suddenly reached into his pocket, pulled out a pair of dark, very dark glasses, and did a two minute riff as Bono, which brought the house. It's fantastic and it was pure genius. It was political genius. Yeah, and I'd thought, wow, you are something else. And he just had a gift for that kind of actor.

29:09Speaker 1:Mike Bloomberg said that he would when he did interviews for jobs. When people applied for a job at Bloomberg, he would take them to a restaurant because he wanted to see how they were with the waiter, how they were their food? Did they look the waiter in the eye. And he also said something that I'm sure you won't agree with is that if someone he was interviewing asked for a glass of wine, he wouldn't hire them. Really and yeah, and I was with I was somebody sitting next to me who said, well, actually being British, he said, well, you know, Mike, if I was sitting interviewing somebody for a job and they didn't want a glass of wine, I wouldn't hire them.

29:47Speaker 2:But what do you want to give you a story? I'll give you a story. When I was twenty seven years old, Yeah, I was the show business editor of the Song Yeah, flying all around, having the time in my life, right, this was best get in the world, flying around into being Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger and all these superstars. And then I get an invitation to go and have dinner with Rupert Murdock at the Stafford Hotel in Saint James's in the private room, and the editor of the Sun took us there and there were about eight executives and I was the youngest by far, so I thought I had nothing to lose never met Rupert, so Medham was very excited, and I noticed that he was drinking a few glasses of wine. But the editor of the Son was having a three month wine who sabbatical, so he wasn't, which became crucial. So we got through the first course second cause I was just a couple of glasses of wine and started being quite garrulous as I would, thinking well, I've gotten to loose here at all nothing. I'm not going to be doing anything bigger than this. And then it got to the end and there was a guy sitting to the right of Rupert,

30:51Speaker 2:and then I was next to this guy. They got to the end and they went to the editor who wasn't drinking first, and they said would you like it looking, and he wasn't drinking, so they said no, I'm good, thank you. So everyone took their lead from the editor. But we better not have one, so they went no, no, I'm good, No, no, they're all askers. So they all said no, no, no, no, And he got to me and I said, well, what would you recommend? And he said the peach brandy is very good, So I said the peach brandy and the guy next to me he said, yeah, I'll have one of those two, and then Rupert said, yeah, it's my favorite. Make it three.

31:26Speaker 1:Ah.

31:28Speaker 2:What all I'm saying is within three weeks I had been made editor of the Needs of the World, the biggest selling paper in the world at the time, and the other guy had been made editor of The Sun, the biggest selling deadly paper in the world. And none of the others who turned down the peach brandy got anything out of that dinner. And so the moral is, if you're ever having dinner with Rupert Murdock, have the peach brandy.

31:49Speaker 1:Oh, I'll be brave.

31:50Speaker 2:Exactly what you want to do. I think he looked, and I personally look back on that and think he looked for someone who would make their own mind up.

31:58Speaker 1:If you were interviewing somebody for a job, would you want to see how they behaved in a restaurant, or would you.

32:02Speaker 2:I want to see how they treat waiters?

32:05Speaker 1:Would you look?

32:06Speaker 2:I think you have. You have here probably the perfect environment to assess people's actual character. And I one of my pet loathings in the world is people that are rude to waiters, or to cab drivers or chauffeurs or whatever it may be, particularly when they're rich and privileged and successful and should have no excuse, you know. And some of the most polite, well mannered people I met have nothing, and they've been brought up to have manners. My mother, is she ever caught me being rude to a waiter, she would go berserk. I do that if any of my kids ever have even a whiff of entitlement or anything, and they know it, so they don't and they would never be rude to waiter. I think it's the ultimate litmus test of character. And you know, I bet you've had some people in here over the years you've just treated your style badly.

32:56Speaker 1:I have to say very few. I mean, I really, I'm so and maybe because I don't know the whole mood here or whatever it is. And also this is the only person I ever bound from the River Cafe ever, you know, was somebody who I heard, I actually witnessed him being rude to really horrible to waiter and I just said out and he called up, you know, I think, Charles, and said, just just really really sad, I can come back or is that what she was? And he said, do you know how much I spend here, you know, But there was like a no no, and then he said he called me up really upset and he said, you know I was not you whatever, And he said, can I can I come back like ever? And I said, well, you have to write to her and ask her what she thinks and you have to apologize and then we'll give it time. And he said, I said, but you can see, we can see, you know, you can talk about six months. Are you putting me on the naughty step for six months?

33:52Speaker 2:And he said, yeah, that's the did come good, not bad, just.

33:58Speaker 1:Too short.

33:59Speaker 2:Yeah. I use restaurant as a way to soften people up, to establish a rap I think that I can be quite good company over a good meal, bottle of good wine. I think I can establish a rapp all that maybe we didn't have before. And if you can do that either before, I mean I had a great interviewed Tom Hanks at CNM and it was it was it was an okay interview. It was with a couple of his cast members, and I thought, I wished I knew Tom Hanks a bit better than we would have got more out of it. And about a month later, I was in the Upper East in New York and I was sitting in a diner and he just walked in on his own and he came over and he said, you might if I joined you. And we had a nineteen minute last and it was brilliant, and I remember thinking, I wish I could interview him tomorrow.

34:48Speaker 1:You have a hunger for a story, for a news story. We all have hungers for the stories. If you look at every table, I would say to the chefs, you know, to the waiters. I've said it millions of times on this program, that everybody has a story there. Maybe somebody here's celebrating a graduation or having been fired that day, or have been given a diagnosis, or saved up for a long time. Everybody and that story. So that's what you do, and that's what you tell, and is that you're kind of north star of getting the story that you can with.

35:19Speaker 2:I used to do a show on ITV called Life Stories where I would spend three hours interviewing some of the biggest stars in the world. And the first I would be like a normal interview. The second, now that barriers would start to come down. About the third day, you're getting really deep with people and they're beginning to trust you and open up and talk about things in a way. I mean, I remember a classic example Michael Parkinson and you talk about interviewers. So Parky was a great friend of mine, and he finally agreed after fifteen seasons to do life stories. He'd always said that for he said, for the reason I say, Michael Kane, he'd always said to be peers, for the reasons I like watching your show. I'll never do it. Parky was the same other I didn't want to get that deeper stuff.

36:07Speaker 2:But park eventually agreed. And I went to see him in his dressing room before and he said, you will make me cry, your bugger, you will made me cry. Not a chance. And I thought that there's no chance. He's never cried in public in his life. He's a tough, gritty yrship. Of course he's not going to cry. And then it came in the most unexpected moment. I just said to him he was an only child, Marcael Buggerson, and he talked about his father and his parents, and his father had died fifty years earlier, and I said, it's fifty years since your dad passed away, and he said yeah, he said, I said, can you remember that day.

36:38Speaker 2:He'd been I think in his early twenties, and he started telling the story and then he remembered them bringing his father's body down the stairs and how small his father seemed, and with that he just crumbled and he then sobbed in front of a live audience. We didn't run most of it. He sobbed for about five minutes a bit to stop film, and afterwards he was completely shell shold by what had drenched up from the recesses of his heart and his emotions. And it was an amazing moment. His son was with him, Michael, who was equally startled, and they went away and they wrote a book about it. Yeah, based on that one moment from that interview. And when I think back to great interview moments, that one really sticks in with me because it's a bit like Chris Jianna Ronaldo and his dad. I think it just sometimes something triggers it, you know. In Ronaldo's case, I showed him a clip of his father from Norwegian television we'd found of his father talking about how proud he was of his son, and Chris Johnder had never seen it. So this most famous guy on the planet I'd never seen a clip of his dad saying how

37:45Speaker 2:proud he was of him, and it made him cry. And you know, it's not that surprising. It's your family. It's intense, it's emotional, but it's still when it happens like that out of nowhere, it's a really special thing.

37:56Speaker 1:And how do you with your family? You do your children? And are they are they at home? Do they cooks in your family?

38:05Speaker 2:None of it's not a bad cook. She's getting a lot better. She used to joke about. She has a sign above the oven that says, I'll pretend I like cooking, and you pretend you like eating.

38:15Speaker 1:My food, which is about good for a journalists, because you don't pretend. We tell the truth.

38:20Speaker 2:Remember, she's actually got good. She's actually got good. One day, okay, twist on the spaghetti and I actually did it for Rachel Ray on American television and it was a big hit. And it's just very spicy. L is a big American television cook and has a big show on big big show And for some reason she got me to do my recipe and I cooked it on TV. But it's one of the great spag bowls. Tell me it has everything in it. I like. I like two things with my spag bowl. I like things to crunch and I like spice spicy. So I put tabasco. Liam Peren was the source in. I put all that kind of stuff in.

39:06Speaker 2:I put in a chopped up carrot and celery, lots of it.

39:10Speaker 1:First, do you like that part crunchy? What's the part you like?

39:15Speaker 2:I like you to be. I like when I when I get the final thing, I put it in towards the end, after I've stewed all the stew everything. I think you've got to stew it for a good hour or so. Then I put in the crunchy stuff so that I like a crunch Some people think I'm mad, but actually it tastes really good, especially chats it up with a bit of limp perin and a bit of tabasco.

39:39Speaker 1:And when do you make it?

39:40Speaker 2:About once every three years?

39:42Speaker 1:Okay, so so you never had the urge to.

39:46Speaker 2:I actually really enjoyed.

39:47Speaker 1:I bet you.

39:48Speaker 2:I never had the time the time, and I don't make myself make the time. But actually I do really enjoy the process of cooking your meal, and I wish I had more time to do it, you know, the When I was asked if I wanted to recommend a dish for you from your book, I chose you.

40:05Speaker 1:We have the recipe.

40:07Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really with a bit of basil and a bit of this.

40:10Speaker 1:Let's read it. I just thought that's part of the drill. Can I read your recipe? Why do you when you read it, tell me what you like about it?

40:17Speaker 2:Well, again, like I said to you earlier, one of the reasons I love your restaurant and you're cooking it's simple, but beautifully prepared and delicious. And when I think of all the great meals I've had, it's that actually simple. It's like being in the south of France, in Santrope and going to club sank On sank or somewhere and having the sea bass right with some vegetables and having some Minuti rose. That's I'm happy. Maybe a few chips and fries, which reminds me. We were talking before we started this, Ted Turner, the great founder of why I replace Larry King at CNN in that nine o'clock slot, which was obviously it's quite a talk. Well, Larry. Larry summed it up after about three weeks of me being on air, he was asked on the red carpet, what do you think of Peers, his new show, and he said, it reminds me of my mother in law driving my favorite Bentley over a cliff. So CNNPR ce an NPR rap with Peers, do not respond, right, Larry's legend, you can't respond. I went every sinew was like so I left it about a week and then someone asked me on a red carpet, what did you think of what Larry said about his mother in law? And I said, well,

41:28Speaker 2:I said, to be fair to Larry, I said, he's had eight mother in law, so he's a bit of a world.

41:34Speaker 1:It's true, didn't he Yeah, he did.

41:37Speaker 2:More than twice.

41:37Speaker 1:He did. Well, I forgot about that.

41:39Speaker 2:My manager he used to represent Larry and once for just a better Sport, asked him over dinner to name all his wives and it was one he couldn't remember. Yeah, you can't remember married too many people.

41:55Speaker 1:What it's like to be the seventh or eighth and think there were seven? Yes, sure, you have to have a lot of confidence to be there like the seventh wife. Okay, read your message.

42:05Speaker 2:Because it's a loving food story. So he takes me out for lunch and his Ted Turner buy some burger joint in midtown Man, and we sit down. I've never met this great man won the America's Car World series. He was just this phenomenal character. And when he met him, just like this flave wire and he said, I'll have a bar, some burger medium, and ten fries. So I went, little details. You never forget about people, I said, ten fries phrase specific He said, yeah, he said, I find if I have eleven or more, i'm a bit blooded.

42:40Speaker 2:If I have nine or less, i'm a little little hungry. So I find that ten fries is my sweet spot. So he specifically ordered ten fries, and I thought that detail will live with me till the day he does, which I thought, ten fries ten good story anyway, Spaghetti with eleven So I love this because to me, it perfectly symbolizes the magic of your restaurant. Thank you, simplicity and beauty and delicious. So spaghetti with lemon. This would serve six people, two hundred and fifty grams of spaghetti, juice of four lemons, a moufe, one hundred and fifty millis of olive oil, one hundred and fifty grounds of parmesan, freshly grated, two handfuls of fresh basil, finely chopped, finely grated lemon zest, and I would add a little of cheese. Cheeseae, a little bit cheese. Personally, he cooked a spaghetti in a generous amount of boiling salted water. Drain thoroughly and return to the saucepan. Meanwhile, whisk the lemon juice with the olive oil and stir in the parmesan. It will melt into the mixture, making it thick and creamy. Season with sea salt and black pepper, and add more lemon juice to taste. Add the sauce to the spaghetti, and

43:52Speaker 2:shake the pants so that each strand of pasta is coated with the cheese. Oh we already have parmesan. I'm sorry.

43:58Speaker 1:Oh we can put more and it's fine.

43:59Speaker 2:Yes, just have more cheese. Let's have enough cheese.

44:02Speaker 1:He loved cheese, never enough.

44:03Speaker 2:When I die, I want my tombstone to say you could never have enough cheese.

44:06Speaker 1:You know what I want to be? I M a big party in a small space. Love that, because don't you just like squeezing around? Then walking into a room with the differences.

44:17Speaker 2:It would be National morning if you went with me. I'm not quite so confident.

44:21Speaker 1:I think the same. I doubt it, okay, carry.

44:24Speaker 2:Milligan's tombstone, told you I was ill, Oh my god, when he died. When he died, we did it on the Daily Mirror front page. Was the tombstone. We told you I was ill? Spike Milligan because he cracked this joke before. And his widow rang me the next day and I thought I haven't offended it, and she ran me and said, could I have the original front page. He would have loved it. He would have told you I was ill, okay, but finally stirring the chopped basil and the grated lemon zest and then you have spaghetti with lemon. There we are simple.

44:53Speaker 1:Something that I asked often of actors. If you know that you're going to interview somebody at you know, two o'clock, would you want to eat before or would you want to be slightly No, no, empty stomach.

45:06Speaker 2:My routine before a big interview or show or something that requires energy. I have a banana, I have natural yogurt, I have a load of nuts, and I have just maybe a barocca or something to juice me up a bit. And then afterwards I love to go and have if it's a really big like thing. You know, I've had interviews with people like Nelson Mandela and the dun Lama and Oprah Winfrey and all these people, and I think by President Clinton or whoever it may be. Afterwards, my favorite thing is then to meet up with friends or family whatever and have a bottle of wine. It's just like decompressed. I call it decompression because the adrenaline just fires through you. But I find for energy, you can't beat bananas, yogurt, the basic stuff. Just just uice yourself up with a bit of energy. Let it all go.

45:56Speaker 2:And then and then comes to the River Cafe and a bottle of red Italian wine, have the we're going to do, and hopefully wait patiently and expectantly for the great Ruthie Rogers to glide down the aisle, stopping with Paul McCartney and Michael Caine. And yeah, finally get to the end of the wrong and remember my name. That's a great moment.

46:22Speaker 1:Okay. But before you go and have that lunch, as you said, before you work, you don't what you want to eat when you wake up in the morning, you know, it makes you have a good day. But we also eat when we need some sort of support, so comfort, whether we've had a bad day at the office once so we've lost someone, when we're just we're just feeling the world out here is a scary place and it's tough. So is there something from your memory or from now or that you would want to eat when you need, Pierce.

46:51Speaker 2:Morgan, it would be spaghetti bottlenise the way my mother.

46:54Speaker 1:Makes it, and she would make that for you now, And do you go home and have that?

47:00Speaker 2:Okay, it's my ultimate. You can't beat your mother's good.

47:04Speaker 1:You can't give your mother's but yours.

47:05Speaker 2:Gum's pretty close.

47:07Speaker 1:Thank you so much. That's great, It's good.

47:13Speaker 2:Ruthie's Table four was produced by Alex Bell, Robbie Hamilton and Zad Rogers, with Andrew Sang and Bella Celina. This has been an atomized production for iHeart Video.

47:26Speaker 1:Ruthie's Table four brought to you by Sky and Montclair