S10, Ep10: Mary Portas, broadcaster

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian a 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 doors.

0:45Hello, friends. You find me pacing my garden. I'm just waiting for my next fabulous guest to arrive. If I'm honest, I'm actually also mulling on my job prospects in an increasingly AI world. An AI-generated, funnier avatar of me with prettier cheekbones delivering their restaurant reviews instantly. And who most importantly does not require paying. Scared. I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I'm a bit scared, if I'm honest. Not one of us should go down without a heavy tussle. Keep fighting the good fight out there. I mean, if I'm honest, we're going to have to find those servers and poor angel delight in them or something.

1:30Anyway, another unreplicable expert who surely isn't going down without a fight is my next guest. It's Mary Portis. Mary Portis, O-B-E, is a broadcaster. She's a businesswoman. She's a retail consultant. At first, she set her sights on acting. She was awarded a place at RADA and had to give it up after both her parents died. She was left homeless at this point and had to look after a younger brother. She went on to blaze a trail through the world of retail. Mary Potters is known for her iconic window dressing in Harrods, in Topshop, in Harvey Nichols. She's campaigned for the health of our local shops.

2:12She was commissioned by PM David Cameron to lead a government review of our high streets. And she's raised tens of millions for charity via her Mary's Living and Giving shops. She's been nicknamed the Queen of the High Street. And she's coming to my house right now.

2:38Mary Potts. Welcome to Comfort Eating. My pleasure. This is truly wonderful to see you across my table. Oh, that's a nice thing to say. Say back at you, girl. In your TED Talk, you said, how we buy has always been a cultural mirror of how we live. Now, I want to look at the last three things that I've bought, and then you can tell me what you think about how I live, right? A full length mirror from the housewife's favourite, Dunelm. 20 bottles of the delicious space food, Huel. I kind of know what that is, but anyway, does it replace alcohol? Because I've had a place of wine that landed this morning, just putting that one out there.

3:27My third purchase is a bulk buy of Mugi cat hair removers. They're my three purchases. What can you say about me? It's a pity, isn't it? That's glamorous, Grace. I'll tell you what I did think when I walked in. God, she's glamorous. I never would have put that list with you, that's for sure. Well, A, I have to ask the big question, was this through Amazon? No, I bought direct from the... So you get a little tick then. You get a little tick then. And it's less about what you buy, but how you buy. So every pound you spend is a vote on how you want to live. Yeah. it reflects how you connect and you're with not only what you're buying but what it does to our planet as well and sort of what we want to leave live for future people so don't know about the the cat hair removal sounds hideous but you know having had cats and dogs and everything possible i know exactly what that how important is to keep the house clean it doesn't smell very catty in here by the way it's a one woman fight against somebody weeing behind the front door oh god sometimes it's just me i do not know what is under this tea towel but what it is it's your ultimate comfort food this is the food that allows you to run an agency write a book manage a home and turn up looking like you've just stepped off a catwalk.

4:56You look incredible today. Oh, do I? I'm quite casual today. It just makes me feel even worse. Mary Portis, what is underneath this tea towel? I want you to reveal your snack and then talk through it. See if you can see what it is. Do you know what that is? Of course you will. It looks like, on first glance, rice pudding with spring onion. Yeah, well, you've lost the plot there, Grace. That might be a really cool thing that they're giving now in the best of restaurants. It is not rice pudding. What is it? It's champ. Do you know what champ is? Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. I do know what champ is.

5:30It's potato-y, it's creamy, but please explain it in your own words. Okay, let me put my mouth first and I'll tell you. Oh, my God. Isn't that delicious? Oh, my God. That is spot on, right? Please. Heaven. Oh. So champ is an Irish dish. My parents were Irish. Came over to this country and bred five kids. and my mother used to make this right and it was our favorite I mean it is you know if you're Irish eat potatoes and everything that we ate came with potatoes but this used to be my favorite but actually more than that when my mother died when I was 16 we used to have to come home from school and cook and I was just didn't know how to cook I didn't listen my sister listened but she'd left to go to university so I was left with my younger brother and he and I used to be the ones in charge which actually when I think about it sometimes it's just so painfully sad and tragic.

6:26But this is what we would do because it was so easy. So we'd mash up the potato and I remember mum mash it. Who peeled and who? Oh, it'd be Lawrence or I wanted the other one at the sink. And I remember I always used to listen to the rundown of the charts and at the time, the year she died, I remember it, Cherry Rafferty's Baker Street. Baker Street. And I just couldn't hear that and I'm back at that sink doing the potatoes, I was mashing it, you know, and it was. I was just going to break into the sax solo, but I just don't think I can nail it. It's so evocative. And to me, it's that sort of bittersweet of I'm okay, you know, I'm safe, but I'm not kind of safe, but this is something that I can do.

7:07And when either of us, if I had a little rehearsal for drama after school, Lawrence would do the cooking and I'd come in late and there'd be a little bowl of Champ, you know, sitting in the fridge. And I just, the love that my brother had made me that, you know, and sometimes it'd be too lumpy and I'd probably moan at him, you know, or he'd moan at me about mine. And that to me, when you've got a bowl of that, you don't need anything else. That is love in a bowl. People will know you from your activism around the high street. You've been known as the high streets are. You spent an incredible amount of time thinking about this.

7:42and I want to go back to ground zero, your first ever high street, Watford, where you grew up. I want to tell me about the high street when you were a little girl and you and your mum shopping there. Well, I was really naughty. So I was five kids and I was the fourth out of five and my sister was really good. And well, most of my siblings were. And so if I played up, I wasn't allowed to go out to the shops on a Saturday. So I'd sit on the wall waiting for them to come back. So you were often in trouble and you were not. Yeah, yeah. But if I did go, it was just absolute heaven. So, you know, you knew what is more than commerce.

8:21This isn't just about selling. It's this wonderful kind of social infrastructure where you can go out and you can say hello to a shopkeeper or you can say hello to a neighbour or you can bump into someone you haven't spoken to before who's walking their dog. So that's what you remember from the 60s? And that is what would have been 60s, 70s. And so my mum would have the routine. You know, you went to Ghana's to get your bread. You popped down the road to the fruit and veg shop. And, you know, they knew exactly what you'd have. They'd have a chat. My mother would talk for Ireland, England and Wales, actually, you know, and I'd be like waiting outside.

8:54And I'd just be watching this life. This was where I grew up and I loved it. And I used to think this is where I'm going to end up working because it just felt vibrant and important to me and still does. We used to take my gran out shopping in the 70s to the high street. And I remember her walking in and kind of almost terrorising the butchers and the bakers because you could see them eye to eye and she'd go, are your sausage good? Where was she from? Carlisle. Are your sausage good? Is your bacon good? It wasn't good last week. And it's the idea that it was like these fearless women who would take you to task if things weren't good.

9:37But also they knew their stuff, didn't they? They knew what they were cooking. It was absolutely fundamental to your way of living. It's a very different energy. So it was just magical. But I never thought I'd end up in it. I didn't want to end up in retail at all. But it was just something I could do with my mother. And that's all you ever did. You know, we were working class kids. We didn't do much else. But I love this idea of when you were naughty, you end up sitting on a wall. It's like clearly from you being a tiny little girl, your love of the high street was such that not going shopping was a punishment.

10:09I would think that most kids would be like, oh, thank God, I don't have to go. Oh, I loved it. But it's also, I think going out and being out. I remember when I was a kid sitting on top of the pram and my baby brother was behind and just looking at my mum's eyes and feeling I was on top of the world. And there I was in a place of actually I've just got her attention completely. Because when you're five kids, you don't get much attention. And it was always going off to the shops.

10:39your childhood was idyllic until everything dramatically changes when you're 16 first off though let's hear a little bit about that wonderful sound in childhood so i like we never had a holiday summer holiday because my parents couldn't afford to take five us away and literally you just go out onto the streets and then my mother would stand on the corner and you would know when it was lunchtime to come back in or the evening but you didn't know any different you didn't know what good was or what that it just was love right but it was all something crazy there was arguments and rouses five kids and but it was you were secure my mother used to make soda bread every single morning every single morning and I'd say can't me after mother's pride isn't it just the way i wanted a bit of old white toast that was easy to put in the toaster and she would be making soda bread on top of the pan so right soda bread every morning is there staples that are cooking every day a certain time has she got like a small repertoire of irish cooking so everything had potatoes with it even when the curries came out in the 70s my mum bought them the swan vesta curries in the packet i mean just what happened to food then, Jesus.

11:49And then she put potatoes with the rice as well because you want to be full on that. Oh, God. No wonder I've got this carbo hit that I still need to have. To me, it's just like a basis. A potato has just got to be the most joyous piece of food there is. You can do anything with a potato. Just think of what you could do with a potato. My mother did with it. So you'd know, like, Monday would be leftovers from the Sunday lunch and whether she made that into a cottage pie or whatever. We always had liver and bacon on a Wednesday, Toad in the hole. It was really, you know, fundamental good Irish cooking.

12:21But my mother always baked and always did loads of bread. And on my birthday, on my 60th, I booked the restaurants that were near me and was going to have this wonderful meals and whatever. And, of course, lockdown happened. And staying with me, I was lucky enough, I had my three children and my brother. And on my birthday morning, he got up and he baked mum's soda bread. and we bought some smoked salmon and we just had a bottle of bubbles and we went up to the top of Swift Hill in Stroud and we just sat, the three of us, and actually it was just the most magical experience. You were one of five children?

12:55Mm. In a nutshell, what was little Mary like? Well, my mother said if I'd have had you first, I think I would have stopped. It's a bloody lovely line. Dear, dear God. I think I just was hyper. I mean, you know, I don't know whether you'd put a name to it today, I'm sure, whatever ADHD. I just was never, ever, ever stopped. I used to have a little pair of shorts on the end of the bed and I would just get up and I'd hear my mother up about 6am, everyone else would be sleeping. And I'd just put on my shorts and go downstairs just to be with her in the kitchen, you know, and she'd be getting the morning ready.

13:29And then I was off. I was just like this exocentral. I never stopped. I just never, ever stopped. How does this translate to school then? Do they appreciate this when you get to school? and they go, wow, we're so lucky to have this really energetic child. This was the nuns. This was the convent. I was always constantly in trouble. But this then one teacher, John Harold, he was a history teacher and he also decided to do drama. We didn't even have a drama department. And he put me on stage and cast me in the lead role in this and I suddenly found my place. He says, that's where you're meant to be.

14:02What was the piece? St. Joan, believe it. There was me up there on that crucifix, full makeup on, Maybelline mascara on. Gorgeous while being crucified. Don't look at me. Center stage. And he put me in this and actually just suddenly all that energy was put into performance. And suddenly after that I knew where my place was and that I could use this energy and channel it. And years later when I sat in for Joe Wiley on Radio 2 and it was request time and someone brought in a request and they said, hello, Mary, I'm John Harold, Mr. Harold's daughter. He's sitting with me now. Will you put out a song for him?

14:43Thank you. And I put out a song for him. It was just that wonderful circle of being able to say thank you. Thank you. And he heard all those years later. It was very lovely. Were you arty? Were you good in art class? Yes, I was very good at art. But I got banned from doing my O-level because I ate The Still Life. I didn't know it was The Still Life. There was Still Life that was put out for the A-level class. and me and my pals used to just go in there to have a little sneaky fag because around the back of the art room there was a little bit of a garden and the door was open and I remember going in to wash my hands after the not smell of fags and all these beautiful grapes and I mean, you know, I didn't have grapes at home but there was still a pair.

15:23It's just entrapment. It was an installation. I was like, God, girls, look at this. We started eating it. Nom, nom, nom, nom.

15:36For that year, I had to go and recite poetry to Sister St. James in my lunch break, which they thought was a penalty. But of course, I love poetry and I love theatre. So actually, it was just heaven. I used to walk around the school gardens doing all different poets with her and learning it for eating the fruit. Around this time, your mum falls ill. Yeah. Yeah, it was the summer. I remember it so vividly hot, hot summer of 77. And I came home from school and we were just about to break up, just finished. And my brother Michael said, mum's not well. She's gone to bed. She's got flu. And she'd never been to bed.

16:14Like, you know, those sort of matriarchal, they're just, I can't even remember my mum ever. You know, she'd have a headache or she'd close her eyes and we'd go, what's the matter? And she just, I'm just resting, poor woman, trying to sleep with all these five crazy kids. And I remember going up to her bedroom and I said, Mum, I'm going to go up to the shops and I can buy some lemonade, you know, because that was a big treat. Do you remember the R. White's lemonade bottle? And then you'd have to bring the bottle back, didn't you? You'd get a little bit of a refug. Five pence or something. And she said, what's lemonade?

16:44And I just remember standing there going, you know, you freeze and your heart. And anyway, fast forward two weeks, she went into a coma, well, two weeks in hospital and she got encephalitis. and then she died. And it was, yeah, it was just like someone had turned the lights off, completely and utterly turned the lights off on our life. But the worst bit, Grace, the worst, and I still to this day, was coming home to that empty house, you know, where you always came home to the smell of cooking or your mum going, there's a wee snack before supper. It was literally like someone had put a curtain down on your life and that bid is done.

17:27I mean, like practically, what do you do? There's five kids. Like how do you get fed? Well, the worst part of it, for me, I think, and certainly for Lawrence, my younger brother who was only 14, was that Michael, my eldest brother, had left home and was training in architecture and he was up in Scotland and my sister had started at UCH. So she'd left. And my brother Joe had just started hairdressing. And so he was, you know, out doing his apprenticeship. And so it was Lawrence and I left. So suddenly that summer, it was like all that noise went, you know, they went. So it was suddenly I was the grown up out of the two.

18:12And I was a completely crap grown up. Well, you weren't a grown up, that's the thing. No, I wasn't a grown up. You were a kid, a little girl. Do you know what? I told someone the other day, when I was writing my early autobiography, And I was saying I've never really suffered with depression. I've never really been one of those people that have ever had, you know, the black dog. But I said, I remember vividly going to school and I'd cry when I leave the house, then get on the bus and stop, do school. Then I'd cry all the way home. And I did that for six months. And you had no therapy. No one spoke with you.

18:44No one, you know, you had the family priest who knew as much about family life as, you know, or the nuns. That was the Catholic faith, you know. and nobody nobody sat with us or said hey listen how are you coping or you just didn't have that and my mother's relatives were all in ireland my father was an only child so we had no we just had to get by who's filling the cupboards who's who's bringing so what used to happen my dad used to leave literally five quid on the table every morning he'd go to work and lawrence and i i'd go have you got anything on after school tonight have you got sport have you got you know football well, have you got, he'd say, no.

19:20I said, well, can you go to the shops then? So he would go, there would be potatoes in the big bang, and we would work it out. We had no idea what we were doing. We just got through it, but it was just pretty crap, unless you had a bowler champ. But then that's what, that's clearly why that is so important. You got that across your chest. It's something. We had something. there's a part of your i'm going to call it your origin story like you're a super villain there's a part of your origin story that i'm i've been fascinated by for years it's the part that happens after this where you know you're caring about your dad how is he dealing with things and he's leaving the fiver on the side and then he remarries yeah yeah and she was an old trout Well, let me tell you.

20:13There's no other way to say it. You know, yeah, he remarries. And, well, we're all like, what the hell? But okay, fine, fine. And he remarries, but he then keeps us in the house, right? Because she didn't want us and we so didn't want to be with her. So he keeps us in the family house and he moves in with her. After nine months, he dies of a massive heart attack and he hadn't changed his will. So she gets our family home and sells it. We're all like, okay, we've got no home now. That's kind of Dickensian. So we had no home. I mean, that pivotal part in your life, it has everything, you know. It has grief, it has betrayal.

21:01It has anger at another woman who's come in and done something unspeakable. it's cast you into a part of your life where you really are, you are the mother now. You're really, and the icing on the cake, you're homeless. What do you do? My dad, when he came over from Ireland, he came with two wonderful friends who became very deep family friends. One of them was a bus conductor and the other a gas man, and they were the ones who opened up their homes. And they had little council houses, four kids, and put us up. isn't it always the way and I just slept on the floor I knew they couldn't afford this I had just left um school and I just yeah so it was really but I think you know look but I look back I honestly don't think I had a bad I think I've had the most rich incredible life do you know I really have but when I look at you and you tell me that but I'm like how are you saying you're really saying you're really happy you're really strong how I don't what was it about you My dad didn't have therapy.

22:07He didn't have any therapy. Look, I don't know that. Actually, when you ask my daughter, she just says sometimes, because I can, she'll say, why don't you just get therapy over that? Because I don't think I ever, ever truly had closure on that betrayal. Did you see her again, that woman? I did, I did, yeah. You bumped into her? Yeah, I did. I just, I'd started to really make money. I was at Harvey Nicks at the time, married. And I had just had my second child. So I was safe. I was in, you know, I was happy. It was wonderful. And I'm in Marks and Spencer's and my husband had the baby and she was crying.

22:41And he said, look, I'll go outside. It's like just, you know, crazy. I'll stand outside. I'll wait for you. I said, okay. And I had my son and he was sitting in front of the trolley, you know, loving it. And I literally just turned the eye on the saw there. My heart went and it was that moment of, do you ever have it when you've seen someone really famous, you think, should I say hello or not? It's that moment you go, no. And I just breathed in, pushed the trolley forward, and I said, hello, Rebecca. And she looked at me, and I said, it's Mary. Because it was very different, you know, this was like 15 years old.

23:18So she didn't recognise, you know. I was, you know, sort of Harvey Nick style, let's put it this way, from the scrappy little kid that had lost her home, you know. And I said, hi, it's Mary. She said, Mary, how are you doing? I said, you know, I'm doing so well, Rebecca. This is my son. My daughter's outside with my husband. And my life is good. I'm just wondering if you could say that yours is as good for what you did. And she just looked at me and I turned and my heart was like this. And I left the trolley, you know, and I just came outside and I just broke down completely. And Graham said, what the hell?

23:54What's happened? and I couldn't even speak to say because I just, everything just dissolved outside on the pavement. I never paid, never went back into Mark's expenses to collect my stuff, but it was a really pivotal moment. I don't even know if I'd have said something enough, but I knew I just told her it was okay and I'm not sure that you can say the same about yours. But that's, I mean, to get that line together is admirable. I would have been just quite tempted to wrap my hands around her throat and then just put her up in forest or at least leave her in the frozen food. Yeah, I've never thought that.

24:28I just, I just, it was, I'm not even sure I was that eloquent. I remember it was pithy, but not as pithy. But I just, she knew and she was so shocked and she was sort of standing there. Yeah.

24:51By the time you're 32 You're creative director You're on the board of Harvey Nichols I'm going to wheel you back though I've got to go to your first job In a bakery That was Saturday Jobs I love my Saturday Jobs Did you have a Saturday Job? WH Smith's. See, that was the classy one. WH Smith then, before they ruined it. Little uniforms selling the Big Pens personal organisers. Perfect. Everybody's copy of NME. I was basically a celebrity in Carlisle. I think I got about 11 quid a day for working. WH Smith, I remember, and Boots, they would take the A-level ones. They wouldn't have the kids who weren't academically achieving.

25:36And I was only, I'd have been younger, 60. So it was Ghana's and it was the most disgusting sort of fluorescent orange nylon overall, buttoned up in a little pleated skirt. Did you used to cinch your little waist in it though? I would have like tried to. Of course I did. I was like literally no weight on me. I don't know why because I used to eat those doughnuts constantly. I just loved them. Apple doughnut. Oh, yeah. God, it was heaven. And I just, I loved it. You'd go in, but it was before they had electronic tills and I was so cramped at maths, so people would come and say, I'll have a bloomer, I'll have a split tin, I'll have a dozen of those rolls, I'll have all two of the Bakewells.