From the archive (season 4): Jayde Adams, comedian

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:06hello you this is part two of my mini series of sun lounger friendly episodes i have dug right to the back of the comfort eating ladder to see what's hiding there and i have found something amazing this episode is the equivalent of discovering a bar of chocolate tucked away behind the lentils that you'd forgotten was ever there. Still beautiful, still delicious, still as enriching as it was on day one. In this episode, I talk to one of my favourite women about naked ambition, school food and the power of leopard skin. Listen to this. I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian.

0:56a podcast where we pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life because even as a restaurant critic I believe the food that matters most is often that snack you cobble together when you're curled upon the sofa each week I ask my guest to lift the lid on what comfort foods have seen them through their lives because you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed arms. Please be aware that today's episode contains some swearing. Hello friends, welcome to Comfort Eating. You find me yet again in my kitchen. I'm fighting off the feeling that these grey clouds hanging low in the sky are giving me via a little snack.

1:48today I'm having something very very naughty I'm having well I've got raw kimchi which is actually quite sophisticated but are you meant to eat it with baby bells I think I've invented something there my guest today is Jade Adams a comedian described by Dawn French as the third funniest woman in the world. Now that's putting me, I assume, in fourth place. Her route to stardom began at Glastonbury, where she was a pretend priestess overseeing fake weddings in an inflatable church. From there, her singing talents propelled her into the cabaret circuit. For years, she was an Adele impersonator on the drag scene.

2:39These days, she's a stand-up comedian, a TV presenter, and most recently of all, you'll have seen her strutting her stuff on Strictly Come Dancing. Jade's TV shows such as Crazy Delicious and Snack Masters focus on fabulous food but I'm wondering what is she eating on her days off when she's kicking back in her gym jams? Let's just have a little last mouthful before she gets here. Nothing worse than a rumbling tummy on tape. I'd do this for you. I shouldn't really leave bits of cheese in the kimchi. My bloke Charlie will go mad. Got a kick?

3:30Jade Adams, welcome to Comfort Eating. Thank you for having me, Grace Dent. I am absolutely thrilled because I love Grace Dent and I love comfort eating. you're an absolute vision across the table in leopard skin which i always say is a neutral yeah you look amazing it is a neutral isn't it it is a neutral it's really great with beige i'm into wearing a lot of beige and camel colors at the moment sophisticated that's like i always think like working class women like us think that like camel and creams are sophisticated because Because it means that you can go out and you're the kind of woman that doesn't get mucky.

4:09Yeah, I've been wearing white because I sort of, I went through a breakup and then I was very first wives club for about a week and just wore white and walked around singing, you don't own me. And then I enjoyed the reaction people had for me, had towards me whilst I was wearing white. So I just kept on doing it. But it does give, because everyone said the same thing to me. whenever they see me eat whilst I was wearing it, which is, oh, you're not a messy eater. And I was like, no, I'm just very aware that I'm wearing white. Yeah, it's a sign of a real woman is somebody that can wear a white cashmere jacket for more than four hours without getting jam on the elbow.

4:51Jam on the elbow must be the name of your autobiography.

5:00Jam on the elbow. Jade. Yes, Grace. Every week, my guest shares with me their ultimate comfort snack, a meal that brings them joy in the dark days. It is a warming hug in a mug or a plate or a bowl. Jade Adams, what have you brought for me today? I've no idea what is under this foil. I'm going to be honest. I don't know. I don't know how. I don't even know how I'm admitting this. that is the best that's the best thing are you embarrassed do you feel embarrassed i love this i love it so much i'm opening it up oh my gosh right god it's so good nobody has ever asked for anything like this before it's it's chips these are homemade chips aren't they oh they're very specific homemade chips they are coated in a vegetable oxo cube how delicious is that but what you've got is homemade chips spam yeah not even fried and you've got a fried egg but the fried egg is really crispy and you've got you've got so basically you've got spam egg chips and what you're doing right now is putting a load of ketchup onto your plate.

6:20Yeah. A load of mayo on top of it. And then you're swirling it. Yeah. I didn't know you were a Michelin star chef. What am I from for? Oh, yeah. Because then I can get some Spam. When do you eat this? When I get home from work. When I used to have a proper job. And I often had, I did nightlife sort of jobs, like bars and things. I'd get home and I'd be really hungry. and this is what I would make. I've had Spam in fritters. Has anyone ever bought Spam on? No, never. Absolutely shocked. What is it about Spam? Salty, porky. Like, I love pork. Do you? Yeah, I think I could be led to do a murder if someone led me there with pork.

7:07What if they just made a trail? What would it be? Rice pork. So when you eat Spam, is it that feeling of pork that you love? It's like, it's portable pork.

7:20It's portable pork. I'm going to say it again because she's got a mouthful of Spam. Would you say Spam is portable pork? Yes, I would. Say the world comes crashing down. There's a war, right? I'm running to the shop and getting the entire Spam shelf because she can do so much with it.

7:41You were born in Bristol in the southwest of England. you grew up with your mum and your dad and your older siblings Kane and Jenna yeah what was home life like normal I think I was the youngest so by the time parenting got around to me they just were like yeah go on but my sister used to get dead jealous because they were quite I think they sometimes were quite tough on her like she got caught smoking I know she had to like empty the dishwasher for like two months whereas when they found out I smith they were like oh all right then did you want a light what kind of people were your mum and dad my mum uh is a working class woman who worked in Asda for 38 years she has a very specific view on life because of the where she's worked yeah what's your mother's ethos and life what what's her belief you say she's got strong beliefs what what what what something don't be full of shit um don't be a hypocrite don't contradict yourself don't lie she wouldn't handle showbiz like i i can you know showbiz is a lot of sort of hey best friend we're gonna be best friends forever yeah so if your mother i mean your mother's working at asda did your mother have access you know the reduced sticker gun whoops oh whoops she was the whoopsin lady no four years yeah oh my god i am in the presence of royalty she had the whoops gun babes your mother had access to the whoops gun yes

9:30oh my god your house must have been full of like reduced price thomas the tank engine cake pork it was three pounds 29 it's now 65 pence it was your freezer just full of stuff that like brought home and like yeah our freezer was the most full thing our fridge wasn't When you were a little girl, like, what are you eating then? What, like, you're all sitting down on a night, and then your mother has gone to the freezer the night before. She's defrosted something. What's she throwing down for? I think we had about three roast dinners a week, or various forms of a roast dinner. We'd have a chicken chasseur.

10:15Yeah. We'd have, I mean, there were Kievs, chicken Kievs. You know, Kiev is a very underrated thing. I think so. It has to be so garlicky that you can still taste it at about lunchtime the next day. Yeah, I want to be burping that shit up for about another day afterwards and going, oh, Kiev. What's your earliest childhood food memory? My mum turned up, so I went to nursery, Redcliffe Nursery, by my secondary school, actually. and I was three she says I was three when this happened so this is the earliest memory I have she turns up and she's doing egg fried rice for all the kids on world food day oh can she cook it yeah my brother's half Chinese right so she um worked in his dad's kitchen yeah for whilst they were together yeah and she learned all about cooking Chinese food So we grew up eating Chinese food every now and again, maybe once a week.

11:18So your mum can not only make fried rice, she can cook proper Chinese food. I love you. I love the thought of your mother turning up at play school with fried rice. Do you know what I loved that I heard about you? Go on. Your Auntie Julie ran a freestyle disco dancing club on the outskirts of Bristol. and you and your sister would compete. Of course, this is something that set you up for later in your career, which we'll come to. But first, I need you to paint me a picture of those dancing days and the competitions that you were in. What did it involve? And are we talking overbearing dance moms and bejeweled leotards?

12:04We used to rehearse in Hembury Methodist Church. Yeah. Had parquet flooring that was really old. so we used to get spinners and we weren't allowed to wear shoes. We rehearsed from Wednesday to Saturday. What are you dancing to? Techno. That kind of... It's that kind of... Is it like... It's like really like high kicks, that type of... Yeah, run, run, run, run, spin, spin, spin, high kick, high kick, back bend. Really intense. What are you wearing? What are you wearing? A skin tight lycra. Swarovski crystals. So you and your sister are wearing matching outfits? Yeah, sometimes. So if you do pairs or rock and roll, you do that with a partner.

12:43And I did it with my sister and Anna. We wore matchy-matchy costumes. I love how important dancing like this is in working class communities because I'm a bit older than you, but I did dancing. Like this whole, you get into this whole world where you're always getting those little paper certificates, aren't you? Oh, yeah, we had them. Taking them home, going like best twirling and kicking or whatever. It's from some kind of hokey board that has just been invented. It was either dance class or teen pregnancy. 100%. What does this stage of your life tell us about you? What was 12-year-old you like?

13:29I was obsessed with the song I Love You Always Forever with Donna Lewis. I was in an on and again off again relationship with Tom Frost I was it was just before I started making friends with the wrong type of girls at school I ended up getting stabbed on the bus stop by a compass by one of the girls in my year because they um had lit the school toilets on fire and they blamed me and my parents came in And my mum grabbed me by the shoulders and she said, now swear to me, look at me in the eye and swear to me that you didn't start that fire. I was like, I promise you, it wasn't me. It wasn't me, mummy.

14:11And so she had to go in and fight my corner, even though all of them had turned against. There was four other girls there and they'd all decided to say it was me. So mum had to go in and she was like, now our daughter is many things, but an arsonist, she is not. And they all got into mad trouble, even though, because they were clearly all lying. and then I had no mates and yeah, one of them stabbed me in the leg with a compass on the bus stop. Stabbing each other with compasses, very big in working class skills. I know, that was our weapon of choice. You're not going to go at someone with like a protractor, are you?

14:46No, no, it's like one of those shutterproof rulers, you can't do anything, can you? Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

15:02you've described a happy family orientated working class upbringing i say happy like it wasn't like you know famous five happy we're talking like working class upbringing so everyone's sort of quite real and real real stuff's going on we've got deaths in the family we've got mum going through breast cancer we've got jenna before she um died later on my sister died later on in in her life before all of that happened she was like always in and out of hospital for something she had bronchial asthma so every time she got a cold she'd be really sick her knees would play up there was you know my brother being raised by my dad there you know like it wasn't there was difficult stuff going on but I never know how to answer when people say did you have a happy childhood because some days I say yes and other days I think no no I didn't and it's because because of that the working class way that kids get brought up like all the stuff that's unsaid and the and the undercurrents and the arguing and the fights but yeah at Christmas we all loved each other she used to pin me down my sister and like spit in my mouth but like she loved me more than anyone's ever loved me in my life and has actually made everyone else's love pale into comparison yet she i had to lock her in the toilet once because she was so angry at me and i was like drink the toilet water and eat the soap it's all fun and games until someone's in hospital it's all fun and games until you're in um therapy in your 30s and you're you're discussing why you have unhealthy relationships with men you're like because like being mean to me is love Well you say that you had no mates when you were younger but I have heard that you actually used to put on dinner parties.

16:54I did yeah when I was older so after the compass incident I was sat on my own in the playground and these two posh girls came over and they said are you okay? I can't remember exactly what it was. Oh gee whiz goddy gosh why don't you come join us in the music room And so for five years at the end of school, I was in the music room and just had the best time of my life. Actually found my sort of crew. It was just easier to dominate them, I'll be honest with you, because they're all nerds. It's not true. It is. But we ended up having dinner parties because, you know, that's what middle class people do.

17:35They have dinner parties. We didn't really have them growing up. We had buffets with like roast potatoes and chicken wings and volubles, which are amazing and have their place. But I've always wanted to have dinner parties, you know. And so from the age of 15, me and my friends were putting on three course meal dinner parties that I would chef. So you chef a dinner party. What the hell? Right, I need to know the menu. Yeah. Right, I'm arriving. Yeah. I've been invited to this. the nerds in the music room have invited me for dinner yeah i get there what am i having three fish tureen to start three fish tureen yeah what's in that what fish uh mackerel trite and salmon are you setting it in like a in a in like a jelly it was a recipe that was in mary berry's cookbook three a three fish tureen what's your main a roast

18:33are you making roasties or are you using aunt bessie's oh i make roasties i've been making roasties since i was like 11 what's pudding chocolate fondant like a melting a melting center warm yeah just out of the oven melted center from scratch how did you pay for all this food did you have a saturday job um yeah i had loads of jobs So I, as soon as I could work, I was working and I loved working. First job I ever had was glass cleaning the engineer's arms in St. John's Lane in Bristol. And then that turned into bar work. And I've been a basically either the manager of a restaurant, the waitress of a restaurant, the bartender of a restaurant, or the cloakroom attendant of a restaurant in all of my jobs.

19:25bar one call centre. It's hospitality. I've been in hospitality for 16 years and I love it. Oh, there's a big crossover between hospitality and entertainment. Massive. So that was what you were doing when you were at school? Yeah, I was working at ASDA with my mum. Were you? Yeah, so I had the glass cleaning job and then when I was old enough to get work, I worked at ASDA on the fish counter with my mum and I'm a trained fishmonger or I imagine I've forgotten it all now but they trained me and everything. You worked on the fish counter in Bedminster, Bristol. I once went out with somebody off the fish counter at Morrison's.

20:04I've got to say, when I dated someone off a fish counter, they did smell of fish. But the smell, this is what people don't understand about the smell of fish. Bad fish smells bad. Fresh fish is the sweetest, most delicate smell. I like so my anything smelling like fresh fish so I um so every Christmas I cook whoever's with me is a very very lucky person because I go nuts at Christmas and I cook it I nearly gave my parent gout last Christmas like the food the food we had over the months I'd and I planned every day I just did something I've never done before every day and they just got to reap the rewards of it but one of the things I did was have like some great shellfish from this really great it's called Bristol Fish Limited in Bedminster in Bristol.

20:51And they, and I went in and had all my shellfish from them. And when I went in and, and the guy who works there, the munger, he came over to me and I smelt him and I was like, oh, was it erotic though? Well, no, no, cause that would mean that I'd want to fuck my mum and I don't. But the man, the man, the man, it was a real sort of nostalgic smell that sweet smell of fresh fish that he had on his on his clothes and it was very nostalgic for me because she'd come home every night smelling like that so with her tabard and her little lat on and then asda made her go on the shelves but that's another story

21:39you moved to Wales to study drama theatre and media at the University of Blomorgham yep it's while you're at uni 2005 you find out that your sister Jenna is ill yes she's having seizures well she'd had one seizure by this point just one in 2005 which is in the I was in the middle of a game of Zipzak Boeing. A phone call from my brother, or 17 missed phone calls actually, which was a lot from him, and said Jenna's in the hospital. We don't know why. Summit's wrong with her head. You need to come home. And then my friend Paula came and picked me up from Wales and took me home. And she was in the hospital and find out it's a brain tumour.

22:26They do a CAT scan to begin with. And that's where they see that it's a brain tumour. She had this like grand mal seizure on my dad for the first time randomly we don't know what a brain tumor is I'm like a what and that was where she asked me to start making everyone laugh because they're all looking at me like I'm about to die and it's doing my night and it's exactly what she said that's what she said to you yeah and that is the reason I'm a comedian I understand why she said that and I understand that you would be very very good at it but that's knackering having to make everybody laugh during in that time.

23:01I couldn't deal with tears. I had to do something. I couldn't, I can't deal, I can't do tears with my family and I can't do silence either. So the best thing to do is to just try and make people laugh and either be told off for that or have people laughing. You moved to London in 2011. Shortly after this, your sister dies and you said that you were an absolute mess for about three years yeah but then the capitals drag community kind of envelops your life they're quite intense when they when they like you they they take you in you know yeah you are a they love a strong woman working class background who have got who's got passions god the gay is going to come for you.

23:55I love that. And if you really make it. Like you open the door and they're there. Hiya. Hi there. And if they really like you, eventually what they'll do is they'll dress up as you and get on a stage and do an impression of you. That's when you know you've made it. But yeah, the gays enveloped. Enveloped. Enveloped enveloped me. You were living in Clapton in East London with your mates. Lizzie, Jess and Babs, which sounds like a sitcom. What was life like for the four of you? It was gorgeous. We had this great two years together. It was gorgeous. Best time I've ever lived with birds. There was no toxicity in our house.

24:39It was really kind. We had things happen to us and we got upset, but we were there for each other. You say there was four of you, but was there other things living in the routes? we had rats really bad rats there was one I came home one night it was two in the morning I'd been gigging and I came in and there was one just walking across the kitchen and I looked at him and he and he looked at me and then he just stared at me for a moment and then he just walked backwards like he was moonwalking

25:16you ain't seen me shit's nothing comedy is not the easiest profession to get into for about a decade you did paid work alongside comedy but tell us about the moment that you realized that you've made it as a comic my amazon prime special was pretty mega there was a lorry outside of the bloomsbury theater where i'd watch ricky gervais do animals there's a lorry there's a broadcast lorry outside there's two of them for my show for me for something i came up with in my head and it was amazing and it was everything that i meant everything i wanted and all in one place at the same time all decisions i'd made came together in into this thing that has been the most successful thing i've ever done i've had 200 million views on the internet the number it means a lot to you doesn't it that number yeah 200 million i was i had no friends i was gonna say it's not bad for one of the music room nerds i had no mates and and the other thing that happened recently was i went from feeling very much like i was the uncoolest person in bristol and then this year i was voted as bristol's most coolest person.

26:37Holy shit. Mad. I love your face when you say that. Bristol's coolest person. I'd be Banksy. Banksy! He must be fucking livid.

26:59You have gone on to host two brilliant TV shows all about food. Snack masters and crazy delicious. So was working in food programming, was that a conscious decision? I want to do more of it. Like I, I, I want to be on, if my, if my life could be entertaining people and food at the same time. I mean, having a TV show, which is about me having a dinner party is probably what I want to end up doing in my life. is just having, you know, like my 18-seater table full up, me cooking for them, interesting conversations happening. I love this dinner party theme that keeps going through your life. That's your happiness, isn't it?

27:44Yeah, I love it. Let's talk about Crazy Delicious. We got to work with Heston Blumenthal. He's often regarded as one of the best chefs of all time. How does working with this acclaimed culinary mind change the way you eat? It changed everything. And he taught me all about separating flavors in my head. Learning that the best meal you can eat often will have the five flavor profiles that you need. So salt, sugar, acid, heat and umami. Umami. Yeah. But if you can balance all of those flavors in one meal, you've got yourself a pretty lovely meal. And I think as someone who grew up eating spam and chips and egg, once I learned that, it really helped my cooking.

28:27because I just make sure all of those things are available in my savoury dishes especially but even even puddings and stuff like learning how to learning that if you want to make a pudding lighter stick some zest like you know have some citrus in it yes I said I'll help it help being able to eat it but he did that he also oh he did this other thing which is really perfect for this podcast he taught me about why and he showed me scientifically why my mum's cooking is better than anyone else's cooking he said the reason your mum's cooking is so much better than my cooking is he says I'm never going to make you feel or change your brain in the way you feel when you are around your parents yeah I think women can feel under pressure to look a certain way in order to eat certain things working in food telly do you see yourself as changing the dial on women and food and an image, body image?

29:26Well, I think I'll be honest with you, Grace. I am sat in front of the woman who has changed what it's like. You were one of the first people to ever tell women it was okay to eat and it was okay to enjoy your food. So I just feel like I'm taking, I'm... Oh, darling. I feel like I'm just carrying on. That's all I feel like I'm doing, which is encouraging people to have a healthy relationship with their food and not feel like, you know, not feel bad for wanting to eat something or not feeling bad for comfort eating. I know, I know, I know. Like, just what, so what that I eat to make myself feel better about the terrible things that have happened in my life?

30:04So what? At least I'm not hurting people. At least I'm not taking that out on people. So what? I want to eat spam and chips and egg. Comfort eating is so important. And we're told by society, especially as women, that we need to focus on the way that we look. Because if we change the way we look, we're not worth being cared about. And that's drummed into us our whole lives. And I feel like I've been put on this planet to make women feel better about their eating and their bodies. Because if I can be successful and I get fatter, then everything anyone's ever learned about the way that they look is bollocks.