S5 E8: Keith Brymer Jones, potter

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:14I'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 up on 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.

0:51Hello friends, welcome to my kitchen. The tea's brewing. The neighbours next door have stopped drilling. I'm ready to receive this week's guest. He's a world-renowned potter, much-loved TV judge and an absolutely massive crybaby. Yes, it's Keith Bromart-Jones who is on his way over. I'm in a bit of a rush only got time for a couple of spoons of peanut butter you can never just have two spoons though hmm hmm so good I can't speak now though

1:29best known as an expert judge on Channel 4's great pottery throwdown Keith's been mastering his craft at the pottery wheel since the 1970s you've probably at some point drunk a cup of tea from one of his mugs but I've heard that he was once a champion Highland dancer and frontman of 80s punk band The Wigs he's a man of many hidden talents I can't wait to dig into them all and to find out what he fuels up on to keep his potting energies up

2:11Keith Brimer Jones, welcome to Comfort Eating. Well, it's a pleasure. It's very strange having you in front of me. One thing I know for sure about you is that things that people have made, pieces of pottery, they make you emotional. And you're interested in what makes people like me emotional about them. I am, yes. Yeah, yeah. So I thought today I'd bring you a piece. Steady. A piece of ceramics that makes me emotional. Oh, okay. And I'm going to present it to you. Oh, okay. Now, I didn't make this. I shoplifted it. Right, well done. You're on a winner already.

2:58In 1986, I used to go to a cafe and drink hot chocolate when I was a teenage goth. Okay. And it used to come in these, I'm going to pass it to you. Yeah. And I loved the mug so much. That you nicked one? I nicked a few. Oh, okay. Actually, I'm going to be really honest. It's got hot chocolate mug written. It has. In a beautiful font. A font. Yeah. Well done. Okay, you've got my mug in your hands and you're a celebrated TV judge. Can you give us a little critique? Actually, it's quite a nice mug. Well, the mug's a bit of a dog, but the actual decoration is quite interesting because it's iron oxide and they would have done a stencil for this.

3:47So that would have had to have been done by hand. So, yeah, it's actually quite awful as a mug. but you know obviously it has quite a lot of sentimental value look so far you've called my mug a dog and quite awful now isn't it fascinating though everyone has a favourite mug and there's always a story behind it and that's the thing that fascinates me this is where I find out what my guest likes to eat behind closed doors what is Keith Brimer Jones internationally renowned potter and TV judge what is he choosing for his snack we've got it in front of us yeah Do you want to? Shall I do the big reveal?

4:25Yeah, unveil the snack, please. Unveil the snack. Unveil the snack. There you go. Now, what we have here is a peanut butter and cheese sandwich. Okay, it's very pale. Really, it's brilliant. Is that toasted? No, no. Toasted? That would be like cooking and that. It's kind of left a skid mark where the peanut butter has escaped out of the sandwich. And I thought it was toasted. No, no, it's not toasted, no. So hang on. It is quite claggy. But it's the cheese and the peanut butter. And the best bread is the cheapest possible bread. The stuff that you pinch together and it just doesn't rise up again.

5:10Look at the finger imprints. This stuff, it'll last for about seven weeks. I know, it's brilliant. And the cheese, I noticed that you've got a sliced cheese. Is this a cheese out of a packet? It's Emmental though, darling. But yeah. Oh my God, that's so delicious. It's good, isn't it? Do you like it? Really? I'll bet you say that to all the sandwiches. I've never met a beige claggy carb concoction that I haven't loved. When would you eat that though? Give me an example. Oh, in the mornings, in the afternoons. it's my sort of go-to sandwich just to give me a bit of a hit you've got all the sugar in there the sweetness of the peanut butter the kind of savory of the cheese yeah it's brilliant can you eat it when you're at the wheel you can really because it all stays together yeah there's nothing falling out of that it's never gonna go anywhere is it

6:13Keith you were born in 1965 yeah and grew up in Woodside Park in North London with your mum Keris yeah dad Roy yeah and older sister Sarah yeah what's it like growing up in the suburbs in the 60s well into the 70s yeah I mean it was wonderful Finchley was a very sort of typical suburb one of those kind of places where you go out on your bike at sort of 10 in the morning and you don't come back till 5 in the afternoon when mum calls you in for tea so it was fairly idyllic really so you've got your mum and your dad and then you've got your dad's parents ma and pa round the corner it's quite an extended Brady bunch yeah it was really pa was really kind of staunch old Welsh Presbyterian quite strict.

7:05I used to go to watch the football with him to watch the father play and he'd sit on the touchline with his, you know, one of those old shooting sticks that folds out with a chair on it, you know, and Ricky, the corgi, always by his side, but he could make a noise on the touchline of the football pitch and he'd just go, when the boys hadn't played well and they all used to cower with fear because yeah he did he just had one of those kind of presents about him and he really didn't like me dancing at the time well this is it you were dancing yeah you'd kind of gone into your billy elliott yeah yeah at that point how did you get into dancing i started dancing at the age of three my mother had done dancing i think at a very early age for herself so she got my sister into dancing and I think basically it was just a question of crowd control I did it all really yeah ballet tap Highland Scottish country dancing and modern whatever the bloody hell that was and that was it I never knew anything different and didn't give up until I was 18.

8:15Did you perform on stage did you do those? Yeah yeah absolutely and there were dance routines to learn throughout the year for the big finale, the big show. And that was my first kind of introduction into performing, really. You're living with your mom and your dad. Tell me a little bit about them. So my mother was a very stay-at-home mother, but she trained as a domestic cookery teacher back in the day, but then sort of gave all that up. Loved cooking, was a very, very good cook. And the father was a disgruntled 70s nightmare kind of businessman. Couldn't stand it. Hated it he he was very very good um at sport back in the day but of course you know being a sportsman back in those days it didn't really earn you the money coming from a really traditional welsh sort of presbyterian family was told to get a proper job which he then did and then he was cross about it couldn't stand it hated his whole kind of professional career as a bank manager and a building society area manager, then an estate agent, couldn't stand it.

9:24And actually I often say to people, it was the only bit of advice he ever gave me. And that was to do a job that you really enjoy because you'll be doing it for 85 % of your life. It feels like you were treading on eggshells around that though. If you, even as a little boy, were really aware that he was annoyed about his life. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, yeah, on a Sunday morning, he was always in a bad mood. I always remember that. Always in a bad mood. Always avoided him on a Sunday morning. He was angry by Sunday morning about Monday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then so all of Sunday. Was just taken up with being annoyed about his life.

10:07You say your mum was a cookery teacher. Yeah. So I'm guessing she's got to have been a dab hand in the kitchen. you think back to childhood what is cooking on the hob oh god right okay so fridays was her big cooking day for cakes and she cooked these amazing wonderful cakes and the whole house just filled up with the smell of cake it was amazing and she'd be prolific she'd be like cooking 15 to 30 cakes classic round cakes you know victoria sponges immaculately finished off icing piping the whole thing. They were tremendous. Absolutely tremendous. So always Victoria's Sponge, like lemon drizzle.

10:48No, lemon drizzle. Black Forest Gatto cakes. Oh, the whole thing. Then there'd be cream horns, chocolate eclairs, profiteroles. Oh, she did it all. It was amazing. Absolutely incredible. And then does she sell them or take them to Women's Institute? Or you just eat them? No, we kind of just ate them. Yeah, yeah. So the father on a Saturday would sometimes come home with some of the lads from football and she would do this high tea on a similar table to this one, maybe a bit bigger than this. And it would have sandwiches, you know, with the crust cut off. And I remember some of the boys from the football club, they're all sort of late teens, early 20s.

11:31They'd never seen anything like it. It was just amazing. Just this huge, massive high tea spread. I don't think there's a happier sight than a table grown in with that type of food.

11:47Both your mum and your dad are Welsh and you spent most of your holidays in Wales when you were growing up. Tell me about those trips. They were amazing. So this is back in the day when you would get the overnight train from Paddington. Yeah. Motor rail, that was it. and you drive the car on at Paddington Station and then for some unforeseen reason, it used to take you all night to get to Wales. I mean, it's mine. But yeah, you used to get shunted at Fishguard. Yeah, because obviously you get shunted at Carlisle. Yeah, I've been shunted at Carlisle. I'm sure you have. Sure you have, love. I've got to tell that joke though.

12:27I had to. You can't let shunted go past. I'm sorry. Don't worry, my editors saved me from me all the time. What was Welsh food like then? Oh, pretty, pretty bad. Pretty basic. Yeah, the 70s. But I mean, it was self-catering holidays. So my mother would cook and she'd do these amazing picnics. We'd go on the beach and, you know, other families would just look at what we got. It was like a high tea on a beach. Honestly, it was just amazing. She used to make about 300 Welsh cakes for the duration of the holiday, two weeks. Right. What I need you to do now is explain to listeners that have never had a Welsh cake, where do they sit on the Venn diagram of scone, drop scone, scotch pancake?

13:22Yeah, yeah. To my mind, there's a lot of different things going together into a Welsh cake. How do you explain it? Well, it's the Welsh scone, really. It's kind of a crumbly, almost pastry, but not quite, with raisins in it. And then squashed, though. And squashed, yeah, that's it. And then you turn up in Wales with 300 of them. Yeah. What do you – I mean, that's quite samey. It feels like the same. Well, it's not the only thing we ate. They were just for snacks. What did you put on the Welsh cakes? Lots of butter, cheese, jam, anything. You could put anything on them. It was brilliant. Yeah, they were great things to sort of just have as a little staple snack.

14:05Yeah, yeah. Up until now, you've been describing your dad, and I love how you call him the father. The father. The father. Yeah. What was your dad like when he was on holiday? Oh.

14:21No.

14:26he was a different bloke yeah yeah yeah it's alright I'll cry all the time but no he was a real he was a different bloke yeah he was like he was released from that pain yeah absolutely yeah no it was it was the only time when he really enjoyed yeah he would he would drag us across the beaches that's like a therapy session I know but no he'd drag us across the beaches on you know big towels and stuff and he'd often yeah I mean he was great on he was different yeah different bloke yeah but we kind of knew that anyway we kind of knew that yeah and he'd again the health and safety back in the 70s but he'd take us out on massive swimming trips we'd like my sister and I at sort of the age of maybe eight or nine we'd be swimming way out you know half a mile a mile out to sea and And because there'd be a rock that we, come on, let's go, let's swim around that rock and come back.

15:27And it was brilliant. Yeah, it was wonderful. I am so jealous of your ability to just cry because it looks so freeing. Yeah, I literally don't give a toss, really. Have you always been like that, though? No, no, no. No, I mean, I remember being in the band in the 80s. Yeah, I was a bit of a tosser, really. Hang on a minute. Put a pin in that. We're going to talk about that. Being a tosser in the band. The tosser years. Yeah. When you were 11, you started at St. Mary's Church of England High School in Hendon. Yeah. It's always a very big moment. We're picturing the 11-year-old Keith trussed up in his uniform.

16:13How easy do you find big school? How easy do you find it? No, it was hard. It was hard. You know, coming from a very sort of typical, you know, villagey kind of primary school to then going to big school. Obviously, coupled with the fact that I did dancing, which I knew at that kind of age wasn't a thing to sort of shout about maybe at big school, boys dancing. And the fact that, you know, at the age of 11, I saw my first dead body, which was my grandfather die. He had a heart attack and he fell down the stairs at their family home, at Ma and Pa's home. And I could tell he was dead. And I think he must have had a huge heart attack at the top of the stairs, fell down the stairs, and there he was, as white as a sheet.

17:02I remember I ran out into the road, I think, because it was just such a shock. But coming back to the starting secondary school, that's when I sort of realised yeah there was a lot going on for me when I first started secondary school and I was a skinny little thing then and yeah I was quite severely bullied at school So you get to school and your grandad's died did anybody try and give you any counselling or anything exactly? It's the 70s, what are you talking about? Off you go No, no, that's right So then you get there and you're bullied yeah I was bullied for the first kind of three years of school um but that's kind of typical bullying where you know you you even carry the books around for the bully you know and on all that kind of thing to the point where I remember um it was the third year and it was technical drawing class um I just had enough and uh I remember when he asked me for for his books I strangled him good for you sorry I just strangled him for the purpose of Guardian readers I'm not condoning strangling people that you really know by to the point where he kind of went blue and the teacher came rushing over and pulled me off and this that the other and I remember typical 70 I had to go and see a nice woman for about three months in the medical room to talk about my dreams it's that thing that we all we're all animals and it's like you know all of a sudden I just had enough and I launched at him and he was twice the size of me but he realized that I was maybe a bit unhinged and left me alone so it was great

19:04Hello, Grace Dent here. One more thing. If you love comfort eating, then you'll love my new book, Comfort Eating, What We Eat When No One's Looking. It's available order now. There's an e-book and an audio book if you want me to read it to you, with chapter headings like Why Butter Makes Everything Better and Why Potatoes Are Proof of a Higher Power. how can you resist? Comfort Eating is packed with funny, moving stories about my family and my childhood, as well as recipes and stories about recording the show.

19:49School was also where you first discovered pottery. Was it a magic love at first sight moment? It was absolutely like that. Absolutely like that. I had a wonderful teacher called Mr. Mortman and he was his camp as Christmas. And he used to even pout when he used to do the register. It was brilliant. But we came into the pottery class one morning and on everyone's workbench was this lump of clay. and the moment I touched the clay I knew that this substance was going to be in my life for the rest of it and looking back on it now it's kind of blindingly obvious why I liked it because I'm dyslexic and for a dyslexic person clay is probably the best kind of material that you can use it's incredibly malleable I don't know whether many people know this but if you're a dyslexic you have a much better affinity to shape, form and volume.

20:48Yes. Well, clay gives you all those things. And the moment I touched the clay, I knew that I would be able to manipulate this substance into my imagination. And it was wonderful. It feels like at this point in your life, lots of other things are kind of out of control. Yeah. So there's, you know, your dad and what's happened with your granddad and strangling folk. And then you've got this thing. Yeah. Yeah. You're in control. Yeah. No, absolutely that. So you fall in love with Clay. Yeah. From that moment, you spend all your lunch times either in the art room or talking to a therapist. Yeah. When do you find time to have school lunch?

21:31What do you eat? Well, I used to, towards the end, I was just having packed lunch. I'd have a packed lunch and I'd take it to the art room to the point where - What's in the packed lunch? Beef crisps. bloody great god knows what was in them nothing natural i don't know what they were called now the yeah beef they're like frazzles but they were sort of they were they were way before frazzles yeah yeah they were 15p a pack but um a few times in the lunch hour and i obviously got to know mr mortman really well and he'd be in there pottering about doing whatever but he'd say the immortal lines and you'd never get this now but this is the 80s early 80s he'd say now listen Keith I'm just going to go we couldn't put this in the book I don't think I'm just going to go to the staff room to get my lunch now when you fix that kiln make sure you've switched it off and it was like I'd be about 13 years old and I'd fix the kilns in the in the art class yeah change the elements and stuff yeah mad in 1982 yeah when you were still at school you joined punk band the Wigs as lead singer when did you realize you wanted to be a rock star Keith I didn't I didn't realize it was basically I met a wonderful guy called Mick James who I still friendly with now he's my oldest friend and I met him at Tesco's as you do you know we all had them weekend jobs and I remember him piping up to me once in the canteen and said oi do you think you can sing in a band And of course, I just said yes, because I say yes to everything.

23:08And so we had a band practice and I became the lead singer of The Wigs. Yeah. Are we talking? Post-punk, really. Right, post-punk. I was a bit too young for punk-punk. So post-punk. Similar to, obviously similar to nobody, but similar to who? Who were you influenced by post-punk? You know, Iggy Pop, The Buzzcocks, stuff like that, really. What I'm fascinated by is you're literally standing in Tesco And someone says, basically, do you fancy being a rock star? And you go, yes And lots of people join bands, but you stayed in a band What is it about being a rock star for you? I'm going to break it down Is it fame?

23:51Did you want fame? No, I think at the time it was just And I know this sounds a bit tosser but I think it was just another way of expressing yourself as a young person and it was it really was and we do these gigs and we you know you'd be able to go mental on stage and but for me it was always a feeling of entertaining you always had to entertain the crowd you always had to take the crowd with you otherwise it was just navel gazing and you know just ego nightmare and I'm not into that but it has to be about the women as well because surely everything changes the moment you become a lead singer was it that all right i'll tell you a story right because there's very little sex and drugs in your rock and roll stories that i've read so far okay so when we used to do gigs and we you know over time we were the ugliest band going we were pretty goddamn ugly really but I'm obviously we're in a band so it doesn't really matter and and I used to have women come up to me no word of a lie and they'd say oh you're the lead singer of the wigs aren't you and I'd say yeah can I sleep with you oh my god literally and then and so and so and it got so boring yeah that you'd start saying things like well actually I've got a girlfriend and they go so and then and then you'd up the ante and you'd say well actually I'm married and they go so and And so at one point I made a pact with our guitarist, Mungo, to say that we were gay.

25:22And we just said, well, actually, I'm gay. And that was the only thing that would stop them. Is it all boozing and being in bands and playing music or do you actually eat at all during this period? I used to have this ritual before I went on stage. A pint of milk, a packet of chips and a pint of lager. Yeah. That would be my thing before I went on stage for The Voice. Well, that's what I used to say. That's what I used to do. Just to like wrap chips in paper, newspaper. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Salt and vinegar. Just chips, salt and vinegar. Yeah, yeah. The grease lines your throat for singing. And apparently, according to Marge, Marge, my partner, is an incredible singer.

26:03She says, it's probably the worst thing you could probably do. But back in the day, that's what I used to do. But the whiskey was always on the go. Pint of full fat milk, packet of chips. Yeah, yeah. And a pint of lager. What kind of whiskey are we talking about? Do you have a specific whiskey or is it like White Horse or something like that? No, it's nothing cliched like Jack Daniels or anything. It would be, actually, it would probably be Bushmills. But there came a point when I think I was about 21, obviously still in the band, and I'd been over in Notting Hill, staying the night in Notting Hill somewhere.

26:36God knows who with and why. And I remember my mother and father saying, oh, why don't you come on holiday with us, last family holiday? you know this that and the other and I got in the car and I drove back to Finchley from Notting Hill not that far jumped in the shower turned the shower on could see the water coming out of the shower but couldn't feel anything on my skin and I thought that's a bit weird my whole body was completely numb because I was probably still pissed from the night before and that actually really scared me the fact that I the fact that I felt like I was operating normally when I obviously wasn't you know I was still under the influence of alcohol and that put me off drink for quite a while actually and I don't have a problem with drink but yeah it just became the norm

27:37after a few years of experimenting and practicing in the art room yeah in 1984 you place an ad in the paper yes offering your services as a pottery apprentice and amazingly you land yourself an apprenticeship at Harefield Pottery in Watford. Placing an ad in the paper selling your frankly untested pottery services. It sounds like a very unusual approach. It worked but what does this tell us about the teenage case? Yeah young enthusiastic 18 year old seeks apprenticeship call 013463098 that was our number infidually and I literally from the age of 11 at first year of secondary school I was going to be a potter no matter what happened I that I that literally and people often say oh it's god it's amazing how well focused you were and you know that you knew that you the only bloody thing I could do so I just knew that I had to make it work I knew I had to make it work.

28:40It's a wonderful feeling being able to do something that you really love in life, well, you all know this, and get paid for it. It's brilliant. Yeah. And I can make a living out of it. What was that first job like? I mean, it was like working on a building site. It was, yeah, really, really tough. My bosses, Alan Pett and Robert Hudson, could have been plumbers, could have been electricians, just happened to be potters. And it was that kind of unpretentious way of looking at the profession of the craft if you like that really resonated with me so having that kind of grounding at Harefield as a mere clay boy shoveling the clay sweeping the floor making the tea was was a real good antidote to that and I knew at an early age that I needed to to learn from the bottom up it almost feels though that you found the almost the perfect place to go because they weren't airy fairy they weren't at all no and you're this lad in a punk band yeah you go to somewhere where it is all a bit sweary and a bit yeah shouty and unforgiving very much so yeah yeah it was yeah i mean i once i've still got the scars on my on my wrists where i once complained i didn't get a lunch hour uh at the pottery and they hung me up on a beam with handcuffs now who has fucking handcuffs in a pottery for god's sake but they did and they They hung me up on a beam for an hour and said, you won't ask for a lunch hour again.

30:05Oh, my God. And I didn't. Yeah, so it was quite, it was a school of hard knocks. But it was, yeah, it was great. It was a good laugh. I mean, you didn't, I mean, obviously, you were punished quite harshly for asking for a lunch hour. But did you eat at all at the pottery? Then I ate a lot, yeah. I was eating probably two lunches a day. Mars bars were my thing. At least five or six Mars bars a day. Why Mars bars? Just to keep the energy up. Just to keep the energy. Because of the marketing campaign during the 80s. A mile a day helps you work, rest and play. They were marketed like a health food, weren't they?

30:43They were, yeah, yeah, yeah. You bought into that. I kind of did, yeah. Now get this. So we were, the pottery was by the side of a canal where no one can hear you scream. But it was by the side of a canal and we had a wood burning stove in the pottery. and Robert used to cook up these fried potatoes on the stove and he used to grow his own potatoes. And believe you me, he used to grow different kinds of potato and you could taste the difference. It was amazing. He's taking fresh potatoes and then just take the soil off them and then frying them in a little stove. On a little pan, yeah. Yeah, with loads of butter.

31:23What do you eat them with? Well, sometimes in between bread, like just have a potato sandwich. Yeah. But honestly, back in the day, I'd literally eat anything because it was real physical work. So anything I could eat, I'd shove in my gob. Yeah. The hard work pays off. And after Harefield announced that they're going to move the pottery to Scotland, you decide it's time to go solo. Yeah. You open up your own studio, Highgate Pottery in 1989. What's it like going out on your own? Well, they say ignorance is bliss and it kind of was at the time. I mean, fortunately, I didn't really know what I was getting myself in for.

32:06And yeah, so I started this pottery, but then would do other jobs to sort of finance the pottery and to help me sort of move along. But then over time, on average, I'd make anything between six to 900 mugs a day on the wheel. Yeah. I can't imagine how strenuous that is. I mean, yeah. It's not a delicate thing. I think that people misunderstand. They do. I think they think it's just gentle and it isn't. It's pressing and pushing and it's very hard. It is quite physical, yeah. How long are these days though? So, yeah, I'd get to the studio around about half five in the morning and sometimes I wouldn't leave until seven, eight at night.