Chris McCausland enjoys our cottage pie and a ginger beer

4:05Chris McCausland:And this is a gorgeous flower I've just been handed. Yes. An artichoke flower.

4:11Nick:It's an artichoke. It's a mamoli artichoke from the Latia region. And they're really in season now. You can get them in waitrose. And most of the time, how they do the minister's leave, they deep fry them. So you'd sort of take off all this root here and you'd take off the outer layers and then dust in flour and then you deep fry them. And they do open like a beautiful flour. Or you can pickle them. So you put them in like what they call an aloe grecque liquid. So that's vinegar, water, sugar, lots of different spices and herbs and you cook them in that. Or another way of doing them is just to literally boil them and then again you peel off all these outer leaves and then you're left in the middle with the artichoke heart and then you eat the heart.

4:54Nick:So they are delicious. There are people sometimes hesitate because they're a bit hard to prep, but once you've done one or two, you can do it.

5:01Chris McCausland:So how would you do it? If you had that just in your fridge?

5:04Nick:You'd take some of the outer leaves off. Not all of them, so you want to eat them, just the first outer leaves. Just like that till you see the heart. And if I was deep frying it, I wouldn't take any more. Then I would peel all the stalk and then cut it to there. If I was doing them allogrek, I'd peel all the stalk and then cut it into lozenges. and then cook them in that allegraic liquid. So we've got our little board here. So we've cut our root. We'll cut straight through it. So you see there's the little heart there. They're all beautiful, aren't they? Very beautiful. But where you have a globe, the heart is much, much bigger.

5:37Nick:Whereas here, so you'd eat all these little leaves here, the stems of them.

5:41Chris McCausland:Great colour, aren't they? They are. Do you ever do an attestruck at home?

5:44Nick:Not at home, but I might do now. I might do them this weekend, who knows?

5:49Chris McCausland:Okay, should we get christened?

5:50Nick:Yes. Yes! Hello, Chris. Good job. Oh, lovely to see you. Hi, Chris. How are you?

5:57Chris McCausland:Lovely to see you. You're great. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. Oh, thanks for having us.

6:02Angela:Yeah, we're very excited. I'm looking forward to this. I've only had my bowl of shreddies this morning, so I'm...

6:07Nick:Would you like sparkling or still? Do you know what? Always still. Always still.

6:12Angela:Sparkling is like somebody's sucked all the fun out of lemonade.

6:15Nick:There you go. Right, that's there.

6:17Angela:Thank you very much.

6:17Nick:And then on that side, you've got Pringles there. Salt and vinegar for you. You know what?

6:21Angela:This is the laziest thing. I've come to a Michelin star chef and you give me a bowl of Pringles.

6:26Nick:Well, I don't want to disappoint you, but that's your first course. The rest are just crisps, crisps and crisps. We do go to Monster Munch later.

6:33Angela:We move into a pot noodle for dinner, are we?

6:37Nick:How did you guess, Chris?

6:39Angela:Little Pringles fact. Do you know what the shape of this is? Oh, I don't know. It is a hyperbolic paraboloid. Is it? Actually. No, no, no. Oh, my God. Andrew's getting on the, once you get on the hyperbolic. Do you like a hyperbolic paraboloid? Once you like a hyperbolic paraboloid, you can't go back. Paraboloid. It's also got the word bollock in it, which is quite good.

7:03Chris McCausland:That's why we all like it. Thank you, Angela.

7:10Chris McCausland:Thank you, Angela.

7:11Nick:Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. Oh, my God.

7:14Chris McCausland:Okay, well, should we do our intro? Oh, was none of that part of it? No, that was part of it.

7:18Angela:I can't believe I've wasted my hyperbolic parabola fact.

7:21Chris McCausland:No, that's going in. That is going in, don't you worry. Time to officially welcome our guest to Dish this week. We have a stand-up comedian who actually understands the value of sitting comfortably. So much so that he takes his own stool on tour with him. Love that. A round of applause for Chris McCausland, everyone.

7:42Nick:Welcome, Chris. Hi, Chris. Welcome. Hi, Chris.

7:45Chris McCausland:Well, cheers for having us. Oh, my God, thank you for coming. Pleasure. Yeah, we heard about this stool, that you have a specific stool that will travel on this huge tour with you.

7:55Angela:Well, it's just that, you know, I mean, it's part of the set, isn't it? So control the things that you can control. I use, you know, I always have a stool on stage. I don't like being sat down for the full show. I like to be up and about. I like to kind of play the room. But I always, I use a stool really because it gives me an anchor point. It's a point of, you know, I can return to the stool. I know that that way is straightforward. and you know you can turn up at a venue and the stool's a bit wobbly the stool's too short it's a spinny stool that's no good to me you know if I'm using it you know

8:27Angela:do half a spin and then suddenly you don't know which building way the front is so just you know just in the way that anybody would take components of a set just take your own stool

8:37Chris McCausland:well do you know at the dish table people love sitting around the dish table and banging the dish table maybe gets a bit of press what about how you're finding as a stool connoisseur, the dish chair. Yeah. Well, I mean... Yeah, go on. Give us your review of the dish chair. Well, it's...

8:53Angela:It kind of doesn't know what it is, does it? No.

8:58Angela:It doesn't.

8:58Nick:I think he's trying to be fancy, this dish chair.

9:01Angela:It's kind of... It's got the structure of an indoor chair, but with the seating kind of area of a garden chair. It's very true, Matt, Chris. It's kind of... It doesn't know what it wants to be. No, it doesn't know.

9:13Chris McCausland:Indoor, outdoor. It feels like it shouldn't be indoors or outdoors. Hey, we're starting today with, as we have mentioned the Pringles, we're into Pringles, but we're also having a ginger beer because you're something of a ginger beer connoisseur, you heard. Yeah, I love a ginger beer. You love a ginger beer. We've gone for your choice, the Fentiman's ginger beer. Why is this one the best, do you think, Chris?

9:37Angela:Well, first of all, it took me so long to learn. every time I was asked, I'd go to get one for years, I could never remember whether I like ginger beer or ginger ale. Every time. And I had to come up with a little rhyme in my head, which was, ginger beer, cheer. Ginger ale, fail.

9:58Angela:And that's how I have to remember. So I have to do my little thing to go, yeah, it is the ginger beer. Yeah, it is the ginger beer. Yeah, a little ginger beer. I like it. It's got a bit of a kick. It's refreshing. it feels like you like a I mean I just don't like a Diet Coke as much as the next person but it does feel like you're choosing a slightly healthier option because it's sad when your life is you know fooling yourself that you're being healthy with a ginger beer like just a different type of fizzy drink

10:26Nick:yeah yeah Diet Coke

10:27Angela:no more than one a day you know I think that's a good place to be with ginger beer I could have three and feel good about myself nice

10:34Nick:get right on it

10:36Chris McCausland:we've got loads for you we do have loads we do have loads We're going to go through your food likes and your dislikes in a second. One item that isn't on the list is a sausage, but you are a sausage fan. Can you talk us through the concept of sausage dark days and the need for sausage?

10:56Angela:No, I mean, listen, I love a sausage. When you're younger, I would always go for bacon rather than sausage if you're having a sandwich. Bacon butty, bacon butty with tomato sauce. It's amazing as you get older, you kind of taste change. And now I'm all brown sauce rather than tomato sauce. Tomato sauce for me now is really quite, can often be quite sugary and you can taste it in it. But especially being on tour as well, I really have to police the sausage intake. Because I'm on tours, you know, six days a week sometimes, seven days a week if I'm far away from home doing Scotland or something. And you can't be eating sausages every day, can you?

11:33Angela:No. So I do have to have me sausage, you know, the dark days where I have to. I mean, it's a good job I can't see because I don't have to look at them there.

11:46Nick:Eat me, eat me. So ideally you'd like to eat a couple of sausages a day. Is that what you'd like?

11:52Angela:Well, I mean, I could eat sausages every day, but I do have to make these sensible decisions because they take about a fortnight off your life, don't they, every time you eat one. so when I go to the hotels there's pluses and negatives to not being able to see the buffet because you know your eyes are bigger than your belly aren't they sure so I can kind of make this decision to not have a sausage and not be swayed by looking how good they look but the flip side of that is I can never judge the quality of the scrambled eggs for myself yes hotel eggs is a oh it's a it's a minefield it is isn't it sometimes it's a moggy swamp yes overcooked And so if somebody's getting me dinner and I go, just check the quality of the eggs, I'm basically making a decision based on what they think is edible eggs.

12:39Angela:And so you never really notice you got them, do you? Some of them, there's too much liquid in them.

12:44Nick:It's when they sit in that sort of chafing dish, that buffet dish. They can't. You've got to make your eggs and eat them. That's the way. So that's what they should be doing.

12:52Chris McCausland:So if you were doing the Angela Hartner breakfast at a hotel, you wouldn't do egg buffet?

12:56Nick:No, no egg buffet. No, make your eggs to order. Come on, that's the way to do it. Especially if Chris was there, I'd be like doubly making sure.

13:05Chris McCausland:How many... Do you know, I can't remember the last time I had a sausage for my breakfast. What about you, Ange?

13:12Nick:I do like a sausage. If I'm like staying at a hotel, I'm like you. It's like the one treat you sort of think, oh, yeah, at a hotel, let's have a fryer. But it is about the quality of the sausage and the quality of the bacon. I like crispy bacon. I don't want it soggy. And the eggs. You want lovely eggs made properly.

13:28Chris McCausland:A black pudding I could have at any time of the day, every day. Yeah. Sausage, not so much. Do you like black pudding? I've never got on with black pudding.

13:36Angela:Black pudding is one of them things that you're just eating a scab, aren't you? Yeah.

13:41Nick:One way to describe it. I don't know. The next time I eat it, that's what I'll think about. Yeah, scab, yeah. Oh, I love it.

13:49Chris McCausland:Oh, I love it. I crave a black pudding. Oh, I love a scab. Let's go through some of your likes and dislikes then, Chris. So let's start off with one thing that we got. In capitals, love Italian food. Bolognese, a favourite. You are getting on Angela's good side. Yeah, we love that. Capitalisation of loving Italian food.

14:10Angela:Just a good variety of food that you can get in an Italian. And I love a bolognese.

14:16Chris McCausland:I love pizza. And one of the things that we read in the book, one of the things that you mentioned was having your first pizza at the age of 20. but in the book you say it was one of the greatest culinary revelations of your life. It was.

14:31Angela:So I avoided pizza because I'd never had it as a kid. We didn't have, in the 80s in Liverpool, we weren't going to restaurants. If we ate out, it was the chippy, you know. So it was just never something that was just around when I was a kid. Went to uni, avoided it because I didn't like cheese. Cold, hard blocks of cheese. I think I had cheese when I was a young kid and then avoided it for probably about 15 years of my life, you know?

15:00Nick:Yeah.

15:00Angela:Because I didn't like it when I was a young kid. And then I was a starving student and a mate of mine had this 99p cook-in-the-oven supermarket job. And he goes, do you want a slice? And I said, no. I said, don't like cheese. And he went, all right, you're missing out. I go, oh, go on then. And I had it. And honestly, it was the most incredible. I'm so glad I started with this crappy 99p pizza because I had a whole world of pizza to discover. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't start at the top. It's an entry level. It's what you needed. I honestly, I sliced this pizza. I went to the supermarket the next day.

15:37Angela:I bought 10 of them and put them in the freezer. I just thought that's my next 10 days. Whatever happens in life, I can eat for 10 days.

15:46Chris McCausland:10 days we're sorted. Where do you think is the best pizza you've ever had, Ange? Is there anywhere that's that? I'm the romance of Italy.

15:54Nick:I do say that. I sort of think where our family come from in Italy, there's a place called the Baracca. And we always go there when we're on holiday. And we have the pizza there. I like about five toppings, I am. So you've got your base tomato, mozzarella, olives, anchovies, ham.

16:10Angela:Italy's a, I mean, this is one of the most stupid things anyone's ever said in this podcast. Italy's a weird place to go for Italian food, isn't it? I was in Italy. I was in Italy. Couldn't get a bolognese for love and money.

16:25Nick:No, where were you? Which part of Italy? In Rome. Oh, that's why. Why? Didn't you do a bolognese? Because it's not from... That's not the pasta of Rome. It's Cagsepens. How were you supposed to know that? How stubborn's that? Yeah, I know. They're so regional, these Italians.

16:42Angela:How stubborn is that? How stubborn is that? Rude, rude. When I was in Greece, they did a bolognese pizza. Now, I mean... Oh, you were away. If the Greeks are showing you up on your own cuisine...

16:57Angela:Then you need to pull your finger out and get on. What the Greeks have done, they've gone, pizza's good, bolognese is good. I've got an idea.

17:06Chris McCausland:Whack it on. Let's do it together. Whack it on, you'll be all right. You also love, as well as you love Italian food, You also love spicy food. You love traditional British food like pie and mash as well. We're going to do a pie today. But before we talk pies and have pie, how spicy can you go, Chris? Can you go for it? Are you someone that can really...

17:28Angela:Yeah, I mean, like, you know, it depends what we're eating. Yeah, I like to give it a go. If I'm in like an Indian restaurant, I usually go for like, I'll go for a madrasa or something. But I always find that like the Indian restaurants are one ahead of what you'd get in a supermarket. So if you're in a supermarket, if I'm in Waitrose, which genuinely is our local supermarket, get the Vindaloo. But a Vindaloo in a supermarket is a madrasa in an Indian restaurant. If I'm in Nando's, go for the extra hot because I like to show off.

18:02Chris McCausland:I'd be impressed. Now your dislikes have a touch of Tim Key about them. Tim Key on. And we loved him on the show. He said that he didn't like milky as a genre. Your genre that you don't like is creamy, not a creamy fan.

18:18Angela:Well, yeah. I mean, I think more often than not, I'm not a fan of kind of white creamy things on my food. Mayonnaise for me, I just think it gets everywhere. It's used now more often just as a glue, isn't it? Yeah. It's, you know, how can we best keep this sandwich together? Oh, I just put mayonnaise on it. Trying to find a sandwich without mayonnaise is... I mean, why can't you... You can't get a sandwich with mustard anymore. It's just mustard mayo. Horseradish mayo. Just what's happened to the world?

18:55Chris McCausland:Now, I've got here that you wanted to speak to Angela about herbs. We heard that you said, you know, nothing about herbs beyond mixed herbs.

19:06Angela:I've enjoyed herbs. but often I don't know which ones I've enjoyed and how I've enjoyed them.

19:12Nick:But if you did something like a roast potato, would you put rosemary or something?

19:16Chris McCausland:No. No. But is there a good thing, a rule of thumb, that anyone can remember? Well, I mean, interesting, you love curry,

19:23Nick:so you'll probably have eaten lots of coriander and mint. So coriander is the more floral one in your taste buds and if you feel it, it's softer in your hand. And mint...

19:33Angela:Is that the flappy leaf you always get in the curry? Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, it's a flappy leaf. You have to fish out your mouth.

19:39Nick:Yeah, because if you compare it to parsley, which looks very similar, and you feel them both in your hand, the coriander's soft and the parsley's quite hard. I'm sitting there with that. That's good. No, that's a good one. Sometimes I get them in the fridge

19:50Chris McCausland:and I can't remember which one.

19:51Nick:Yeah, and then mint is, again, you'd probably have that with lots of curries. And that, I sometimes feel, it's like having chewing gum. You know, that's your flavour that you're looking for in mint. And I put that with fish and I put that in salads. But then I think hard herbs. So they're sort of soft herbs like basil as well. That's another soft herb. And then hard herbs are like your rosemary and thyme and things like that and bay leaves. And then again, you put them in when you're doing stews and making roast potatoes and parsnips, stuff like that.

20:21Angela:Basil, I enjoy basil. You must like that if you like Italian food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can taste what it adds to the flavour. I think I miss a lot of what these things add to the flavour. Is it oregano or oregano? How do we pronounce that? We go... I say we say oregano. Oregano, yeah. So is oregano a herb?

20:42Nick:Oregano's a herb, and that's another Italian one. And that is great dried. That's a perfect herb that you can have in the summer, and then you dry it, or you've got it dry. And that, I think you can put that on salads, like a Greek salad, if you have dried oregano. And it goes really well with lamb and stuff.

20:56Angela:Oh, yeah. So my wife begs that with better. Oh, yeah, there you go. And that's good. Yeah. And they'll use a lot of that in Greek... If I made that, it would just be feta.

21:05Nick:Well, you're like me, Chris, because my husband, when he cooks, he'll go in and put herbs and all the rest of it, whereas I would be like, Chris, just feta. Bit of olive oil, that's all you need. All we need. Why are you trying to make it fancy, Neil? Leave it as is.

21:16Angela:Yeah, says the woman with the Pringles.

21:18Nick:Yeah, exactly. That's the way you get a Pringle, you see. Nothing fancy. Right, Chris, I'm just going to put the food down here. So I'm moving the mightier left, the glasses ahead. Oh, to the right, OK. Yeah. So that's there. Feel that there. It's quite hot, the plate. A knife and fork there and your napkin. Thank you, Angela.

21:41Chris McCausland:All right, the food is here. It has arrived. We have the pie. I've started. I've started. You get involved, Chris. You get involved. You get involved. So this is called The Best Cottage Pie, a recipe by Martha Collison. Tell us about this. What constitutes it being the best one, Ang?

21:57Nick:Well, I think what she's done is put some little secret things in, Marmite and Worcestershire sauce, which I think has really added to the flavour and stuff. So you start off, roast off all your meat, all your mince in a pan, remove that from the pan, then add your onion, carrot, celery and that's been finely chopped and you sauté all that down. And then another thing she does, which I never used to do, but she puts in chestnut mushrooms, like blitz mushrooms. So I think that really helps with the flavour.

22:24Angela:When you say that, do you mean like blend them? Yeah, blend them together.

22:26Nick:So she blends all the mushrooms. They go in with the celery, carrot and onion. then add some tomato puree cook that out then add your meat back in add some red wine allow that to sort of reduce down and cover with some beef stock and then you add your marmite a little bit of Worcestershire sauce and your bay leaf and you cook that for about 15-20 minutes and for you I put a gluten-free soya sauce because marmite and Worcestershire sauce have gluten in which you can't have and then you've got this lovely delicious or cottage pie filling and then you put mash on top mashed potato with some cheese on top of the mash.

23:01Chris McCausland:Oh, yes. You made that sound so easy. There's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of. A lot of cutting, a lot of bits.

23:07Nick:But, well, no, if you've got one of these, like I said, blitzies, like little fine choppers, and you can use them, you can put your celery, your carrot, onion, all of that in there, so that does it all for you.

23:16Angela:We've turned into QVC here, haven't we? Exactly. I'm on commission, Chris.

23:21Nick:How did you know? You need to stop and chomp. Stop and chomp.

23:25Chris McCausland:Get it now. And get free Pringles. Yeah, exactly. Have you ordered?

23:29Nick:The other thing is, secret tip, is let it go cool before you add your mash on. Okay, so let the meat go. Yeah, because then your mash doesn't sort of drip, go into the filling and stuff, you see. Yeah.

23:39Chris McCausland:Okay, yeah, yeah.

23:40Nick:So you don't want it all running through. Yeah, exactly, all going through. You want the separation.

23:42Angela:So this is delicious. I also, I'm a big fan of food that I can shovel. Yeah.

23:48Nick:And I've also put cabbage there next to it, Chris. And that, you've just done boiled cabbage with butter and a bit of black pepper. Yeah. But I think having the Marmite and the Worcester sauce in there, I think gives it that little kick. But you could add chilli to this. No, no, no.

24:03Angela:I mean, I like chilli, but there's a time when I play. There's a time when I play. That's not very crazy. No, I mean, especially when you can't see what's on the plate. Yeah. You know, logistically, some things can be more difficult than others. I'm sure. So something like cottage pie is a comfort food in more ways than one coming because it's a comfort food in what it is. Yeah. But it's comfortable. It's not stressful to eat. Yeah. I haven't got bones getting in the way. Yeah, of course. Sometimes if you have even just separate components, you stab something. It's like Russian roulette. You don't know what you've got until you get in your mouth.

24:39Angela:More than a few times in my life, I have stabbed what I thought was a chunk of tomato and bit down to it, and it was a segment of lemon. Oh. There's nothing wakes you up quicker. Now I bet. Wow. Wow.

24:53Chris McCausland:Wow. Tell me how you make the mash, because the mash is going to be... You know what I'm going to say. Yeah, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say four packs of butter.

25:00Nick:Not four packs, but a fair amount of butter. But I think mash, peel your potatoes, cut them into even size, and then boil them until they're cooked, drain them well, add your butter and mash it, then add the milk. Because I think once you've added the milk, you can't get any final lumps out. So add your milk after you've mashed it all with your butter. Oh, is that the problem with lumpy mash?

25:21Angela:I think so. Is the milk's gone into a...

25:23Nick:And they haven't cut their potatoes evenly because then some are cooking earlier than others, you see. Oh, yes, you do want them all the same. You do, you do. You all mock me, you two. There's a reason, there's a reason.

25:35Angela:That does make sense. And then tell me about... Next time I make them on, I'm going to make sure I've got my knife, my serving spoon and my ruler. Yeah, I agree with you. And my tape measure.

25:50Nick:Oh, I feel the piss taken. No! It makes sense. I can take it.

25:57Chris McCausland:And then what about cheese? What cheese did you put in this? Mature cheddar. Mature cheddar. And put that in right... No, not on top of the mash.

26:03Nick:Just on top of the mash. You know. And that's a little extra luxury. You don't need it. You can work it with half. So it works very well. So Martha's, brilliant recipe, I think.

26:12Chris McCausland:Yeah, thank you, Martha. Yeah.

26:13Nick:Who's Martha? And then we have a wine pair of... It was Martha's recipe.

26:16Chris McCausland:Who's Martha, though?

26:17Angela:She's Jeff.

26:18Nick:Oh, okay. Yeah. Because these are all Waitrose recipes, so they're all from there. So not only have you given

26:22Angela:me a bowl of Pringles from his garden. I've done someone else's recipe. You've made somebody else's recipe. I mean, Jesus Christ.

26:32Nick:And you know what? The best thing is, Chris, we've done so many other people's recipes, all from Waitrose and other sort of chefs. You're the first person that's called me out.

26:43Chris McCausland:We've also got, we've swapped you a ginger beer. We've gone for a Bundaberg ginger beer now. What are you thinking, Chris?

26:49Nick:There's a quizzical look on that face now. I'm not sure about this.

26:52Angela:Not as fizzy as the Feternamons, but maybe that's because it's been set with the ice for five minutes. I would say not as... It's not sweet, but it's not as gingery. It's a bit milder.

27:07Nick:It seems sweeter, doesn't it? It does.

27:09Angela:Not overly sweet, but more sweet than ginger.

27:13Chris McCausland:And there's a red wine pairing as well. If you do want to have a red wine with this, it's the Vina Luria Reserva Riaca from Waitrose, of course. If you want to try this wine, all the recipe, all the ingredients, how to do it, are on waitrose.com forward slash dish recipes.

27:31Angela:Do you want some more, Chris? Some more pie? Yeah. It depends. Have we got anything else?

27:36Nick:No.

27:37Angela:No? Wow. Wow.

27:40Nick:God, the review I'm going to get after this.

27:43Angela:I love what we've got.

27:46Nick:It's loads to take home.

27:47Angela:You don't have to have any one. Yeah, you've got loads to take home. I'll text on from my kid. Oh, yeah, do this.

27:52Nick:You do that, don't you?

27:53Chris McCausland:Oh, yeah, yeah.

27:57Chris McCausland:Chris McCausland, it is time for your fast food quiz. Okay. It's a quickfire round. Yes. Here we go. Tell us your favourite way to eat eggs.

28:05Angela:Eat it. Oh, do you know what? Love a boiled egg with a bit of salt and pepper on it. Like, cut it into quarters, bit of salt and pepper. Nice. Keep it in the fridge and it's always there in it. Well, I say it's not always there. You eat it. You know what I mean? You can stock up a few days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Favourite sandwich filling? Favourite sandwich filling would be, I love a bit of ham and mustard at the minute, but mustard, mustard, not mustard mayo. Not the mayo. Not mustard mayo.

28:28Chris McCausland:What is your favourite form of potato?

28:31Angela:I'm at the point in life where I have to start making any sensible choices about chips, but, you know, I grew up on chips. I love chips. That's your favourite? That's your favourite, chips? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I do love mashed potato as well. Oh. You have to pick one, Chris. You can have potatoes, potatoes. Can't we just have potatoes? Yeah, you can have potatoes. The favourite form of potatoes is potatoes. Potatoes. What's your favourite crisp? Salt and vinegar. 100%. Always. Salt and vinegar. Always.

28:57Chris McCausland:What is your favourite pasta, Chris?

28:59Angela:I love a penne or a... What's that fatter tube? The rich tube? Rigatoni. Rigatoni, yeah. Whenever I have bolognese... I say I love spaghetti bolognese, but I always get it with like a smaller pasta because otherwise I end up... little flexer tomato sauce all over myself. What's your favourite Sunday roast? Do you know, like, lamb. That's what I will get if I'm out. If they've got a lamb, always get a lamb, because I would never cook lamb.

29:29Nick:Right, okay. No, but that's why a lot of people, we always do that. People go, I eat fish out, because I never cook fish at home. Yeah.

29:35Chris McCausland:What is your favourite item on a Sunday roast? Well, obviously the roast potatoes. Roast potatoes. Roast potatoes is the correct term. Yeah, yeah.

29:43Angela:Do you know what? like I do I do like a bit of broccoli though and I really in my old age now I really like a sprout on my Christmas dinner oh I love a sprout

29:52Nick:yeah

29:52Angela:but you grow up not liking sprouts don't you and then you get older and you realise they're alright

29:58Chris McCausland:we should talk about your book Chris yes we should talk about keep laughing

30:04Angela:you got the it's amazing how few people have picked up on that

30:07Chris McCausland:really yeah

30:09Angela:as a title my thinking was keep laughing Obviously, there's a little marketing tie-in with Strictly there. But also, in three years' time, when it's in a bargain bin somewhere, it still makes sense as a comedian's title. I haven't called it Strictly Come Comedy or nothing like that. I thought it was quite clever. Only like three people have picked up on it. Oh, wow. Well, I'm lucky to be in that top three. Yeah, we got that. We did it.

30:35Chris McCausland:Now, this came out last year and it tells your story, your life story of right up to winning Strictly, strictly which we want to talk about in a second and how was it to sit down and reflect on your life because it's i mean it's quite a it's quite a rare thing to do in it to sit down and be like

30:53Angela:right life yeah it is i'd never written a book before and i think the thing that worked in my favor is they put it on sale before i started writing it and so and so i didn't plan it and I think I've got one of them brains that I can go round in circles and I can over plan things and second guess myself and talk myself out of things, but just writing and having what comes out come out. And then I pieced it together once I felt like I'd written a lot of interesting or amusing stuff. Do you know what I mean? The weird thing is, is that like, I suppose if you split the book into three portions, you've got everything about me up until being a comedian, losing my sight over 25 years, becoming a comedian when I was about 26, and then doing Strictly, which was like a huge thing really at the end.

31:45Angela:And I thought writing about being a comedian would be the easiest bit because it's what I do and it's what I love. And it turned out that writing about, you know, growing up and losing my sight was actually what I found was, you know, more interesting because I was writing thinking, well, I'm the only person that can write about this from my experience. Whereas every comedian has to write about, didn't I did live at the Apollo? Didn't I did...

32:08Nick:I got used to you. Well, I've been listening to it on audio and stuff. And there's the point where you're talking about when you punch this kid and you've cost your parents£35 because you've had to replace two things at school.

32:21Angela:Wait to pick the one thing that makes me sound like a... No!

32:25Nick:A violent... Well, the thing that one of the things that's made me laugh so much is the cassette. You know, when you go to the old man's flat. I mean, anyway. But it's a brilliant book, too. But I just thought you refer to stuff that's happened in the future, but how it affected you as a kid. Yeah. You know what I mean? And, you know, your reference point to it. I think it reads beautifully. Yeah.

32:45Angela:I mean, there's a lot of things that I think when you look back and you realise, you know, just you really look at things like the, you know, the role of your grandmother in your life and things like the Hillsborough disaster, which I wasn't at. I wasn't there, but it affected the city in such a big way when I was 12 years old. So these things, you get to look back, having lived beyond that, and see how did that affect me at the time. You can look at it as an adult, never really done that before. And I think Alan Davis said to me, when you're writing, write as if nobody's going to read it. You know, don't be worrying about writing things that you think.

33:30Angela:I don't want people to know because people want to be let in. I think you definitely did that. Because I did Strictly as well. I think it really kind of ripped me open in front of everybody on the telly in such an emotional way that I think I was a lot more open with the emotional side of things, losing me sight and things like that than I would have been if I'd have wrote it before Strictly. Yeah. You know, once you've cried on the telly in front of 10 million people, you feel a lot less a lot less precious about it

33:59Chris McCausland:so it was probably like a hugely cathartic process doing something like Strictly as you say once you've been that engagement and been that open and you're on a real physical journey and emotional journey once you cried on the telly

34:15Angela:it genuinely changed me more than anything else I've done and it affected me quite a lot

34:26Angela:I just looked, I viewed myself and I viewed everything I did differently when I came out the other end of it. It sounds really, really silly because it's just a TV show.

34:36Chris McCausland:And what do you think it was that made that, you have that reaction to it? Was it the training, the ritual, the challenge, the competition?

34:45Angela:It was probably the continuous level of fear, the terror of doing this on live TV how intensive it was the relationship with Diane that you build up doing this thing together on the telly in front of millions of people it could be a disaster can we get through it the connection it made with people realising I've always been very closed off and protective over my own personal feelings but I'm on the telly trying to overcome obstacles that everyone else can see and it connected with people in a way that I never expected. It's connecting with people who are getting in touch, who are disabled in lots of ways or suffering from anxiety or have lost someone in their family and suffering from grief.

35:33Angela:And they get in touch and they tell you how it's connecting with them. And you realize they can see what you're trying to overcome to do what you're doing. You realize the power or the benefit of sharing your vulnerability in a way that I never would have done. You know what I mean? I mean, I dig it all, put it in, don't let anyone know. But you realise that people take value from sharing that and people seeing it. So I think I was able to write the book from that perspective way more than I would have been able to. And hopefully it's funny as well along the way, you know. It is definitely very funny.

36:08Chris McCausland:And I guess, I mean, it's terrifying if you were just doing it in that room in front of an audience, but then it's also on the television and it's live and it's the biggest show on the telly.

36:19Angela:Yeah, yeah. It's, yeah, the first episode, Diane said to me that I'd gone grey, like literally the colour of drawing from her face. She'd ask me a question and I would, there'd be like 10 seconds passed and I'd go, and she thought I was going to freeze on the telly. She said, I looked that bad. Because you train in this marquee near the studio and then you walk through the corridor. It's like Dead Man's Walk. It's like the green mile to your execution. And then you stood in the studio and you can hear before every dance they play this VT of your training week and you can hear it in the studio and then that music that little jingle where they go dancing that honestly I've never been so terrified in my life.

37:02Chris McCausland:Tell us about the meal you went for

37:05Angela:after you won

37:05Chris McCausland:and the reaction you got.

37:06Angela:And we went out for an Indian meal where we live and we were sat there having the meal and nobody said anything didn't even register with me nobody mentioned it Nobody came over to the table. And we finished our meal. We got up to leave. And the whole restaurant gave me a round of applause. I felt like I was in a movie. I was so, I didn't know what to do with my face. It was so, and the funny thing was as well is that all of the staff in the restaurant, they all wanted, they quickly wanted a team photo with me. And they had a photo with me and we walked out and I said to my wife and our friends, I said, they had no idea who I was.

37:46Angela:They saw everybody clapping there. Get the photo, we'll Google it.

37:53Angela:But it was, that is probably the most surreal thing that's ever happened to, it'll never happen again. Yeah, I mean, I am a grumpy, you know, 48-year-old Northern comedian. I should have no appeal to seven-year-olds. But suddenly, suddenly they all want a photo.

38:15Chris McCausland:Chris we need to talk to you about your tour as well which is called Yonks and this is a tour that started in and I'm not getting this wrong everybody who's listening January 2024 that was two years ago this is hardcore comedians I always forget are so hardcore I do it for like years how is Yonks going and is it something you do every night

38:37Angela:so yeah it's been going really good I mean you say over two years I've done it in four legs So I kind of do January to May slash June and then September to November. Right, yeah. But it started before Strictly and I did about 80 dates before Strictly and then I did Strictly and I had all these dates booked in but then they sold out and more people wanted to come along so you add extra dates and then you add matinees to some of the shows and then we ended up adding matinees to the matinees. No. So some of the Saturdays and Sundays we were doing three shows in a day. Oh, gosh. And I'll be honest, it's not a wise thing to do, I think.

39:16Nick:You must be exhausted.

39:17Angela:Yeah, but I got asked when I was doing eight hours dancing the day. So they were like, oh, the matinee sold out, do you want to do it at one o 'clock? And I was like, well, yeah, because that sounds easier than this.

39:29Chris McCausland:Well, if you want to go, if you want to see Chris's tour, there are a lot of sold out shows. Better be quick. You can go to chrismcorsland.com slash tour for all the details. You kind of need an ange in the audience because I love a good laugh. Yeah. Because sometimes I find if I go and see a show, once someone laughs, I don't know, it sort of opens it up to the room, doesn't it? Everyone's like, well, if Angela Hartnett's laughing...

39:52Angela:Well, if she comes to my show, I'll repay the favour and I'll just do other people's jokes.

40:01Chris McCausland:Okay, I have an end of the show question for you here, Chris. Yeah. Here we go. For your chance to win this Waitrose goodie bag.

40:08Nick:This trolley. That Angela Hartnett hurts. With this massive bag here. Wielding. Can I just feel the weight here? You can feel the head. Oh, yeah, that's all right.

40:15Angela:Yeah, it's worth a bit of effort. That's worth it. Just going to roll my sleeves. Here we go.

40:21Chris McCausland:Here we go.

40:23Nick:Okay.

40:23Chris McCausland:It's all gone quite mastermind serious. Very, very, yeah. Okay, here we go then.

40:28Nick:Strictly final, here we go.

40:29Chris McCausland:Okay, to win the Waitrose goodie bag, please answer the following two-part question. Oh, that's why it's heavy. That's why it's heavy. Strictly Come Dancing is looking for a new host. Please tell us why. You're the man for the job. and should or when you get the job, is there anything that you would change about the show? So there's no real right answer to this? No, it's all subjective, so the back shows. But please, but do entertain us, please. But give us something.

40:57Nick:Come on.

40:58Angela:Is this the most elaborate way the BBC have ever hired someone? Do you know what? I mean, obviously, I think me and Diane as a double act would make a good host. Diane would have to have the job downstairs, like actually watching the dancing. I'd be upstairs eating pretzels like Claudia always did. And then I would get rid of the Paso Doble and the Samba and I would banish them as never being dancers again.

41:26Chris McCausland:Okay, that's a good note. Definitely. A good note. The duty bag is yours. Yes! We'll pass that on.

41:34Nick:I love that. Get rid of the Paso Doble. Oh, get rid of the Paso Doble.

41:38Chris McCausland:Nonsense. Well, he's speaking from experience. Exactly.

41:41Angela:No one's ever done a Paso Doble for fun.

41:45Chris McCausland:Chris, thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much. That was really, really fun. Thank you for that excellent pie, Angela, as well. Pleasure. And a round of applause for our excellent guest, Chris McCorsley, everybody. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. Massive thank you to Chris for joining us on Dish. Great to meet Chris. He was brilliant. Chris on Dish. Chris from Waitress. Hey, we're going to do some listener questions before we go. Go on. We've had this from Ingemar, a DM.

42:16Nick:Okay.

42:17Chris McCausland:Which asks for sort of a little bit of behind the scenes information. They say, hi guys. So firstly, Andrew and Nick, thank you for giving me a heart attack with your final season rubbish. I have so many messages about that. If you didn't see that on Instagram, we put up this video where we were saying it was our final season. Because technically it was. Because now it's just on Foreverdish. It's just every Wednesday forever. They say can't wait for their bit of no breaks. A quick query, because you mentioned in your recent episode with Stephen and Erin that this was your third menu of the day.

42:48Chris McCausland:Am I correct in thinking that you filmed three episodes and then have had three meals just filming the podcast? Do you get stuffed or are you still excited by guest number three? No judgment, just envy. No, that was a rarity. These days now. I think we did three because I was ill. It was because of that. It was because of that. So right at the beginning of the year, I had like, I don't know, cold, flu, something. Something. Couldn't get out of bed full. Yeah, and I had like the week off.

43:19Nick:Yeah.

43:20Chris McCausland:So I was off the radio and off dish, so we had to move to that day. So we squeezed in three due to my ailments. So normally, no, we'd never do three. Normally it's two. Do we ever get full? No, I don't. No.

43:33Nick:I think in the beginning, I would give us big portions or normal portions I'd give the guests and we would eat and drink. I think we did in the beginning. Yeah. And you always say small portion and then eat the lot. Where's your moderation, Chris? I don't know if it's there. Chris Mick.

43:48Chris McCausland:Then I'll eat it. Yes. That's why I can't have any food in my house. Just kidding. Just kidding. Okay, well, thank you for listening and we will see you next week. Jennifer Garner with us on Dish next week. So we'll see you then. If that episode has left you wanting more, find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Just search Dish.

44:09Nick:If you want to make any of the meals I cook on Dish, head to Waitrose.com forward slash Dish Recipes for all the ingredients and the recipes.

44:17Chris McCausland:Email your questions, thoughts and suggestions to dish at waitrose.co.uk.

44:23Nick:Dish from Waitrose is a cold glass production.

44:27Chris McCausland:Waitrose, the home of food lovers.