S10, Ep6: CMAT, singer songwriter

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.

0:44Hello friends. Now you find me at the mirror on the very sunniest of days out there today. now something i have seen a lot of recently which is making me feel very ancient is the 20 year old women around hackney central who are stridently not shaving their armpits these days it is making me feel very bourgeois and petty for getting that double blade at mine every few days which i have been doing since 1983 over the last week or so i've been stopping shaving mine oh yes i am down with the kids too. Then yesterday, with my comfort eating guest sitting right in front of me and my unshaven armpits greeting them, a beacon of my empowerment, I realised I really, really did not like it.

1:37Why not? I think I've internalised the male gaze. I really did hope to look like a Dua leaper hanger on, but instead I just look like a truck driver. Now at my particular vintage, I have decided it's probably best to stick to what you know. No pits. I'm not going to grow my moustache either. And those wispy long hairs I've got behind my knees, they are coming out. My motto is be your own woman. Do what feels right. I think this is a motto probably shared by my guest today, the Irish singer and songwriter, C-MAT. Kiara, Mary, Alice Thompson's first album exploded onto the music scene a few years ago and has since collected seven award nominations.

2:30It has won RTE Album of the Year. Born in Dublin and then grew up in County Meath, C-MAT's teenage years were bumpy and her route into music not straightforward. It finally took a kick up the bum from megastar Charlie XCX to get her arse in gear and onto the stage where it truly belongs. Seema has described herself rather brilliantly as the unwashed ITV version of Taylor Swift. It's easy to see why she has a devoted cult following. Her performances are so camp. You just want to be her best friend, which I aim to be after this interview. Her warm, raspy voice makes you want to fall in love with her.

3:15With her third album, Eurocountry, out now and a live calendar packed full of festivals, what is this absolute superstar eating to fuel the ride? I wonder if she shows her armpits.

3:36see matt welcome to comfort etan thank you i'm very happy to be here i have read that you turned up to your first day at secondary school in a beehive and false eyelashes i did i did and i used to get in trouble all the time and the principal was miss murray because she used to just take me and any of the girly whirlies that were under third year into her office and hand us like a johnson's like baby wipe plain old baby wipe and a baby wipe to like really aggressively like wipe all the makeup off my yeah and the eyelashes did she make you take them off yeah yeah but i didn't have any makeup skills because the internet wasn't really the most available not that it wasn't available but there wasn't a lot of information on it at that time so I was doing fake eyelashes because I had read about fake eyelashes in like 60s magazines that I used to like get from charity shops and then also I got a bump it when I was on holidays which is this plastic thing that you put in your hair you know bump it I know a bump it didn't really make for a good beehive to be honest if anybody's listening we do have some male male listeners it's kind of a lump of is it rubber and you put it into your hair to make the hair bigger yeah and I honestly think that there is no crisis that can't be averted by just spray tan a bump it and a set of eyelashes I don't I don't do the spray tan so much but I have to I have to for like red carpet stuff but other than that I don't really get a spray tan sometimes I just put on the you know the tanning baby lotion because that's what my mom uses.

5:18If you ever turned up on the red carpet and you've just got like one orange hand and like half an orange arm. The last Brit Awards I went to the spray tan wasn't amazing and then also I like had a moustache and I forgot about it like I have very very fair hair but I had lots of hair on my upper lip so if you look at any pictures of me on the red carpet for the last Brit Awards I have a very pronounced Ronnie the entire all the pictures. Why do you call it a runny? I think that's Dublin slang, no? Big fat runny. Big fat runny. How long before you got off the red carpet did you, were you made aware by the public that you had a moustache?

5:56It was the next morning when I looked at the actual red carpet images. I said, oh, right, I've got a big fat runny on my lip there the whole time.

6:12It is not every day that I have a country music pop queen come to my house. But when I do, I ask them to bring their ultimate comfort food. I do not know what's underneath this tea towel. I want you to reveal it and I want you to express in minute detail what it is, what it looks like and when would Seema eat it. Okay. This is an egg in the hole. So this is something that my mom would have made for me growing up. and is one of my favorite things on the planet. You basically get white sliced pan, cheap white sliced pan. You cut a hole out of the middle of it with a wine glass, put it on the frying pan, loads of butter, and then you crack an egg into the hole.

6:57And then also you have a little round of bread on the side that you just also fry in the butter. And you have to flip it over because I want it toasted on both sides. Now, can I just stop you for our English listeners? Yeah. A white pan. See Matt is basically saying white plasticky bread. The kind of the stuff that middle class people get really upset if you try to eat it in front of them. Because it's not sourdough and it hasn't got like bits of like, you know, seed and things. It's that white bread that will survive a nuclear apocalypse. Yeah, and it won't go mouldy. It doesn't go mouldy anywhere near as fast as sourdough.

7:32I would have this if I haven't eaten anything. if I have been working really hard and I come home and I'm like oh fuck I actually haven't eaten food today and I don't want to order takeaway because in general I through my touring lifestyle never get to make my own food anymore so this is better than having someone make food for me do you know what I mean I particularly love yeah we should eat we should eat I'm so gobsmacked by egg in the hole I'm actually a little bit hungover so this is like perfect for me at this curfew some time. You were in the pub last night. I was in the pub last night. What does Seamat drink in the pub?

8:07Seamat drinks pints. Seamat drinks pints of lager. Lager? Yeah, I'm just like plain lager girl. I love beer. I actually love beer very much. How many pints do you think you can drink before you start to feel a bit sick? Probably about eight, to be honest. I'm quite, I'm quite hardy. But that's, but I'm very drunk. I'm very drunk at eight. Do you feel absolutely awful the next day not always not always i'm quite hardy it's so delicious if i'm feeling butter yeah butter very important to me in general in this life but also excellent job like i usually do it dippy so i'll like flip it because i quite like the runniness but i think this is a lovely jammy egg and this is completely acceptable to me it's lovely i like to do this i like to get the nicest bit and just you know blow my load kind of thing peak too early or and wells just put the nicest bit of the egg on the round of bread that comes separate and then have it like a little canapé like that is divine to me so fancy i'm so fancy i'm a fancy lady

9:20seema you've officially arrived at pop stardom i have yeah you're settling into it nicely i can tell What I want to know is... With my egg in the hole. You're sitting there with your egg in the hole. And what I want to know is, have you found your inner diva yet? What I want to know is, if you've WhatsAppped your manager at 3am in the morning complaining that you've ran out of milk. I try not to be a diva, but I have been known to ask my management to find someone to spray down my ass in Aberdeen and places like that. But that's as far as it goes. I want peak diva. Well, my long suffering manager, Barry O'Donoghue, I would say I was mistreating him long before I was famous in such a way.

10:05I'm quite a diva and I'm quite openly a diva. If I am backstage and there is no Diet Coca-Cola, I'm literally like, what the fuck is happening here? And I will actually get picked with someone. I'll be like, and then sometimes they go, oh, I'm like Barry. And he's like, right. And he will get on his little bicycle and he will cycle to the nearest shop and get me a 10 pack of Diet Coke or any. I'm going to test the divinous here, right? Ask for a Diet Coke. Can I please have a Diet Coke? I've got Pepsi Max. Go fuck yourself. That's not the same thing. It's not the same thing. It's not the same thing.

10:36It's not the same thing, unfortunately. It's nice and cold. I've got a cold Pepsi Max. Don't care. Don't care. It's not the same thing. And that happens. That happens. People do that to me and I say, it's not the same thing. And then they're like, oh, so do you not want it? I'm like, no, I'll drink tap water. Thank you. I'm addicted to Diet Coke. This is the thing people don't understand about me. I've been addicted to it. It's like cigarettes. And I would actually love to not support the Coca-Cola company anymore. When you walked in the door into Comfort Eating Headquarters, my living room, with your team, you turned around, looked at your team, and one of them brought a can of it out of their handbag and gave it to you.

11:15They kind of, they passed it almost at arm's length, as if like it can get a bit testy for a moment. I drink about five to six cans a day. And that's quite good for me now. That's quite a good level. I've been at 10 and 11. And I've been no water in between. My mom was a Weight Watchers diva. Because of course she was. My mom was a Weight Watchers diva. So Diet Coke was the only fizzy drink that was ever in the house. And we weren't allowed to touch it because that was her special drink. And so it was always like, it was like this pedestal. And when I was doing my leaving certificate exams, which is your A-levels, I have a distinct memory of like sitting in my room pretending to study I wasn't really studying I was just really stressed out um and I feel like my granddad would come in once every couple of days and just drop a 24 pack that he got from like the cash and carry on the floor for me and I'd be drinking them warm just like you're a wild animal really yeah just opened the door pushed a crate through you have successfully leapt over the scary make or break second album you're just about to release your third album yes all in the space of three years cmat this is a marathon and not a sprint are you planning on keeping up this schedule i hope not you know i'm booked up now until september 2026 live wise and i don't really have any time off when i'm forecasting to the future they kind of are like we kind of need to know roughly when you're going to make a new record and like that's not how it works actually I may not make one for five years I may have one done by the end of this year it depends on what happens to me and it depends on what happens in my life and depends on if the record lands or not it's not about I'm never actively setting out to do something and I think with the three records coming so close together it's because so many things happen in such a short period of time that I wanted to work them out if you are a smart business person or not even if you're a smart business person but if you're an artist that has like 50 people depending on you for your work you're kind of just going to go yeah I'll just get an album out I'll just get an album out to keep all these people in the job because it actually doesn't matter in the short term it's like you can release a bad album and it's just an excuse to put another tour on sale and then people will buy and people will go and they just want to hear the old songs anyway can I take you away from even the concept of even thinking about doing a bad album which we're never going to do and take you to like a point in your performance life that I am a little bit obsessed with.

13:49You're on Jules Holland. You decide to open up one of your songs by doing this dramatic face forward smash into the floor. And I watched it on YouTube loads and loads of times. Now, you don't just kind of do, you say you're a fan of, you know, 40s film stars. But it isn't kind of a, you don't do a faint. You do a smash. Did it hurt? Have you got a bad back? Would you like some Raljex or something like that? I think I've probably done it like a hundred times now. So previously in one of my tours, the production had a big staircase in the middle of the stage. So we had this like kind of a cake staircase that went up in the middle and there was a big mirror on top.

14:37And so initially I threw myself down the stairs. because I thought that looked really good. Not completely down, but I would like fall on the top and then kind of splay myself across the staircase. And then we got rid of the stairs because I got too many band members and I wanted to run around more. And so then it just evolved into me falling onto the ground and doing the first bit of the song with my arms and legs outstretched, like pretending to have fainted. But the floor must be dirty. Do you not end up inhaling like old bits of cigarette butt and like dust? I'm usually covered in stage upon leaving stage.

15:12Doesn't kind of somebody come with a clipboard beforehand at Health and Safety in a yellow jacket and say, please, Chiara, can you not fall down the set of stairs? No, not really. Not at this point. I think too many people are probably too scared of me to tell me what to do anymore. What part of you do you think is, what percentage do you think is singer and what is performance artist? oh I think I think I'm that's a really interesting question I think of myself as a singer and songwriter I think I'm a songwriter like I think that's my job and the performance art bit comes from a my taste like I love ridiculous people like I really really love I'm a really big fan of Anne Margaret you know Anne Margaret no she was an actress in the 60s she was like Swedish she was in Viva Las Vegas with Elvis okay and she's in Bye Bye Birdie and her whole thing was she was beautiful and gorgeous but she just contorted herself and like vibrated around in a really ugly way but then weirdly it was sexy and I I really loved that like you're very in touch with that that idea of in your performance it's not always elegant and wanting people to have your best side you know in that Jules Holland clip you just like that and you're kind of lying almost your legs are spread and they're kind of going in different ways yeah and then Jules tries to give you the microphone and he has to kind of clamber over you step over me yeah so there's an element of gorgeous clown yeah I think that's just my taste I find a lot more like reactive to the music I think it's a much more musically intuitive way of performing and I don't even really like choreography that much not like not too much of it I want to see someone kind of throwing themselves down the stairs.

17:07Do they bring a choreographer in and say it would be really good if you were here by this point doing the hand movements? No it's just me just it's just me making up stupid bullshit on the spot generally.

17:29I think the moment that can really show how far you've traveled it isn't the furthest point it's the starting point and sometimes you realize how far you've come when you go home for the first time after you've had huge success how do you find it when you go go back I don't go home that often at this current moment in time because if I'm being honest with you it's too intense because as successful or whatever as I am in the UK it's like that on crack in Ireland right and specifically Dublin and I guess because of the way that I am it's not like I think it's not the same as like being in a successful band when you're the person and you have the big stupid voice and the big red hair and you go on the way and you dress like a clown all the time or whatever people a lot of the time in dublin will spot me but not really know who i am but they're just like there's your one there's your one forget i can't place her exactly do you think ireland allows you to be in any way starry though because do you think there's do you think people allow you to be a star or do they want to bring you back to earth no i actually think the the great thing about dublin is there's like a bit of nuance it's like a little bit of both it's like you are the big thing but also people will just like sit down at your table with you because they're like oh yeah it's it's it's this weird balance of like you obviously are that person the star but also you're literally from Dunwoong so we're going to like sit down at your table with you and ask you for a picture and also ask you if you're coming to the club tonight tell us about Brady's Brady's Dunwoong it's the best pint of Guinness in the world it's also just three very distinct sections in it so it's kind of broken up with like big like swinging doors yeah and there's a signed photo of me in the middle section so that's where me and my family go which is which is probably a bad idea because it's the thorough section it's the thoroughfare like it's where everybody walks through so generally I'm sitting there and they'll go how you see Matt I'm like how yeah Brady's is in three stages you've got the first bit and then there's doors then there's the second bit and then there's doors is the third bit like the vip room no it's there's no vip room in brady's dumb boy i would say the first bit is the coziest bit so when you walk in off from the front village this is where the session happens so this is where the musicians will set up their instruments if there's a session i think there's one on the tuesday and a thursday now and then the middle section is kind of i think it's the conversation pit that's what i like to think of it and then the back room is where you watch the football and the great thing is the bar runs the whole way through so it's just one bar the whole way through i can't really describe it is it full of gorgeous men there's a long silence here is it full of gorgeous men you know i think to the to the eyes of maybe uh a straight english woman straight english woman you would say yes but me you know in the most respectful way possible to paul mescal i've never understood that because he looks like people who would have bullied me in school Do you know what I mean?

20:41He has that head on him. Like, I don't get that, but I know other people really go for it. So in that sense, yeah, probably. I can see that he's a nice looking lad. He's very good looking. But there are 12 of those in the King's head in Carlo. Yeah, yeah. There's 75 million of them in the Kildare Meath area. You were born, Ciara Mary Alice Thompson. You're from an Irish family. two older sisters a younger brother your mom and your dad now this is a relatively modest family by irish standards your parents are obviously churning out lots and lots of dinners like it's like if you have if you had six mouths to feed and there's going to be that's 126 covers a week what's cooking i to this day can't eat shepherd's pie and i don't like shepherd's pie i don't want shepherd's pie because of how often Sinead made shepherd's pie is that your mom yeah my mom shepherd's pie is delicious it is delicious I know it's delicious I had it so often I became a vegetarian when I was 12 I think partially I think there's two things and one I was obsessed with Paul McCartney spoke about Paul McCartney every day for two years wasn't up with him wanted him to be my boyfriend even though he was in his 70s at the time so became a vegetarian but also I genuinely looking back on it now believed that it was just a way of me getting out having to eat shepherd's pie ever again and then there was also my favorite dinner that my mom would make and to this day if I go home she's like I'll make your favorite chicken and mushroom volavents it was like the posh thing she made so it's still like peas and carrots mash parisnate maybe um but then chicken and mushroom volavents which you make from Campbell's and i think oh god my mouth is literally salivating it's lovely it's lovely whenever i mention volavon on television some a producer will always say to me can you explain to the public what it is because they think that people don't understand so volavon flaky pastry kind of made into almost like a little bucket into which you can put something creamy that was your favorite thing and you know much like this much like the egg in the hole there was a little pastry lid so when it rose up there'd be like a little round in the middle that you'd take out my mom would put all of the chicken and mushroom volvons in and then you put the lid on top like a little hat I love a little round you know is that what broke your vegetarianism no what broke my vegetarianism was alcoholism actually I think like I think I turned 17 started drinking and would yearn yearn for the nugget like just absolutely yearn for the nugget and then you thought I'm just gonna have to can this idea of marrying Paul McCartney I yeah I I just have been eating meat ever since and I haven't really looked back I love meat unfortunately I you know like I know it's not I know it's not the most ethical thing in the world but we're all gonna die and if someone wants to eat me when I die that's literally fine because I'm not going to care well you've heard it here first yeah was your mother a foodie was she really into cooking this type of thing no she's not a foodie at all to be honest and I have spoken so often about my mother's food at this point because I obviously love food and I talk about food quite a lot and every single time she's like you make me out to be the worst chef and I'm like Sinead love you so much queen like Thank you for raising me.

24:13Like you're a great woman in so many aspects, but the food was not one of them. She just wasn't. She just wasn't foodie because bless her, 2000s diet culture was hell, was hell. So you weren't even allowed to talk about liking food, I think. Do you know what I mean? It was like this, like really, I just have so many memories of any enjoyment of food being like covert, like a covert operation. Like, oh, stop desperate. Oh, what am I like? oh Jesus Christ I'm after eating a curly whirly to stay with me like this kind of thing. Tell me a little bit about the curly whirlies. The curly whirly. So the curly whirly was like I think a curly whirly because it has so many holes in it compared to other chocolate bars and sweets is like not as bad.

25:02So there would be a bag of curly whirly's in the freezer and she would be allowed to have one curly whirly a day but she would like smash it up so be in the freezer and she'd smash it up and break it into tiny pieces so that she would microdose curly whirly over the course of the day anytime she needed a sweet thing so it was still only one it was only one point or one sin or something but she could have like a little sweet thing she's gone along and again that was another thing that was off limits that was like in a bag wrapped up in the freezer put away and she was allowed to have that and none of us were we were allowed to have normal sleep do you know look i'm sitting and i'm laughing but i i lived through exactly this sins one of them is sins one of them is sin that blows my mind oh how many sins are in that slice of bread oh my god you're bringing jesus christ into this like

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30:09It was like. Sorry, I don't know why I'm laughing. It is really funny. It was like you got straight to the sibling group. Straight to the sibling group chat. And I was like, two Christmases, guys. Woohoo. Which is not true. Which is not true. We don't have two Christmases. You. So you got a spot at Trinity College, Dublin. I did. Ireland's top university. Yeah. You go and look with your grandparents. Yeah. what what's it like living with them for six years you're both clearly at incredibly different stages of your life your grandparents and you I loved living with my nanny and granddad it was such a joy I to this day would probably still move in with them if it wasn't weird but it is weird obviously because I'm a fully grown adult now I loved sitting and watching the telly with my granddad you and your granddad he's got his chair you've got your chair what's he is he got a little kind of stout or something on the go he's never drank in his life he's a pioneer he's never drank alcohol in his life he drinks about 75 cups a day i reckon so my granddad i believe has eaten the same food every day for approximately 85 years so he might wake up at like 11 a.m goes down cup number one which by the way is a basin like the mugs that he has is like you know a little bowl a little cereal bowl with a handle on it he's having eight of those a day i reckon Did they used to leave dinners out for you and things?

31:33They, like my granddad, this is, I was always supposed to be pop star because they spoilt me so bad. My granddad used to literally hang my knickers out on the washing line. My granddad in his late 70s, early 80s would be like, like I'd be working in Super Value coming home after. And they'd be like, oh, she's worked so hard at the Super Value. She's so hard at work. Like I'm going to do her washing and clean her bedroom. And like I was waiting on hand and foot when I lived with them. I never had to do anything for myself it ruined me I was gonna say like you obviously were set out to be a pop star you get this spot at Trinity College yeah you drop out of Trinity College after six months I drop six months it was not good I it was too much for me I just like I was doing Irish studies which is like interdisciplinary plenary so it was like bit of film studies history geography English literature and then Irish language study because I am an Irish speaker how quickly into the course did you think this is not not for me I need to go I just convinced myself I was fine until like I was handing in like one of my first essays and I hadn't eaten anything and I was still really bad at food at the time I hadn't eaten it in like four days stayed awake for two days was on lots of weird prescription medication that I was probably robbing from my granddad.

32:53And I like collapsed and I fell into a coat hook that was on the back of a door. And I have a hole in my leg. I have like a scar from it like went through my lip and stuff. And I like fainted a couple of times. And then I went in to hand in this essay and the lecturer was like, you shouldn't be here. It was like, I've been thinking it the whole time, but like you probably shouldn't be here. Like you're like, she was like, your essays have been really good. Like you're really smart. You're good at this academic work, but you don't have your shit together like you can't do the admin side of it which is probably because i was working in debenhams oh my god you worked at debenhams i've worked at debenhams uh estee lauder counter at debenhams in sterling in scotland i worked in blanchett's town and henry street rest in peace debenhams didn't know how good we had it so you're an incredibly intelligent woman i can tell that and you're obviously very proud of ireland and wanted to do this course that is picking apart all of the different parts of it and concentrating on your language but there's something going on at this point you're just not quite you're not feeling right you're saying that your weight's not great you're starving yourself you're taking prescription pills and that all converges to a point where you've smashed your face off a door and then turned up at university with a really bloody lip with bloody ronnie a bloody ronnie with a but with a very good essay yeah she said it was really good i quit uni cough never said uni my life is college but i'm in england now you're an English person I know it's so bad I'm a wet Brit so terrible but actually quitting university like my family were like this is the worst thing that's ever happened ever but when I started working in super value it meant that I had money to spend on like amps and guitars and stuff and then I started like my band and we started doing gigs and I felt a lot better like I think it was much I just shouldn't I just shouldn't have been you know using my brain for anything other than songwriting when you uh quit university and um you know broke your family's heart did you tell them by whatsapp i didn't i didn't i just kind of came home from that day and was like i don't think i'm gonna go back to college and my granddad was fuming he actually didn't talk to me for a week he was so upset because he'd been going around the golf course like because he'd been going on the golf course being like kira's in trinity yeah my brother letter case in trinity and then that was really bad but you know what's really nice full circle is that when i started ending up in like the newspapers and the magazines he like brings copies with him to go golfing to be like handing them out to the lads in the golf course can i ask you about harnessing heartbreak because i think uh that's what's so many you know women that listen to your work think that you absolutely nail this idea of taking on crap relationships of which I have so much experience of myself and then you've talked about toxic relationships I've written a lot of songs about toxic relationships I really just had one very long one but as talented as I always was and as interested in doing music and all that as I always was I don't know if I'd have the career that I have today was it not for those five and a half years of just constant terrible times which is what it was if I look back on it now my 18 to about 23 it was just a continually bad time with very few kind of cracks of light getting in it when it comes to like relationships and psychological evaluation and really learning how to write and express myself I don't know that I would have this career if it wasn't for that bad time Can we talk about, you go to Manchester?

36:42I actually kind of moved there to get away from him. He followed me over a little bit. And it was that kind of thing. But I had great friends there, worked in the TK Maxx, which I loved. Oh my God, hang on. TK Maxx on Market Street. I want a tip. Best time of the day to go. Every TK Maxx has a different delivery day, right? But the delivery days stay the same. So you need to figure out, you got to do intel on your local TK Maxx. Right. So that's when you get like Donna Karan ski pants for£2.99. Yeah. And the Marc Jacobs. And there's Marnie. And there was like Dolce & Gabbana. And all the really high brow, high label stuff.

37:22Just like slash prices. Not to be doing an advertisement for TK Maxx, but it really was cool. You get to Manchester. What's food like then? Are you eating healthily? So Manchester is when I really get into recreational drugs. Yeah. But particularly because I was working two jobs sometimes. So I was doing TK Maxx, but I was also a sexy shots lady in the nightclubs of Deansgate Castlefield. So my time thing was bad. I was smoking copious amounts of weed, which meant that my diet went from no food to just the most insane food of all time. And I was eating a lot, which actually I think was good. So hang on, are we talking takeaways?

38:04Are we talking like lots of like good food? going down co-op and getting some lovely. It was co-op actually. Basically I'm going in knowing that I'm about to hit a bong as soon as I get in the front door. So I'm buying two bags of the share sized bags of co-op onion rings, which are the best onion rings. They're like crack. I'm getting a liter of some kind of ice cream. I'm getting a packet of Oreos and I'm getting Betty Crocker's chocolate fudge brownie mix. And I'm basically making the brownie mix, but I'm crushing the Oreos into it so that bits of it get crispier and bits of it get softer and it's poking out the top and I actually put less water in than they tell you to so you can under bake it and it's way chewier and crispier at the same time it feels when you're describing that like what you're actually doing is Seema in Manchester is going back to Seema as a little girl with Weight Watchers yeah and just sticking two fingers up right at it I I did gain quite a lot to wait in Manchester because I was just having a great time.

39:05When the relationship ended, it must have been awful. Tell me then about the exact moment you had a flash of inspiration, you got your pen out and you wrote the hit song, I Want To Be A Cowboy Baby, that goes on to be on your first award-winning album at Ireland's biggest award ceremony. I think I had broken up with him and then he moved out and I was in the flat by myself and I was feeling pretty miserable so I was like I want to go down to the pub and then I suddenly got a lot of anxiety I was like oh usually when I go down to the pub I have this older man boyfriend with me but if I go alone by myself now I it might be a bit of a dodgy situation because Charlton wasn't that dodgy but like you know you still don't want to be like 22 years old by yourself in the pub as a girl and getting shit-faced which is what I wanted to do and I was really upset by this and I was really miserable at the lack of freedom that I realized I now had and I just kind of like looked at myself in the mirror and wrote the song very quickly in like 20 to 30 minutes and that's one of the most bizarre experiences of my life to this day I find it so funny how important that song is not just to me but to so many people considering where it came out of did you know it was good yeah I did and I knew that it was the first good song I had written in about two and a half years but there's a crossroads here in the road with your life is there a moment where anyone gives you advice or anything well the one the one that I think is the most obvious answer is that I a couple months before this like won some kind of competition thing to go and be in a songwriting session with charlie xcx but it wasn't a session it was like we were listening to her unreleased music and like giving thoughts on it and she pulled me aside at the end and was like what are you doing and I was like what do you mean she was like are you making music are you releasing music like what are you doing and I was kind of like oh no I'm just like working and I want to be a songwriter I don't want to be an artist anymore because at that time I didn't want to be an artist and she was like well if you're not making and releasing music because you're living in Manchester you either need to move to London or you need to go back home to Dublin and be around people who will inspire you to make music because you're just not going to be able to do it entirely by yourself in the way that you're trying to do now I was like I'm going to move back home to Dublin even though that was the last thing I wanted to do it was like the absolute last last last thing I wanted to do but she was right and then I moved back in with my mom and then eventually back in my nanny and granddad and was working in like UPS which I got really badly sacked from and then Beaulies and the whole time I was like writing songs I was writing loads and it was all really good

42:09your new banger of a single take a sexy picture of me it's got a viral dance it does that's how saw viral dance sounds like it needs a cream or something anyway tell me about this song tell me the story behind this song last year during festival season we got booked for a lot more like high profile festival slots and they would be filmed and recorded and like put on the internet and specifically like filmed let's say by the bbc or something and put on their official instagram or tiktok channels and multiple times like relentlessly so the comment section of those videos would just fill with people calling me fat and and not just like calling me fat but being like why is she there why do i have to see a woman that looks like this the tone was always she should be ashamed of herself for looking like that and doing her job i do think that you know for somebody with your background with food this must have been I mean how how has it not sent you into a complete and utter tiz how are you still productive how are you still performing I mean it did like it definitely there was days where I was just like this is fucking miserable and I would rather this not happen again and the only way that I could think of it not happening again was by like losing weight or like finding out some way to lose weight or whatever but actually for me and my body type I don't think there's an amount of weight that I could lose that would still put me into it like I don't think there's anything I can actually do to myself to make myself palatable for those people so therefore I'm not going to bother there's also a swing of this right because there's the people on the internet who are like ugh hate her hate that she looks like this yeah there's also another side of the internet that I find respectfully equally kind of annoying.

44:06And I don't mean this because I know it's coming from a good place. But I will get comments that's like, it's so good to see plus size representation. She is a diva. She is so brave. This is plus size representation. She's representing real bodies. Like this is a political da da da da da da da da. I just look like this. I'm not doing anything for you. I'm not actually even trying to be an activist or body positivity or anything like that. I actually just am here and I know that those women who are probably similar size to me and bigger are just like desperate to see anything and of course it's nice to see you know diversity in any shape or form represented in the media but I'm also like I'm not like a soldier and you know those people mean so well and they're obviously coming from a really nice place and I don't want to be shitting on them or even criticizing them but I it's like it's equally as hard and the thing that kills me about it is I have so many men in my life who are musicians and songwriters and they have never ever ever ever had this much focus on their physical appearance I was literally I was literally having to explain it to Sam Fender the other day I was like da da da da and he was like oh that's mud like he was like can't do his accent but he's like oh what why are you man he was like jesus christ he was like what are you because he was like yeah we were just talking about it and he was just like it's just mad i can't believe that that happens and he was also basically like i can't believe it happens to you but also every other woman i am friends with that makes music you don't cave to the pressure when you get criticism and you do things like where what I'm going to describe the Brit Awards that dress yeah how would you describe that dress see Matt so I had an idea for my first proper red carpet appearance that I thought would be funny which was a dress that is high necked and long sleeved and very very glamorous and chic and demure and almost nun like from the front but then when I turned around it would be completely backless but so backless that you can see the entire top half of my ass crack I thought that would be really funny I just thought it'd be a funny thing to do um were you bothered about your ass crack before you went out did you make sure that you had like a good shower and things like that I would have been quite scared the spray tan was interesting because I had to explain to her and then I showed the lady the fitting and she made me bend over spread my legs as wide apart as you can imagine and I actually had to pull my arse cheeks open so that she could get because she was like normally if I spray tan someone the arse crack you'll see you know if they bend over whatever a little white line she's like I can't afford for that to happen because I can't afford for my fake tan job to be as high profile as this and people to see a white line in your arse crack so I had to like basically show whole I would have been scared that people would have got drunk during the evening and either treated it as an ashtray or tried just to put little bits of rubbish in it so when I got home I maybe had like a bus ticket or something in my bum.

47:27There was one band on the red carpet so everyone else like when I was like walking around and showing it off was like giddy and excited and thought it was really funny and all had like the right attitude about it which is oh my god this is great this is so funny ha ha ha what a legend can I get a picture with it it's like yes of course you can um there was one band that I shall not name that were on the red carpet behind me the whole time mouthing off about it a little bit mouthing off about it and kept making jokes with each other kind of like oh put a penny in the slot all this and they I don't know why they thought I couldn't hear them they were basically the way the red carpet works is you're all just like moving along down a train so generally the people that you start off with are there the whole time and they just kind of kept going in on it apparently um apparently the daily mail uh pixelated your ass crack so as not to upset the public they did it was amazing it's the best day of my life i want to still get that like printed and enlarged and put in my home look we're on our last question okay i've spoken to a lot of musicians on this show and not one of them has seemed to fully crack the food touring schedule conundrum and apparently you use a lot of service stations well my next single is called the jamie oliver petrol station um which is it's kind of veiled as a diss track about jamie oliver but it's not really it's more about me and my relationship with like a rational hatred because I can be quite intolerant and annoyed by people.

49:02And it's me trying to be like, this doesn't serve me and you need to get over this. But I'm using Jamie Oliver as my target for the allegory. What's Jamie Oliver done to you, Zima? What has Jamie Oliver done to me? I don't actually hate him. And I don't think he's a bad guy. But one thing I really don't believe in is the sugar tax. I hate the sugar tax. I hate it, hate it, hate it, hate it. Don't think it actually benefits anyone. and I think it makes life a lot more difficult for low-income families because generally high levels of sugar and high levels of trans fats and high levels of sodium and all these things that are about to be taxed by the British government if not already if we're not already there um are things that are present in cheaper fast foods yeah that low-income families will get to put food on the table in general and that food is becoming more expensive but more expensive food is not being affected.

50:01I have a question for you that I really want to ask you. I want to ask me something. If you had a choice, so this is the choice, you can only have one thing for the rest of your life. You either can never kiss anyone ever again. You can never be kissed or kiss anyone ever again. Or you have to go the rest of your life without sauce or sauces. Whatever option allows me to have sauce, I don't care about being kissed. I've kissed hundreds of people. really thousands wow i just don't care anymore i love that i love that whereas like you can't put a price on curry sauce on chips no no i'm i'm struggling with it i don't know because i love shifting i absolutely love kissing love it's like my favorite activity but at the same time sriracha sauce i love shifting love shifting and i hate i'm actually quite a saucy girl like i love sauce i love things drenched in sauce and like i don't like you know like a dry dinner can't do a dry dinner see matt i just never want you to leave i just want you to sit here and talk to me about food but i'm gonna have to say thank you for comfort eating with me thank you oh my god i could have just gone on and on and on and on and on and on and on she's incredible oh thank you this was really fun i loved it

51:30This episode of Comfort Eating was produced by Hattie Moyer. The executive producers are Lucy Greenwell and Grace Dent. The music was written by Axel Cucutier. Mixing and sound design was by Solomon King. If you love comfort eating, then go and leave us a review. And you can follow or subscribe so that you never miss an episode.

51:57This is The Guardian.