S5 E9: Tamsin Greig, actor

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. Hello friends. Now, you might have noticed on your TV screens that I am currently out of the country. I am on the Australian Gold Coast. I'm in the jungle.

0:54I can't tell you what I'm doing right now, eating sheep's eyeballs perhaps, maybe I'm being locked in a box with some rats, who knows. What you're about to hear is something that we recorded just before I left, when I was in a far happier place. I was cosy in my own home and I was planning to get my pyjamas on and eat some mashed potato on the sofa when the interview was finished. I am so far from the ability to comfort eat right now please have an extra buttery crumpet on my behalf will you please can you do that also if you're doing your Christmas shopping please consider my book comfort eating which is out now and with masses of nostalgia and stories about the making of the podcast and tales of delicious food really okay over and out enjoy the show

1:53Hello friends, you find me as ever here in my kitchen just getting ready to welcome today's guest. She is British comedy royalty. You'll probably know her from the legendary Black Books or maybe Green Wing or Episodes or Friday Night Dinner. I could go on. Yes, it is Tamsin Greg herself on her way over here right now. I cannot wait. And she's coming on the tube too. She would not take the taxi that we offered her. She is a true woman of the people. Before she gets here, I think it is finally time to unwrap the last slice of banana bread that I have been sneakily saving right for this moment.

2:52you've got to put chocolate in it or it's just dangerously close to a health food i am so excited to chat to tamzin today i want to find out how it all started and what weird and wonderful foods fueled her on her way to tv film and theater glory See, if you weren't listening, I'd definitely put some Nutella on this.

3:30Tamsin Greg, welcome to Comfort Eating. I'm really excited to be here. What I love is that the flowers you've got on your table match your dress. Yeah, this is what I do. This is what I do. It's just me. I wish sometimes that you could see me about four hours before this all happens, just wandering around in a slightly stained pair of Asda pajama bottoms. Just those, not the top. Just that. Yeah, braless, chest out. I mean, otherwise you just get like chafing, don't you? You came here today on the London Underground. Yeah, I did. Now, this completely supports my theory that the more famous and recognizable the person, the less hassle they are.

4:18Hassle they are or hassle they get? No, the less hassle they are as a person. Stephen Fry drove himself here. Did he? Jo Brand drove herself here after a funeral. No problem whatsoever. But then you get people that have been famous for four and a half minutes. Yeah. And they want to be brought here on a sedan chair. In a private train. Yeah. It's that time again for my guests to reveal their ultimate home alone comfort snack. Tamsin, what have you brought for me? Unleash the snack. Okay, you ready? oh how pretty doesn't that look pretty now yeah explain what's in front of me okay so we've got some nice seeded brown bread that's toasted yes right and when it's still like super hot from the toaster you put butter on and then you put peanut butter on very quickly so the peanut butter starts to melt as well yes and then on one side you put marmite you mix that in and then on the other side you put marmalade and then sliced banana.

5:34It has to be length sliced, not round sliced. Because you've also got a little bit of sliced apple there, which is a kind of palate cleanser. This could often be a late night snack after filming or the theatre. Right. The peanut butter with the marmalade and the banana, right, is pudding. Okay. So the peanut butter with marmite slightly melted is mains. Okay. So you should really start with mains. Should we start with mains? Yeah. Let's eat the mains. Now, so what you've basically got is one piece of toast, but you've made it into two separate courses. Yeah. But with almost like a fruit side salad.

6:13Yeah, which is... Oh, we're going to eat them. I mean, this... I love your podcast, but this is the worst part for me. Okay. Why? Listening to other people masticating. Excuse me? You know that, the chewing. yeah that's terrible so many people get in touch and go I love this podcast yeah but I can't stand people chewing and I'm like season five babes why do you keep coming back season five aversion therapy I'm going to keep listening to this that's a lot of marmite that's a lot of marmite but that's good because now take a bit of apple

6:59it's like Chinese tea isn't it? it's a real palate cleanser I've never had apples so closely after a marmite it totally makes sense it slightly cleans your teeth because there's always a little bit of residue isn't there you can go in for a bit of pudding now because the beauty of this is you can go for pudding but then go back to mains I apologise to all your listeners who are hearing this bolus going around my mouth.

7:33So you were born in 1966 and you grew up in Northwest London with your dad, Eric, and your mum, Anne. You were one of three sisters. So is this a noisy house? well it was because there were also five lodgers and a handful of cats it was a flat you know one of those old really old mansion blocks that was really a kind of glorified shithole and um when my dad started having children he was nearly 60 they had three children bing bing bing one a year for three years then my dad said oh we should stop now my mum was ready to keep going but he was quite elderly and but they'd lost all their money they bought a business to sort of look after her and the children because he was you know kicking on they lost the business they lost everything moved to London and my mum went out to work as a secretary because dad was too old by that point to work so he became a house husband is there an age gap between you 27 actual years between them Yeah, but they didn't have enough money to live on her secretary's salary.

8:42So they rented out three rooms in which they put five lodgers. So there were 10 of us living in this flat with one toilet. No way. And mostly weed in a bucket out the back door. So it was quite noisy in a kind of Pinterest-esque way. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Everything was kind of wet and there's no heating. a lot of mould, ice on the inside of the windows in the winter. Us three, we all shared a room because the other rooms were filled with lodgers, looked out onto this bit where there was no sunshine and the outside drain always got blocked. So that was one of our jobs to go and unblock the drain.

9:22You had one older sister, one younger sister. What were you like as a kid? I think I felt things very deeply. but in the 70s and with an older father it was they didn't know what to do with that and I remember you know like putting on plays because my dad was at home making him sit with maybe one of the lodgers to watch the play which all candle lit you know it was a terrible fire hazard but my dad would always fall asleep and I would always be very upset but I also did I mean You know, I'd do choreographies in my bedroom, you know, listen to music and do a big routine, which I'd make my young sister join in with.

10:06We also played rounders in our bedroom. And like the bunk bed would be like first base and then second base would be like the top of the wardrobe. So we broke quite a lot of furniture and then had to sort of prop it up with various different toys. So we weren't found out. How does your dad cope with living in this very female household? Well, all the lodges were male. Oh. Yeah. So, yeah, so it balanced it out. And most of the cats were male, I think. Yeah. But he was in a little world of his own. He was born in 1905, so he had seen catastrophic changes through the last decade, but was sent at the age of 21 off to India because he'd done chemistry at university.

10:54and someone happened to know there was a job in India in one of the mills creating the dye stuffs because he was a colour chemist. So in 1926, he's sent off at the age of 21. He's never been abroad. I love that you're now much older talking about this and instead of it becoming more normal, it looks as if it makes less sense to you now that your dad was older and he'd seen so much. It's almost as if as you've moved through your life, you realize that was a really big age gap. You know what I mean? Yeah. And we didn't ask at the time. Yeah. And that's the thing I really regret. When my dad had me in the early 70s, he was in his 40s and that was considered old.

11:43Yeah. What was your experience? Well, we often got, oh, yeah, with your granddad. Oh. And I'd go, no. not help them and say that it was my dad I just go no but we it was just like that's what it was like you know we all so we all got it your dad was doing the bulk of the child care so okay you're coming from school what's he cooked we were spent so much time trying to avoid his strange um culinary experiments he was a great experimenter and because he'd lived in India and Pakistan and Hong Kong he picked up things while he was at so we'd have a you know we'd have a curry that he'd have made or some experiment of Chinese food without much knowledge but because it didn't taste like you know the Chinese up the road which we went to once a year we'd go I can't eat this so he'd just go and take it out and maybe cook some sausages and um we never had you know like now you'd go oh spaghetti just do it's very easy just that's our quick dish we never had pasta at home just was not a thing in the 70s it was weird but our posh going out which you got on your birthday and you once here was to go to the same italian restaurant and we'd i'd just have spaghetti bolognese and that was like the summit of glory yes because we were out it was our birthday and I knew what I liked and it tasted exactly the same.

13:16Spagball. Yeah. It never, like, I just think it never fails. But the excitement though of going to that place once a year and always having to say. And my mum who was, she was a performer, so she presented quite loudly, which I think was a distraction from the very tiny person inside. Right, hang on. Your mum, what kind of performer? Well, she was born in Leeds and had a very unhappy childhood and knew that she didn't want to be defined by that unhappiness. So it became quite grand and it became quite posh. So got rid of the Leeds accent very early on and just became very, very well-spoken and too loud.

14:03Just slightly too loud. Just a little bit. Like, ma, ma, ma. My sister, when we were coming back from shopping. Well, like on a bus, if she was on a bus. My sister got off the bus because my mum's voice was slightly too loud. What was she like in shops? No, no, too loud. Just, no, too loud. She would shout your name over there to try and get your attention. And I would just hide. Did she work all week and then she was off on the weekends? Yeah. So what happens when she comes back? Does she take over and look after the kids then? No, Saturdays. She had coffee and cigarettes. That was breakfast, which she'd have till noon in her bed.

14:41There were quite a lot of, you know, in the Winciette sort of covers that they had in the 70s, there were a lot of burns, like little burn holes, because they weren't going to buy a new one. And my dad has to bring all the instant coffee, never, ever fresh coffees, always instant coffee. And she'd read the telegraph and all the paper would be everywhere. And also surrounded by cats on the bed. and my dad had been cooking up some weird monstrosity in the kitchen. Did she ever go in the kitchen? Only when he had to come out, he had to leave the kitchen and she would go in the kitchen, she would close the door and she would bake.

15:17So Saturday was for baking and she would bake the most brilliant things, like lemon meringue pies and huge Victoria sponges with fresh cream and gooseberry full and parmiers, which are really hard. Did you like these cakes? They were delicious. Meringues. But she would smoke all the way through while she was baking. So I'm sure there were bits of ash dropping in, you know, like, what is that in the palmier? That's just a bit of, it's fine. It's fine. Just blow it off. And at Christmas, she'd make, she'd get marzipan balls and dip them in dark chocolate and put hundreds and thousands. I mean, did you help with this?

15:56We weren't allowed in. What? She'd put the radio on, radio three, very loud classical music, smoking. The only interaction we were allowed is if she ran out of something and then she'd write it on a piece of paper and we had to go down to the shop and hand it in and say, could we have this please? But often they couldn't read her handwriting. So then I'd come back with a box of cornflakes, terrified. Because I knew nobody in the house ate cornflakes. It was too posh. On reflection. What she wanted was cornflour. Awful. It feels like you're really fond about your mother. You're not saying she was absent.

16:30It feels she was there. Well, she was loud when she was there. So even when she was not accessible, because she was in the kitchen baking up a storm, so we knew that she was there because she, you know, she sort of spilled over into the rest of the flat. And then she'd sometimes give us money to go down to Wimpy because she then didn't want to cook on a Saturday because she'd done all the baking. and then the baking lasted all week. I try to explain the wimpy to people that are younger than me, but I never feel like it translates properly. No, you know what I mean, don't you? The wimpy, such a massive deal.

17:05It felt as if it was our first taste of America. Yeah, exactly. So you went there and they had knickerbocker glory. Yeah. And just those, just that kind of... Just that bun, the burger bun, the bun. Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. And they're not French fries, but slightly thicker, but not chunky fries. your mum was into amateur dramatics so did you get your interest in acting from her yeah she did amdram when they lived abroad because that sort of scene was quite was seen as sort of semi-professional in the kind of expat community so she did amdram stuff when they were abroad but not when they came back and i think she you know that was a sort of loss for her but you're doing plays as well you're like i was doing plays at school and plays i made up at home but I was also a dancer so I went and did ballet for years and years and then and then contemporary dance and um and then trampolining obviously that's the natural progression isn't it and um so I was always kind of you know embodied

18:16so you grow up you move away but then you come back to kilburn to look after your parents not just your dad also your mom what's what happened there uh well dad was like pushing 90 by that point and um you know you know somewhere that people are gonna die but also because my dad had his first heart attack when i was six yeah so there was always that sense of like well he's going to go soon you know my mom's like this is it this is it yeah so preparing so i thought that her best she thought the best way of dealing with the pain of the possibility of losing was to say he might die yeah yeah and so from the age of six you just think well my dad's gonna die and then he doesn't die for nearly 30 years yeah we get to the point where my mum was like i just wish she'd go she was i can't take another attempt dying oh my god but weirdly dad died when he was 92 and three years later mom died she was only 67 but i think she'd sort of gone right well i don't need to worry anymore about him and then she didn't really care for herself i mean you don't care for yourself when you're determined to smoke every cigarette that was ever made but with mum we knew so we were it was a different letting go I was quite surprised even when he was 92 you know things didn't work anymore I was gonna say you've been around it all the time it's been hanging in the air but did you still go through shock I was driving to Birmingham because we used to record in Birmingham on this radio show that I was on and um I got do you remember pages did you have a pager so I got a pager message it was my mum's the home number so I came off the services and I phoned mum and she said he's gone and I started crying on the phone and went into the loo's I don't think I've ever told anybody this in public and I went into the loo's and I cried in the loo and then I came out and then I was washing my hands and then I started shaking and crying again and this woman came up to me and she said are you all right and I said I'm sorry I've just had some quite bad news and she said can I do anything I said no no it's just it's just um I my my dad's just died and I've got to get my car I've got to drive to work and she said why I said well because I've I'm working I'm working in I've got to be there because they only record at that time that's the time I've got to be there so I've got to be there so I can't I can't do this I've got to get in my car and I've got to get to she said go home go home and I said yes but you don't understand because this is the only time they record and then she went silent this woman and looked at me and she looked like she was sort of sweating and she went are you Debbie and Debbie is the name of the character that I play in this radio show called the archer and so then she became quite excited oh my god so i was like no i'm not debbie well i mean i played debbie but you know i'm i'm not so then she was trying to take care of me but also really excited and she went you've got to go home you've got to go i can't believe i've met you you've got to go home but it was brilliant because i got in my car and i drove home and without her i would just have got back in my car and driven and done my job because that's what you do you do your job and I went to the what is it a morgue where they where the where the body is yes I walked in and I could see my dad I've never seen my dad like lying out because he was also like that hunched over I'd never seen up his nose so that was weird so I walked up alongside him and I went oh look at his nose because he's got a wonky septum just like me.

22:05And I've got, I'll show you now. And you see it's wonky. And no one else in my family have got it. And at that moment I was so delighted that there was something connecting me with my dead dad. That he's also got a wonky septum. And I would never have seen it. That was a gift as well.

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23:24Hello, 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.

24:08Like your mother, you develop this love of acting and you head to Birmingham Uni to do drama and theatre arts. So no more of Dad's Corries, no more of Mother's Bacon. What are you eating when you're an undergrad? well bizarrely a few months before i went away to university i started going out with this bloke who was a french chef so i didn't have to cook he's a chef it's a disaster i know i know a lot of chefs basically what they do is they make something and then they just put nine times the amount of butter into it and then you go god this is so delicious this is how have you done this yeah This is, and then it's because there's so much.

24:54There's so much butter and just a little bit of sugar. Yeah, butter and sugar. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Also, he was un soucier. You know, they would say, like the French chefs, if you're un soucier, then you were like an artist. Yes. So he would know, and he'd do this, all the kind of the right gestures, and like smelling something, you know. He'd do it all in the right way. And that couldn't last because I was just massive. Oh, he used to do this delicious. It was very simple. Pouli basques. It's just a chicken in a beautiful Basque sauce. So he taught me as well some very basic dishes. And when my younger sister went to university, because we hadn't been taught to cook by our dad, because it was too chaotic to go in the kitchen.

25:38So for my sister, when she went away to uni, we made her this book of things that you might want to cook. But then this guy would put in how to spatchcock a chicken. And she would like, I mean, this is kind, but it's absolutely useless. Were you just tempted to keep him on because he was a chef? That would have been a poor reason to stay in a relationship. I've stayed in a relationship for far worse reasons than that. But then you graduate with a first and you go out into the world. What's the plan? I wanted to see if it was possible to earn money being an actor. Yeah. In the way that mum had always done it as a hobby, as in the Amdram stuff.

26:25Yes. I wanted to see if it could be taken seriously. But my mum said, you won't earn any money, so go to Secretariat College. So I got my first from university. Oh, blooming. And I went to Secretariat College in Birmingham, Matthew Bolton College. And I went and did my, you know, for a year, going and doing my typing and my shorthand. Were you good at typing? Yeah, really good. And shorthand. can you do shorthand yeah i can so i went and did temping in offices and then i also got a sort of semi-permanent job at the family planning association in birmingham in the midlands hub and so i was doing my typing and shorthand doing letters and also answering the phone when people would phone up and say i need um contraception where do i get it see i can already see that you were really good at this because because you've got a lovely voice that just sounds so caring I'll get you these pills it's fine you know you will need to use cream with the diaphragm that sort of thing you break out of office life 91 you land your first big role Debbie in BBC Radio 4's The Archers and then in the early noughties something absolutely amazing happens you start in two of the most legendary British comedies of all time.

27:47You play Fran in Black Books and Dr. Caroline Todd in Greenwood. And these are back to back. Right. Do you know kind of right from the start with Black Books, which ends up being a four-year chunk of your life, do you know early on this is going to completely changed your life no no I'd done a few um sitcoms like like a guest appearance in a sitcom or in one that was not ever shown yes those sorts of ones through the 90s so I was sort of learning how to do the performance in front of an audience which is which is a real skill it's really hard to do to to give an a performance to an audience that's there but to keep it very small for a camera it's quite a hard balancing act but I was sort of learning to do that so then when I got Black Books I sort of knew how to do it but didn't quite know what the show was but I don't think any of us did and apparently Bill Bailey said to me that they didn't know him and Dylan didn't know either so they were just watching me to see what I was doing and I was watching them to see what they were doing because they were blatantly funny and I thought I was just the straight woman in between who they could could set up jokes for them so we were all just watching each other and by sort of osmosis we sort of worked out what we were doing

29:22since then you've gone on to have countless roles in tv film and theater including six series of Channel 4's Friday night dinner in which you play mom of the family Jackie Goodman. Now, it's in the title, Dinner. And I've always wondered how you cope with those long days of filming a scene where you're all sitting around eating because that's a real skill. Yeah. Because you can't grimace, can you? You can't go, you've got to look every time like this is the first delicious piece of chicken. Yeah. So how do you do it? So we all learn very quickly to cut up our food very small and only eat vegetables.

30:09What's the best thing they ever gave you to eat where you went, actually, this is freaking delicious. Well, there's one thing I did say to Robert Popper who writes Friday Night Dinner. I mean, Jackie's not a great cook because it's always dry chicken and vegetables and potatoes that are, you know, definitely out of a packet, but they're made to look like they're not. I was like, I think she would be a great cook. But he didn't realize that. But anyway, so I did. I do love vegetables. You know, if I will graze in the fridge, I'm a real fan of a sugar snap. And just breaking off whole broccoli florets and popping those in.

30:48Love all that. Did you end up feeling maternal towards the boys? Because they were old. You know, they're not little boys, wasn't they? They weren't child actors. No, they were in their 30s. Yeah. And I'm supposed to be that mum. I thought it was slightly rude. Well, look. Do you know what I mean? I did get a great fondness film. What I love about those actors is the pair of them are so clever. Yeah. They're so bright. They're so brilliant. They're so good at writing, doing stand-up and writing their own stuff. And you would never know it. and the thing that really got us through because it was a little bit like being in a big brother house being in the house because it was an actual house we weren't allowed to leave we used to had boggle do you know boggle that was the thing that got us through and we'd been together for too long that was really bonding and all of them all of them are brilliant at boggle and and i just was always wanting to disappoint them why boggle because you never know how long you've got between setups.

31:49They say, right, you need to go away, so you have to get offset, go away. You've got a few minutes. So you can't do a big game of articulate. Do you know what I mean? Because it would always be interrupted. But when we were playing Boggle, we could go, hold on. And then they would have to let us finish that game and then we'd mark it later.

32:15now you've been married to fellow actor and writer richard lee for over a quarter of a century yeah i don't like the word proud but i'm really pleased that we're still married yeah it's hard it's really hard isn't it well joe brand said that marriage is two years of being in love and then another 27 years of saying who the hell is this dickhead in my house and i always think of that i love that but you see what i would think is who the hell is this dickhead in my house meaning me oh it's me why why have i ended up being such a bastard but you know we have got we've got a little secret yeah about what we do every day do you want to hear it I absolutely I am totally here for relationship guidance well we started off when we were just like stepping out we're stepping out we're just looking walking around London we weren't like going out we were just you know hanging out and at the end of each day we'd go best bit worst bit what was the best bit of your day and the worst bit of your day and we've done that every day since we met in April 96 and so at the end of the day we go best bit and instead of saying we now don't say worst bit we go what was your most challenging bit and what I know then is that if something happens in the day and it's not appropriate to deal with it then I know that at the end of the day when he says what was your most challenging bit I'll go I think you know was it the bit where you screamed at me and waitress you have two sons and a daughter together and these were in extremely busy years when you're working constantly how did you do it well I tell you what I did I did have a decade off theater yeah so I didn't do any any live stuff that would take me away in the evenings and if I did do filming in that decade that first decade of having children we had a great nanny and our nanny came to work with me and the baby.

34:22And it was set up that the nanny and the baby would be with me on set. So my nanny and the baby had their own trailer. I had my own room and I breastfed her at 11 and three o 'clock. And my husband was looking after our sons and, you know, managing that way with other help if he needed to work or... So it was a lot of... I feel like leaving the nanny and the baby in the trailer and then just getting in a taxi and going somewhere. And then, like, just going to dinner by yourself. It was so late. It was so late. It was really hard for me. It was really hard for the nanny. And she did it for eight months, that, because I was on Black Book's third series, Love Soup and Green Wing at the same time.

35:13the schedules all coincided so we had to do this massive kind of like jigsaw puzzle of where I was going to be I don't know how you did that because I've seen lots of people in television come back onto set with the nanny brought the nanny and only been able to do the tiniest amount because they're knackered and they're also having trouble delegating and they're just really confused who's done it all. It's really hard. But I did have a brilliant nanny and I do have a brilliant husband who were all ready to shapeshift with our family. And you're glad you did it. Yeah. And here's the thing that I say quite quietly, there are costs.