S6 E3: Kathy Burke, actor, director and writer

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.

0:44Just a quick word, there will be some strong language in this episode.

0:52Hello, friends. You find me in my very peaceful garden. just under the flight path, I'm sure you can hear, pulling up weeds in my pathway. I'm quietly beside myself because another celebrity is about to ring my doorbell. She's the punchy, the funny, the mouthy, the absolutely brilliant. It's Kathy Burke. OK, that's done. Let's go inside. Oh, the path looks so much better now. there is something so satisfying about a closed ended task. The thing is, let me tell you, the more that you romp through a to do list, the more other new fresh tasks just come into focus. A bit like my laptop. I think I've got 78 tabs open in my brain at all times.

1:46I have found one answer to this. It's when you're pulling up weeds, just be in the moment, And simply pulling up weeds. That's it. You don't need to worry right now about replanting the nasturtiums. Just pull up weeds. It's very peaceful. So my life lesson today is just have one tab open at a time. Which for me is currently YouTube watching endless Kathy Burke clips. Kathy Burke is probably one of the UK's most loved and versatile actors as well as a director and a writer I think we all feel like we know her don't we but according to Kathy she has never played a role based on her own life in fact if she ever gets a script where the characters remotely like her, she won't do it.

2:41It has been such a busy, varied career. So what I want to know is who is the real Cathy Burke and what was she eating during all these different chapters? I better wash my hands, covered in soil.

3:05Kathy Burke welcome to Comfort Eater Thank you very much Grace Dent Thank you for coming to my house It's a beautiful house I don't think you're feeling very well today And you've still come out of the house I'm honoured Well I was more poorly yesterday than the day before So I sort of feel today is the end of it Man you're a trooper You're a trooper for coming out Look I know two things for definite about you. One is that you're quite obsessed with death. You also have a very sweet tooth. Well, I do. That's only recently developed. I'm going to combine these two great loves of yours. If you were to choke to death on one sweet, what sweet would you choose the coroner to find in your windpipe?

3:54Well, see, it can't be a chocolate sweet because that would just melt. I don't know. I think a Malteser could kill you. Do you think? I don't know. I think it would disintegrate pretty quickly, but not necessarily. It's like a minstrel. One of those could really get you. So when you were kids, what were those things, gobstoppers? And they seemed to get bigger and bigger. And then there were these huge ones like the size of golf balls. Yeah, they can kill you. That's right. So I think one of them, because I'd like it to be quick, Yes. So it's just one, and then it's stuck, and then you're gone.

4:28I'm glad we've got some clarity on that. Each week, my guest brings me their snack. It's underneath this slightly grubby tea towel. Every week, I'm shamed by my own tea towels here. Cathy Burke, please unveil. Talk me through it. Well, what we've actually got, which you enjoy, is homemade toast, burnt. with blueberry jam. Why burned? It's just a little extra je ne sais quoi that I like. I don't burn the whole thing entirely, but if the crusts are black, then that's lovely. And the combination of the sweet jam on the charred bread, it's just something I've always really liked. How many times have you had the fire brigade to your house?

5:25Not that often.

5:34Cathy, you grew up in a council flat in Islington, and it is just a stone's throw from that very flat that you live now. What was Islington like back then? Well, I mean, it always had its posh bits, for want of a better word. But the places I knew were the flats, the estates. And just like anywhere in the 70s, everything was quite empty. Yeah. Especially on a Sunday, you could do wheelies on your bike around there because it was very rare that a car would be there on the road on a Sunday. Was it an estate or a block of flats? Yeah, I lived in tenement flats, Horton Mansions they were called. Where did the Horton Mansions people, which cafe did they go to, which pub did they go to?

6:29My dad used to go to various different pubs. I think my dad just went to whichever pub he wasn't barred from, you know, because there was a lot of barring. You're not coming back here again. And then, you know, a month later you were allowed back in. You had two older brothers. Yeah. Yours is an Irish immigrant family. Tell me about your parents. Well, I didn't really know my mum. My mum died when I was 18 months. So I didn't really know her. But my dad, you know, my dad, Pat, he was a very troubled man. A lot of drinking. And, you know, he lost his wife very young. Suddenly got three kids to look after.

7:13So how old was he when he suddenly had three kids by himself? I don't know. He was younger than my mum. My mum was 38 when she died. I think my dad was probably about 34, which now you think, blimey, that's a baby. Yeah. You know? And drinking in the house all the time in front of you? No, no, I don't remember there being actually drinking the house. It would be pubs and stuff he'd go to. You know, a lot of these guys, not just my dad, was sort of working in pretty grim conditions on building sites, probably being verbally abused quite a lot because of being immigrants. I sort of look back, I don't blame him for needing a drink at the end of the day.

8:04Yeah, if he is out and he's going to the pub and he's at the building site, who's feeding you? Who's looking after you? My big brother John, my brother Barry sometimes, but it was my recollection it was John that did everything. But I was also, I had a godmother, I had a foster mum for a while. So, you know, there were people around. It wasn't just sort of us left on our own. What does John cook? Typical night you get in, what's John, what's on the stove? I think sort of evening meals were like your bog standard, maybe a bit of egg on toast or beans on toast. But the weekends you'd get, you know, your boiled bacon and cabbage and potatoes or a stew.

8:53And I used to love the stew. It would be a steak and kidney stew. If money was tight, there'd be more kidney than steak. A kidney, I've never... Did you like a kidney when you were a kid? No, I hated kidney, but I still ate it because you didn't turn your nose up at anything. You couldn't be fussy, you know, because you were just so sort of grateful for what was put in front of you. And if you said, I don't like it, somebody else would eat it. It felt like John just kind of stood up and took over when you... Yeah, I mean, poor John. I mean, he had no choice. You know what I mean? Think about it now.

9:35He was 10, 11 when he lost his mum. Yeah. And yet just got on with it, you know? Bloody hell. Okay, and when he wasn't there at all, if there was no John, no one's cooking, how do you eat then? Well, I would be on my own quite a lot as a kid because I used to bunk off quite a lot. What would I eat? Well, I remember I would just knock on other people's doors if I was hungry. Neighbours that I knew, neighbours that I didn't know. And what would you say? I'd just say, hello, I'm Cathy. I live at number 106. Are you making any lunch or are you making any? Yeah. I remember eating raw sausage as a kid.

10:17I remember taking the skin off, pretending in my head that it was pate. I mean, look, it kind of is. It kind of is. I've had dozens of people on this podcast, and I think you're one of the few people that's properly experienced being hungry, though. Without a doubt. Without a doubt, yeah. I felt cared for, but it doesn't mean to say that there weren't times when I did feel hungry. Like going to bed? Yeah. With that? Yeah, going to bed feeling hungry. I don't want your listeners to think oh my god is she upset I'm just really banged up but um yeah you know because sometimes dad would go off he'd disappear you know what I mean if he was on a bit of a binge and whatever and so there would be times when you'd just be like oh god hungry going to bed but the next morning I'd either be in school or I could go to a neighbor's or my Auntie Joan or, you know, and get something to eat.

11:28Your older brothers, John and Barry, had to be pretty mature for their age and life sounds like it was hard for you all. But what was sibling culture like? I do remember the first time I made my brothers laugh and that was, I made a joke. It was Blue Peter and John Noakes and they were in Brazil and he was there with the statue, Christ the Redeemer, how magnificent this is. And then I just said in a John Noaksy-type accent, and we're giving him a blue pizza bunch. And my brothers pissed themselves. They laughed so much. Yeah. And I was just, this is amazing. Do you know what I mean? It was like, and then, of course, I probably repeated it again and again.

12:21But yeah, I just remember that, getting that first big laugh

12:37Introduce me to teenage Kathy Burke Do you think we would have been mates at school? I'd have driven me mad Why? Because I was really fucking annoying Why? Why? Because I was just an irritating little arsehole. I was just being told to shut up. I would just shut up. You're getting on my nerves. Yeah, I was just really irritating. What do you look like when you're a teen? Listen, you look back and it's like, oh, my God, you were one of the cool kids, Kev. Because I got a skinhead haircut and I was into punk and two-tone. And I'd sort of put safety pins on my jacket. I was the right age for punk.

13:18I was 13 and 77. Who shaved your hair off? I went to a barber. My dad went fucking mad. My dad saw me out on the street on a Sunday when I was meant to be at my Auntie Nelly's having my Sunday dinner. And when I got home, my brothers went, you're in trouble. He said, I saw you working down the road with this shaved head like a fucking idiot and all that. And, yeah, I wasn't allowed to go out for a couple of weeks. So was it about the Sex Pistols at all? Was it the Sex Pistols that really excited you? It was the Sex Pistols. I do remember walking past Johnny Rotten. He was sat on the window ledge outside the Hope and Anchor one evening.

14:05And I remember seeing him and walking past and thinking, what do I do? So I walked past again. And then he could see I was this sort of plastic punk, as we used to be called. And he said, hello, little girl. That's what he said to me. And I went, fuck off, Johnny Rotten. Yeah, yeah, it was great. He would have loved that. But that's why I did it.

14:38You had no mother figure around this time. It feels like your dad wasn't about. These are quite choppy teenage years. Who is the person that's given you the guidance, do you think? Well, nobody really. I think I was just doing my own thing and I was just waiting to get into the Anna Cher Theatre, you know, which was this famous place in Isla run by this incredible woman, Anna Cher, that was like a drama club that you went to after school. But it was a waiting list. You didn't audition. So you just put your name on the list. I put my name on the list when I was 13. And I finally got in sort of close to my 16th birthday.

15:24I was one of those kids that, you know, put on plays. You know, those annoying fucking kids that, come on, I'm going to do a play. Oh, Jesus. So I was one of them arseholes. And, but then we had, what are they called? Supply teacher, English teacher, and started to do some drama with us, which had never happened before at my school, my secondary school. And I was just very good at it. Is getting to Anisho, when you get there, is it like arriving in some sort of paradise? You are suddenly surrounded by all these creative people. Yeah. It was amazing. It was just this room full of a mixture of kids, not just working class kids, middle class kids, quite rich kids as well, because that was Islington and every background, every color.

16:24But then just her at the center of it, Anna Shea, you know, all this noise, you know, 50 to 60 kids in a class. And just the noise, I remember, it was quite frightening walking in for the first time. I mean, it was a while before I was picked to stand up and do anything. and and I remember thinking at the time but the first thing she's taught us is to be a good audience so you just gotta fucking be patient yeah and so I was happy to just sit and be quiet I didn't care how long it took because I was terrified of being picked to stand up and do something

17:15when you look back over your career there's been three huge chapters you've gone from actor to comedian to director it begins in the film scrubbers where you played an inmate at a women's young offenders institute and perhaps your finest role to date playing witness in doorway in an award-winning Guardian TV advert. Yeah. You've come full circle, you know, here. What I want to know is how do you go from serious acting to comedy? Was comedy the plan? No, comedy was never the plan. I just wanted to act. I didn't care what it was, whether it was comedy or drama. you end up performing with some of the biggest names in the 80s and the 90s in British comedy, French and Saunders Harry and Phil Paul Whitehouse one of my very favourite characters that you did was Magda Magda in Abfab Magda in Abfab, just walking in small, meaningful role, you walk in and just deliver this blistering monologue, right, and then just fuck off, and then just go again it was great Perry in Harry and Field, Kevin and Perry Appointment viewing, tens of millions of viewers How are you scouted by these comedy legends?

18:42Looking back, I mean it was sort of quite amazing really So I was in this film Scrubbers, that was my first job And in Scrubbers was an actress called Amanda Simons Amanda was also a singer so Amanda was working with the young ones they went on tour this was Rick Mayall and all that gang and then Amanda rings me up and says you've got to come and see the young ones Rick Mayall wants to meet you and I was like what the fuck this is incredible and so I met Rick Mayall we all went to the comedy store Rick Mayall told the guy at the comedy store give this young girl a life long membership for the comedy store and it was like oh my god and then so i think that was the beginning of it and that was certainly where dawn and jennifer knew me from and then simon and roland from raw sex asked if i would join raw sex they were kind of for anyone that doesn't understand what raw sex is they're like a joke cabaret band with one man on the kind of on the bongos on the bongos yeah and they they're meant to be kind of a lounge band yeah they're just they always look like they've been sleeping in a van for days and yeah raw sex big in the 80s big in the 80s and so i came up with this character tina bishop who knows everything there's to know about darts and she was from keithley the thing about tina was that the The whole reason she was part of her sex was that she'd been impregnated by Roland, Dwayne.

20:22So, but I remember talking about food because I remember, right, she's got to have a craving. That was all I knew about pregnancy was that they get hot a lot and they have cravings. So there was this sort of grotesque bit and totally my own doing. sat on the stage and while the boys were playing the number I opened up on stage a cold tin of baked beans and then dipped a banana into it and would eat the beans and the banana straight out the tin big laughs for that sort of grotesque horror noises people just couldn't believe I was doing it I couldn't believe I was doing it but then for years afterwards I couldn't eat bananas or beans things are going incredibly well with your career and then age 33 1997 you're in the film nil by mouth this is a devastating film it's a about a victim of domestic abuse it's with ray winston it won you the prestigious can award for best actress yeah tell me about food on the set of Nill by Mouth.

21:37Oh, caramba. Well, the food was appalling. I mean, it was a really low-budget film. And we shot in the winter. It was cold. It was grim. I just remember it was snowing one day and the veggie choice was salad. And I just was, what the fuck is going on? Just do a pot of soup. And I think Ray Winston got the ump and sent one of the runners out for fish and chips for everybody and I had some chips. I can imagine that's quite the sight to behold, Ray Winston, actually, with the hump. I've seen him on screen do it, but I've never seen it in the flesh. Yeah, it's not as intimidating because he is as soft as shit, basically.

22:26He's just a teddy bear, you know. With Neil by Mouth, suddenly you've gone from comedy sketches to having Hollywood. Yeah, but you know what? It's so weird because everybody just remembers the television. So it's like, oh, she went from comedy and then suddenly... But I was doing plays. I was doing quite serious work. So I was sort of doing lots of stuff like that, plus my own writing. I did all that before I was even on the bloody telly with Paul and Harry. Well, I suppose then the question is that you've been doing all these different things but then suddenly you've done this thing that you're now you are famous you are recognizable was there ever a time where you acted like a complete star like i once heard that adele um one of the first things she did and i think she was still living in brixton got a champagne fridge oh did she god no i never i never did that what was the thing i did that no not really i didn't really change my life that much I didn't want my life to change that much because all I ever wanted when I was a kid was basically my own fridge I just wanted my own space and to do what I want and watch the telly when I want and basically that's it I lived my life the way I dreamt of as a kid I never dreamt of winning acting awards my dreams never went that far it was just I used to walk past the nice terrace houses in Highbury and think I'd love to live in one of these one day you started cooking sausages though didn't you I did start cooking the sausage very above my own station did you ever have that um did you ever have that period when you were acting did you go out and live in America did you spend time in Hollywood or no no that I mean the opportunity was there but yeah a mate of mine at the time called me oh she's such a reluctant movie star and that was it I was quite reluctant about it all and I was because I'd always directed even though it was fringe it wasn't like big flash things but I loved that more you see Why does your friend say that you're so reluctant?

24:52You're the reluctant film star. Because when everything was being offered to me. Yeah. And there's that thing that happens. When you win a big award, like the Cannes Award or an Oscar or whatever, it sort of then like, it certainly was back then. It's like, oh, well, now that's what you do. Now you've got to a place that everyone wants to get to as an actor. So you've got there. so now you have to maintain it oh right you're doing this film in ireland great let's see we can get you an oscar nomination for supporting actor and i'm like hang on a minute i don't want a fucking oscar nomination why not because i didn't want to go to fucking america and haul myself around sell myself to get a fucking oscar because that's what you have to do and it's like so i've got to waste six weeks of my life and i could be directing a play in plymouth i've got to go over there and fucking all myself about just to get an Oscar.

25:48I'm not interested. Like what, go to parties and wear the nice dresses. You have to do the schmooze. Like go for dinner with folk. You sort of have to. You sort of have to. And that's fine. Other people love it. And it's a wonderful thing. I love it when it happens for my friends. There's no one more happy than me. But I just wasn't bothered about it. It's so weird. For me, I just didn't want it. Maybe I was shy of the whole thing. When something's in the diary, like I'm talking about back then, when something would be in the diary and they'd say, so-and-so film studio's bosses are going to be in town and they're all having drinks at so-and-so in Old Compton Street and it would be really good for you if you just swung by, swung, that's always the word, swung by, If that's in the diary, what are you dreading?

26:46Not being able to get pissed and be myself and have a laugh. It's also the reason I've never run a theatre, because, you know, I've been asked to be the artistic director of certain theatres over the years, and I never wanted to do it because there's part of you that has to beg for money, basically. So you have to sort of put on the nice jacket, have the wine and be very pleasant to people who might be giving money to the theatre. It's just not in me. When you were a little girl, you'd have went and just knocked on people's doors and said, give us the money for the theatre. That's true. But I just didn't fancy it.

27:29I just was only interested in being in a rehearsal room.

27:43I'm coming up to the part of your life, you, right now, now people at home might have seen you in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. You were in Phoebe Waller Bridges Crashing. Is that what you like to do though? Because acting has taken a real backseat and you go over and you start directing. I think that surprised a lot of people. Yeah, but it didn't surprise the people that know me. yeah it's not surprised people who didn't know me was there a specific job that you just come back and shut the door one night and went right literally there was a sort of row of them okay there was a sort of job after job that was a bit i'm not liking this i'm not feeling it i don't like the way he works it's nearly always he i just don't like the hanging around i don't like just sitting around doing nothing i like having to use my brain all day i like being exhausted at the end of the day from work i don't like being knackered from boredom so i sort of took what i didn't like and made sure that as a director i didn't do any of what i didn't like it's really weird because my directing work the public they don't know about it they're not interested the theater fuck off but it's everything to me i went to a party recently my mates tillion aid had their 40th anniversary so there was a lot of mates from the past and there was a few mates that i had worked with there was one mate had done a play with me and the one thing i i thought that's what makes me proud is that they all said it's still after however many years still my favorite job I've ever worked on.

29:30Yeah. And that is what makes me proud. Nobody sees that. There's nothing on my mantelpiece about that. But that for me is everything.

29:46You are very honest and very upfront about your health. You've been very honest about menopause. Yeah. And I've been trying to be more honest in public about it. I find the whole aging thing a wild journey that I'm on. I like it when upfront women talk about menopause because our grandmothers just wouldn't have. Yeah. You absolutely wouldn't have. The thing that I always want to talk about is the level of kind of quiet insanity that started to come over me at about the age of 46. Well, it affected me quite badly, actually, because I couldn't get any help. because I'm on other medication for things.

30:31I couldn't have HRT. So, yeah, so basically I just had to grin and bear it. Holy God. And it wasn't great. It was only five years ago. But the way things have changed since then has been amazing. People do talk about it more now. So it was getting to a point because I couldn't work. I couldn't fucking even go for walks. I was like that for about three years. Yeah. and it was horrendous and i just sort of hid myself away and then i was just on the point of fuck it i'm gonna have to pay you to have hysterectomy because i've got to stop this because this is i've got no life and then it just stopped and it was unbelievable i couldn't believe it i couldn't believe it growing up we're tall once that stops for a woman that's it you're not really a woman anymore you're a sort of dry husk you're this you're that of course we were all fed a load of bollocks that's why we don't talk about it because it's like still that old it's like waving you off to pasture yeah off you go now but what's wonderful now is people realize women realize that is not the case and it's like people get a new lease of life once they've come through the other side of the menopause I was just like thank fuck now I can start living again menopause completely changed your diet too I've heard um it's like look I was saying this yesterday to my team I didn't think that I had all my life didn't have a sweet tooth until I hit this stage in my life I could eat three times a day just sponge pudding and custard I wouldn't I don't need any other food you know it's just i just want to eat i could just eat a bar of chocolate a day that beer and i'll say that's where i am yeah it's so strange because i was never really a a sweet tooth person but then yeah when i got got to my 50s it was suddenly i was adding biscuits to the shopping list i was like biscuits i don't really buy biscuits for women listening to this Which biscuit is the sign that the menopause is coming?

32:51Is it a custard cream? Well, do you know what? I quite like posh biscuits. I like an oaty, fruity biscuit. Yeah. I like a ginger nut. Yeah. Cakes. I'll tell you what kicked it off as well was all these fucking patisseries opening up everywhere. Yeah. Coffee shops. Yeah. I think that's the biggest con of the 21st century is coffee. Okay. What, like just walking in and getting charged£4.95? I think you fucking arseholes. Do you know what I mean? What a con.

33:27I've heard that on your 40th birthday, though, you said it was a cause for celebration. Why was that? Yeah. I mean, I've never really worried about being older or getting old. I mean, now I'm 60 this year and you're talking to me about my 40th. I was a baby my 40th. I think anybody under the age of 55 looks about 12 to me now. It's weird because I am coming up for 60 this year, and it is the first one because I didn't feel like that when I was coming up for 50. It was like I'm still doing the same thing. I'm still enjoying my life the way I always have done. It's not stopping me doing anything I want to do.