S9, Ep1: Gary Kemp, musician

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, I am not normally a meal planner per se, but unusually you find me at my fridge, plotting the week ahead's consumption as I await my guest. It's one of my key 80s heartthrobs, Gary Kemp. I'll tell you, I've applied my lipstick all the more carefully this morning. It is that time of the year when the resolution to stick to the New Year's resolution is stretched away for thin. Now, mine was to eat seasonally. And listener, I am so sick of cabbage and kale. I feel weak with culinary disaffection. I've now got a load of hard little apples and British pears that are sitting like bullets in the fruit bowl.

1:38My taste buds are screaming out for blueberries that have been flown from the southern hemisphere. I will resist. Let's focus on today's guest, who I have to say I have loved ever since I was a little girl. Since I was a little girl picking up smash hit magazine from the local news agents and pouring over the latest news of what him and his friends were doing in that London. Gary came from genuinely humble origins to form Spandau Valley in the 80s with, among others, his famous brother Martin Kemp. Now, the Kemp brothers in the 80s were what Oasis were in the 90s. Heartthrobs and an enormous hit machine.

2:25Spandau Ballet had classics you'll know like True and Gold and they sold more than 25 million records. Since the band broke up in 1990, Gary has pursued his solo music career and he's about to release his third album. He's a solid actor too. He had a part in The Bodyguard with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner and he and his brother Martin played the gangster brothers Reggie and Ronnie Cray in the film The Crays. Very underrated, a brilliant film I'll tell you. He stars in a spoof documentary about him and his brother Martin called The Kemps All Gold. Also amazing, very very funny. In short he is a talented and versatile actor on top of his musical prowess.

3:09So I cannot wait for him to get so I can find out what food he's chewed on to fuel these multiple talents. Not turnip soup, I know that.

3:28Fall is all about cozy comforts, but when you're prioritizing your health, it's easy to feel like you're missing out. With Hero Bread, you can enjoy all your fall favorites because they're made with Herobred sliced bread loaves, tortillas, bagels, dinner rolls, and more. Try their all-new Hero Noodles with 12 grams of protein and just 80 calories. So skip replacing every carb with cauliflower and indulge in your breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime favorites while still hitting your goals. From breakfast bagels and meal-prepped enchiladas to mouth-watering burgers and cheesy noodles, you won't believe Herobred's options have 0-5 gram snack carbs and are high fiber from the taste and texture.

4:08They've even got small batch drops of indulgent favorites like the popular Hero croissant. And right now, Hero Bread is offering 10 % off your order. Go to Hero.co and use code FALL25 at checkout. That's FALL25 at H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures are per serving of Hero Bread. Contains 2 to 18 grams of fat per serving. See the product nutrition panels on Hero.co for more information.

4:34Gary Kemp, welcome to Comfort Eating. Thank you, Grace. Thank you for having me. I've heard that you are something of an interior designs person. I think that you're into antique furniture. I grew up in a house where we didn't own anything. The only thing we actually owned was the cat. And when it was about 18, 19, I became fascinated with architecture. And then I kind of started looking back and then I found this gang of people. in history, the pre-Raphaelites and the arts and crafts movement. And they were sort of like the band of the time in a way. You know, they were competitive and they were sexy.

5:09Do you know a lot about interior design now? For example, I have just painted this wall. Any idea what colour this is? No, I can't tell you what that is. And I wouldn't want to insult you by saying it was English mustard. There you go. Oh, it's meant to be light gold, but I think that in certain colours, it's English mustard. No, I used to, I had a living room and I bought a house. I became obsessed with the aesthetic movement, which is 1870s. I even did a programme on Radio 4 about this guy, Godwin, who I particularly like. The colour of the aesthetics, the two colours would have been green and yellow.

5:48And I painted my entire living room that colour. And Sam Taylor Wood came round and she really liked it. So she wanted to do one of her famous sort of 360 pictures. And it ended up in the Tate for a Turner Prize. And I remember standing in front of this picture of my living room between Janet Streetport and Elton John. And Elton John said, got nice bits. And Janet Streetport went, it's a bit I know.

6:25Every time I welcome a celebrity guest to my house, I ask them to bring me their ultimate comfort food. This is the food that makes them feel at home after a very long touring schedule. Do you want to take away the tea towel, reveal the snack and explain? Oh, my God. I am never before have we had this. And I am. Please tell me what it is. It's pie and mash with liquor. and it's you know you can't make this at home it has to be only done in a pie and mash shot because you know the top has got to be slightly cinched and the bottom of the pie has to be slightly raw that's what gives it it's uh textual beauty i have many questions to ask about pie and mash that no one can ever answer but now i have a literally an expert in front of me right right okay question one is what is in the pie well i believe it to be mince beef it's i don't know i mean it's i i never asked that question but i used to have it when i was little exactly oh i mean look at that look at that oh my gosh since i've been in london right okay now for northerners listening to this you're probably thinking it's gravy it's not it's green It's pond green.

7:43It's parsley sauce. And I didn't know that for years. I just knew it was liquor, green liquor. And the potatoes have to have lumps in them. It's basically lumpy mash. That's what you need. It's great comfort food. Exactly. What were you tasting? What were you feeling? Where is that? I'm going back. I'm in Chapel Market. Chapel Market is in Islington. There's a Man's Pie and Mash shop down there. Saturday afternoon. So this will be younger. I had a day job on a Saturday from about 11 years old. But I, so before then, it would have been when I was, you know, eight or nine. My mum used to take me down Chapel Market.

8:21But we'd treat ourselves to a pie mash inside this very tiled wall. So it's a beautiful sort of Arnouveau-ish tiles that they have in those places. And then the floor would have sawdust on, right? You know, have some bit of sawdust on the floor. and I so I'd have pie mash with my mum was it a treat proper treat yeah it was a treat my mum wasn't a good cook you know so anything that we could get outside of the house was a treat I mean blessed no she wasn't there's a really good if you want to know what it's like in the 60s to be in a pie mash restaurant the guys are bringing out the hot pies on the trays from the kitchens at the back uh the liquor's in a massive pot uh at the front the mash is also on the counter in a massive pot it sort of gets slabbed on the pie the pie gets put on the plate double if you're really feeling you know sentacious and then slab of of mash which is sort of scraped off the edge of the plate yeah there there it sits like a little mountain and then and then the green liquor from a ladle i guess is poured over and then you you put your vinegar on at the table that's kind of what it is a wooden table completely a cultural thing though it's like a it's a proper London thing.

9:40There is one other thing on the menu. In all Pyle Mass shops, jelly deals. So stew deals or jelly deals. And the jelly deals, I never really loved quite like them. It's the bone that I always felt a bit weird. But my nan was a great cooker of eels, right? So I remember going to her flat, I remember vividly seeing so many times, you know, I'd always run to the sink because there'd be eels in the sink, you know, alive in her sink. And then she would... And they're big. They're big. And they're dark grey. Scary. And they're snakes, basically, aren't they? Yes. And she would... How did she kill them?

10:18Well, she would take them out of the sink and get a chopping knife and just start hacking away. I mean, I apologise to any Guardian listeners. And they've all gone by now. They've all gone. And then what did she do with the eel? Did she... Oh, then it was boiled. and I don't know what, sometimes she would have it as a soup. Did she love seafood? Did she? I love the fact that as you're actually thinking about this, the full horror of it. Seafood for me growing up was just fish and chips. You know, there was no way that you would actually see a fish naked without its battery clothes on.

10:59But did your family eat like jelly deals and all that kind of stuff? Yeah, we did. My mum did. Yeah, yeah. And definitely welks and all of that on a Sunday afternoon. And this was another comfort food. We'd be in watching whatever the movie was on a Sunday afternoon and you'd hear the guy coming down with a barrow down our street. My dad would go out and we'd have winkles and cockles. Are they in jelly? No, no. No, cockles would be just out of their shells, you know, and they were really tiny. And then the Winkles were black and you'd have to get a pin. My mum's needle from pins. And we'd all be given pins.

11:41What a life I lived. And then we'd all be given pins and you'd have to take the little hat off of the Winkle. Sorry, it sounds gross. Take the little cap. The little Winkle has a little flat cap. It's like a Peaky Blinders of sort of shellfish. Yeah. You'd take that off. he wouldn't like it because he'd go away inside the shelf oh no hang on yeah obviously I'm thinking no he'd go away I'm sure he did I'm sure he did and maybe they were the uncooked ones I don't know it is funny though when you're talking about all this because I do think that we've had a lot of people that come in here and they say oh I had a working class childhood but yours was the real deal the absolute real deal it was the real deal and I'm ashamed to have lost the accent and people may well ask that.

12:30I don't know what happens. Does it not come out once you've had a couple of drinks? No, no, because if you listen to me, yeah. What about if you were in a cab? Yeah. You or your brother, he says, they usually say to me.

12:47History is littered with siblings who get famous and then become rivals. But let's go back to your early years when you and Martin were growing up and it's often hard for an older sibling to accept the younger one when he's arriving. What was it like for you? I went to the food cupboard. He came into the house and I remember seeing him in the cot. I was staring at him thinking this is something I need to deal with. And I went and got some treacle from the cupboard. we'd been Lions Golden and I slowly poured the tin over his face and the contents of the tin and then I thought well that's not quite enough so I went and got some Tate and Lyle sugar and poured that over the top of that and I remember seeing these little bubbles coming through popping what were you trying to do?

13:48it was a sort of art experiment I think you know looking back on it well I suppose it was a kind of murder. No, I don't know. It was just a kind of a delicious, sweet, slow death infanticide. Do you know what? He's married to Shirley, right? From WAM. When she was growing up, her mum used to have this thing to keep her entertained where she'd get a liver, you know, from the butchers, cut the liver up into different squares and then Shirley would sew it back together.

14:24I mean Dickens said nothing on us mate The working classes are just a different This is the stuff we're not meant to say out loud in interviews Isn't it? We're not allowed Yes you go and pour stuff over him Who was the favourite? No my mum wasn't like that No? No favourite? When we got Christmas presents There'd be like There'd be a present wrapped up And on top would be like two pence or a shilling. And it would be the difference between my brother's present and my present. She was so determined. She had to give us equal money, you know, in whenever the presents were worth. You in a flat house?

15:05No, where we lived in one floor, you'd go up the stairs past an old lady's. Old lady lived in the basement. She just used to shout up, they're trying to kill me upstairs. I don't know why. She'd obviously gone paranoid. And then my cousin lived in the first flat and she was married to a Turkish Cypriot. He made Turkish coffee, which we weren't allowed to ever drink, right? Because you had to be 12 or something to drink Turkish coffee, I was told. The smell was amazing. Yeah, of course. And then it was our floor and we'd have just a tiny kitchen, two bedrooms and a living room. And we all shared one outside toilet.

15:44Because my aunt and uncle living at the top of the house. We washed in the sink. And then my dad used to take me to the bathhouse just off of Essex Road. I hated it. It's basically just loads of cubicles with baths in. Horrible old ceramic baths that used to have chips knocked out of them. And to me, it was poo, right? I'm thinking, I'm not going to get in that bath. That looks like poo. So that's where my dad used to take me. But mostly it was like, we'd have a good wash in the sink. So your mum wasn't a good cook. She was a dinner lady. Yeah, she was a dinner lady. I know. She was a lovely dinner lady because she worked in a school for disabled children, which used to break her heart.

16:26She used to come home crying so much. I say she wasn't a good cook. Cooking was functional. It was, you know, meat and tooth edge. And we didn't really have the money, I guess. But they grew up on powdered food, right? Rationing on eggs that were powdered and stuff like that. scarcity so they didn't know how to cook i remember taking my mum to the ivy in the very early days of our success saying to treat her to show her to show her she for a pudding she got the custard and you know apple grumble and um and she said oh this doesn't taste like birds i said no mum it's not birds custard she goes well it must be some other powder and I said no they don't make it with powder yeah but do you think she enjoyed it do you think no no they they they didn't like going to posh restaurants like that you know it would be like them going to a lawyer's or something yes or a private doctor's you know but did that make you sad because you know you've grown up without these things and then suddenly you start to have a little bit of money, but you can't, they don't want to be treated in that way.

17:39Yeah, I think, you know, my mum, I remember coming to my first flat and, don't put your cup down there, mum, that's Tudor, you know. But it's, she was saying, you know, you've got to get net curtains up because the neighbours will think you're poverty stricken. My mother was obsessed with net curtains, exactly. There was this idea that everyone will be looking in. they'll all be obsessed and looking in looking in she wasn't far wrong in the 80s i did have lots of people looking in you said you seem to have you seem to have jobs really early you were a teenage green grocer yeah no i started off as a paper round boy then i became the head boy i remember my brother was under me at that point so he was just a normal paper boy and i was marked up the papers my poor brother once he got up to go to his paper round and uh and he walked got dressed walked out the house it was still dark it was winter and he walked around to to the news agents passing the post office as we always did with the big clock in the window yeah and the clock said 2 a.m oh no would you imagine like nine year old kid out the house at 2 a.m then i got a job in the green grocers on a saturday and my brother then got the job there as well yeah so so hang on a minute hang on a minute if i had been a young girl and suddenly the green grocers have got the kemp brothers working in there all i'm saying is i would have had a far healthier diet this should have a blue plaque the kemp brothers both served what were you serving well this is the thing you know we'd sell to to sort of the normal working class side we'd we'd sell potatoes and cabbage okay and then and apples and then to the cannonbury side we would you know sell these strange things, avocados and courgettes, you know.

19:33So I remember. The Great Divide. I remember taking a courgette home and putting it on the kitchen table. And then my mum and dad gathered round and my brother, and we stared at it for a bit. And my dad said, I've got an idea. He said, it's kind of like a small marrow, isn't it? Yeah. So he then carefully slit it and stuffed it with little bits of mincemeat. Good. And put it in the oven as you would cook, as you'd stuff a marrow. And so we ate it, you know, sort of ritualistically. What did you spend the money from the green grocers on? What did you do with it? Well, buying records probably and buying my first guitar.

20:14Do you remember the first record? My first album I got at Christmas and it was T-Rex. It was Electric Warrior. But pretty much my first single. I remember the first single I bought, my brother and I went down to the shop, the record shop, full of purpose. We were going to buy singles. Yeah. That's what we were going to buy. And I remember my Blakey's on, you know, clip, clop, clip with my loafers or whatever, Salatio shoes, thinking I was a bit tasty. Yeah. And we bought, and we looked in there, and he rather embarrassingly bought Tremelos, me and my life. Do you know, you never forget that. And I bought Kinks, Ape Man.

20:53And I'll never forget that lovely blue pie label, which I had playing for ages. Then I think my second single I bought in Chapel Market with my mum. On her way home, my mum thought, we'll get fish and chips for lunch. And, you know, as a takeaway, she put them in the bag and got back home. And she took the fish and chips out and then she took the record out and gave it to me. And I went running to record player to play it. And of course it's now like wobbly. It's all completely, it's got like one of those kind of 50s vases or something, you know, like fruit bowls. And it's going, get it on, bang it, gone.

21:32Pop singer. That's kind of how I hear that record now forever. That's the actual version. I couldn't take it back, could I? I'd say my mum melted this with her fish and chips.

21:52Fall is all about cozy comforts, but when you're prioritizing your health, it's easy to feel like you're missing out. With Hero Bread, you can enjoy all your fall favorites because they're made with Hero Bread sliced bread loaves, tortillas, bagels, dinner rolls, and more. Try their all-new Hero Noodles with 12 grams of protein and just 80 calories. So skip replacing every carb with cauliflower and indulge in your breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime favorites while still hitting your goals. From breakfast bagels and meal-prepped enchiladas to mouth-watering burgers and cheesy noodles. You won't believe Hero Bread's options have 0-5 grams net carbs and are high fiber from the taste and texture.

22:31They've even got small batch drops of indulgent favorites like the popular Hero Croissant. And right now, Hero Bread is offering 10 % off your order. Go to Hero.co and use code FALL25 at checkout. That's FALL25 at H-E-R-O dot C-O. All figures are per serving of Hero Bread. Contains 2 to 18 grams of fat per serving. See the product nutrition panels on Hero.co for more information.

22:56I'm going to move you on to the late 70s. You're hanging out with Tony Hadley, Martin, Steve Norman, John Keeble. You're part of what is a new scene. and it's centred. I mean, I watched this from afar via smash hits, right? So I'm a little girl and I'm hearing about this regular Tuesday night Blitz Club, Covent Garden. You're there every week. And I mean, a lot has been said about this place, but I am sitting with someone that was, look at the smile on your face thinking about it. There's got to be an exhibition about it as well at the Design Museum. Your misspent youth is an exhibition If you just shut your eyes, what do you see?

23:43It's cheap, it's not in a nice place, the only reason you could get Steve Strange and Russi and could get the Blitz Club on a Tuesday night was because no one else could get it, no one else would come it's a wine bar and it had really cheap sort of Blitz posters up, literally about the Blitz and a lot of cheap makeup the smell of cheap makeup that the boys were wearing as well as the girls When did you start planning what you were going to wear on the Tuesday? Did you start it a few days beforehand? I think, you know, I used to get my mum to make me stuff. That's because I couldn't, and our friends made each other.

24:18We all, because a lot of them went to St. Martin's fashion school. And so they were making stuff all the time. And there were one or two shops, but I was showing my, my boy was looking through Pinterest yesterday and he's like, oh my God, look at this shot of you, dad, look at this shot. and my wife said where'd you get those clothes and i said lawrence corner you know aren't they just old army surplus places that we used to go and mix and match you know through whatever cheap stuff they had you know american shirts or hats or something weird what was your absolute favorite outfit to go out in well my mum made me this brilliant little kind of setup which was i drew i stuck all this paper together and then i drew a pair of trousers out on because she was a seamstress and she made me these flat fronted trousers out of this material that i went and bought you know this bright blue material and a little kind of jacket your designs your mother running these things up within about six months they were being sold a rip-off of them on gretna market up where i was up north you know out the back of a van and we'd be walking to school in like velour knickerbockers and things.

25:27And it was a rip-off of these ideas that you lot had. Yeah, well, I think all the ideas came from Bowie. We all wanted to wear those Bowie pants that he was wearing at that time. It was called a Bowie night originally, so it was all kids who'd had their head turned by David back in 1973. But famously, I've heard that you were like, when he came down to the club, he eventually turned up at the Blitz and you were like, oh, not interested. Well, yeah, the Blitz had two levels and there was an upstairs bit with a balcony. And David came in and everyone was like, you know, going crazy, you know, in their sort of own way.

26:08And Steve Strange sort of took him upstairs. And I'm like, don't go up there. Don't go up there. He's yesterday's man. We're the band now, you know, it's us. And so I stupidly didn't go and sit with him. I've seen a picture of him sitting up there You know he was sitting next to Bob Geldof Because Bob did go to the Blitz a couple times Paula was like really hip The drug of choice was blues You know speed, amphetamine People were aware that the 80s was coming This new decade And that we were fully aware that there'd been Various youth movements Pop movements That had gone back from the 50s in these waves all the way through the 60s and 70s right up to now.

26:54And it was going to be our turn to do something. It's fair to say that the Blitzkid scene gave birth to Spandau Ballet. To the makeup, fashion, the whole attitude. You quickly gained a fan base. And when you knew that labels were circling and wanting to sign you, Spandau Ballet cleverly put on a massive gig on HMS Belfast in London to show them what you were made of. No, we were adamant to play places that no one else played in. You know, we didn't want to be connected with the sort of the old punk scene or the punk rock scene, if you like. And then, and so it was about trying to make events whenever we played a gig.

27:39I think we did see ourselves as being a part of a movement, which was a cultural youth movement. What do you think when you look back, because everything's available now, you can find everything that you did. When you look back, do you laugh or do you go? No, I love our pretentiousness. And I think it was, you know, that if you can't be pretentious at that age, then it's a shame, you know, because the cynicism. I think there is a lot of cynicism now because people are more frightened. of being caught out or trolled or whatever. We were so ordinary that we had to see ourselves on a grand stage.

28:19You know, let's see ourselves potentially as something grander. And then you were finally signed. Yeah. A massive moment in your life. Music execs must have been all over you. So are you hanging out in posh restaurants now? I'd never been to a restaurant apart from a pie mash shop. God bless this poor pie mash, which is now going cold in front of us. First time I ever went to what you'd call a restaurant was when the record companies were courting us. And I was taken to West End restaurants. And I'd never seen tablecloths. And it looked like something out of a movie. And didn't really know what to order.