Life in Charms with Clodagh McKenna

0:01I'm Anoushka Dukas and I've been designing jewell for 30 years and collecting charms for as long as I can remember. In this podcast, I will be asking a series of extraordinary women to tell me their life story in seven charms. Welcome to my podcast, My Life in Seven Charms. Chef, TV presenter, cookery book author and farmer, today's guest has so many strings to her bow. She has said that if she had a superpower, it would be to make more hours in the day. No surprise there. Her social media followers are enchanted by glimpses into her life in Hampshire and Chelsea with her beloved husband, Harry, her beautiful kitchen garden, gorgeous chickens.

0:47And I think she's the only guest on my podcast who has built her own pub in her own wood with Guinness on tap. I'm delighted to welcome Clodagh McKenna to my life in Seven Chans. Oh, Clodagh, I'm so thrilled to be chatting to you. I know, me too. I know, I've been really looking forward to this one. In your beautiful home. Oh, thank you. so let's start with the first charm yeah so this little charm is it's a pot of apple clove jelly and I I was really excited about this one actually because I literally see it as a kind of proper miniature three-dimensional uh jack you know jam jar I quite like those hexagonal an octagonal actually, an octagonal one.

1:33So I see this in the actual jar is yellow gold but with tiny cognac diamonds set all the way around it so it kind of looks like what the clove jelly would look like. And then it's got a yellow gold label engraved with a tiny little apple with a tiny little white gold bow put around it and we'll just put on the bottom Handmade by Clover. Oh. And so why apple clove jelly? Why apple clove jelly? So I'm going to try and tell you this without getting emotional because it was a very emotional moment in my life. One of the most emotional moments in my life. So I had gone to Balmaloo Cookery School. It was my first week there.

2:26It was a three-month course I did, which was 25 years ago this summer or this January last January um and and it was a lot for my family going there my mother secretly went away and got a loan from the bank to pay for it without telling my father because I'd finished university and they wanted me to go into a proper job and back then learning to be a chef was the only option would be to work in a restaurant kitchen it wasn't like it is now but there's so many options for people and so we told my dad the night before I was leaving to go and he was really upset about it and annoyed about it and cross cross and anyhow off I went and to the cookery school and I came back the first weekend and my dad who was a really proud typical proud Irish man you never ever would see cry and yeah very proud and I had learned how to make apple clove jelly that week at the cookery school and I brought back like six pots and I put them down on the kitchen table went upstairs to take off all my chef gear and change into my clothes and I came back down and my dad was sitting at the kitchen table with his legs folded like this and his hands in his hand or his face cupped in his hand and he was crying and I got such a fright when I saw him crying and I thought that I was really stunned and it took me a second because I thought something had happened to my mom or to my brothers or sisters.

4:05He never seen him cry before. I'd seen him cry once before when my granny died um and and he I looked in the pot of the apple clove jelly had been opened and there was a spoon kind of put it all kind of all over the place on the on the kitchen table and I said dad are you what's happened just tell me and he goes no just give me a second and I said what is it and he said he said it's just it's the um I'm getting emotional now he said it's the apple clove jelly I haven't tasted that taste since granny used to make it when I was growing up as a child and it was just amazing it was just that to see him to see him emotional and let himself go and to see that this very simple thing of an apple clove jelly the taste had brought him straight back to that moment with his mom and and at the time I didn't think about the significance of the food or anything like that I was just I was I was so happy at that moment even though it was all emotional I was so happy to see that my dad had this wonderful memory and moment with his mom you know right there in the kitchen with the apple clove jelly and and then what I didn't realize is that that moment stayed with me forever and has been in my thoughts and in my mind forever more you know I think we have these moments in life and we don't realize the implications that they have in us um and what that did to me is that it really grounded in me that what food can do and the importance of it and the memories that evokes clearly and the memories that evokes and the skills the old-fashioned skills and to keep up those traditional things and um and making something for somebody like you make jewelry you know or making food making with your hands something for somebody um and that love that goes into it and what it does and it never leaves people it never leaves people I didn't leave my father and that immediately from then on I I never ever looked back on food it was always my and was that I love and and having been a bit ambivalent to say the least about you going to cookery school yeah was that a moment where he was like oh it all changed it all changed over the apple clothes it all changed actually just talking about that bally maloo yeah you mentioned bally maloo um i suspect this next charm has got to do with that but i just want to ask you what is it about bally maloo because over your years it's become utterly legendary all around the world yeah what is it about bally Maloo it's actually very close to home for you yeah um it's magical um it's what it's magical because um you know Doreena Allen who is the founder of the cookery school along with her um brother Rory O 'Connell who now owns the cookery school he just took it over um and all of the Allens the late Myrtle Allen and the late Hazel Allen and and Rachel and everybody who's involved at Ballymaloo there they are there for the love of teaching and making a difference in the food culture but also that links into farming and the environment and our water and everything so it threads there's a thread throughout it it doesn't doesn't just stop with food um there's no ego there they're they're Quakers so they've got this wonderful family work ethic together everybody does something so it's quite a magical place to go and I was so lucky to be there in the end for three years um and I'm still incredibly close and they're like they're such a big part of my life and always will be this brings me to your next charm this is a yellow gold fish skeleton so so the fish head and then the tail at the end but in between all the bones and they're all articulated.

8:12It's got a little black diamond eye. And then down one side of the spine, I put little white gold, tiny little garlic flowers. First of all, that's so amazing that you've just created that. So that was a big moment for me because when I finished the cookery school, I got offered a job to train as a chef up in, or as a chef, but that was my chef training really, at Balmaloo House. And at the time, the head chef there was Rory O 'Connell, who is one of my lifelong best friends. When I got to Balmaloo, they gave me a little cottage to live in. And then Rory got me a dog. And so I had my dog. I got him and I became part of their family very, very fast.

9:02Yeah. And the work was so hard, but I didn't mind. was so young and so so young and so much energy 24 oh yeah yeah yeah yeah this 35 years ago like so much energy and so enthusiastic and you know we'd come into work at 10 in the morning we'd finish at like 12 at night you know and it was just physical yeah you know big pots and everything and I was tiny and um I think at the time I was the only girl in the kitchen I bet you were kitchen yeah because things have changed a bit yeah yeah um and for the first year i was just on the soup section so i was making soups for like 140 people every day we're making batches of aioli or prepping vegetables and you know you that's your kind of beginning part and then one day what i think it was one of the somebody called in sick or something happened can't remember exactly the detail but I was put into main course fish so I went from there over to main course fish you know when I look back now I'm thinking why wasn't I terrified why was I nervous I kind of break down going I can't do it I was so excited I just couldn't believe it couldn't believe it I'd be on so I remember I ran down outside right but Balmulia House is here and then like all these wonderful kind of wild gardens and woodlands all around and the stream running down where there was the most amazing patch of wild garlic so I ran down there um and picked massive buckets of wild garlic leaves and then all the beautiful pers white flowers yeah so beautiful and then I got I did it so fast it came back up and I had them all and I said I'm gonna make wild garlic butter to go with the black show why hence your black diamonds and I made a maitre d butter with the wild garlic butter and blah blah blah cooked off the fish and was my first plate going up and And I remember I wanted it so beautiful and so clean.

11:00The fish was so fresh that it would come in from Ballycotton, which is a local fishing village, which is only five miles away. And I remember what I had learned there is the most important thing is not you, is actually the ingredient. And that don't overcook it. You know, don't over season it. Don't over flavor it. It has to, you have to be able to taste the beauty of the ingredient. But everything had to be perfectly cooked. you know people were coming to Balmain Loot for perfection. Black sole is quite a rough skin, it's quite a tough skin and peeling it back and then gently pushing the fillet off the bone and onto the plate and then getting my wild garlic butter straight, slicing you know the beautiful perfect round maitre d' and putting on the top and then putting the leaf on it and my leaf, my wild garlic you know beautiful broad leaf which kind of it's a beautiful arch to it, swooped right over the fish like that and then the pert flower went straight up like that and the butter started just gently melting down the back of the fish and I put it up and I thought oh is this too simple and then I put it up and and Rory looked at it and was like yeah that'll do that'll do and the head waitress who was absolutely terrifying and everybody you always have to get you'd nearly be as worried about what Rory would say as what she would say.

12:26And she'd been there forever. Since she was a young girl, she'd been at the right beginning of Amelie and she came up and she goes, well done, Clodagh, well done. Now come on, back to work, quickly, back to work. And I was, because I was standing, I was so happy with myself. And it was that night, then we all went to the pub and I sat up beside Rory and I was just delighted with myself. And he didn't have to say anything to me, you know, because... You just knew. This was my job, it was my work and that's what I also learned as well is that you don't need to be a pat on the back for everything in life.

12:55You know, you just need to feel it. So has that really informed you in terms of what you said about the flavour being all about the ingredient as opposed to everything else that goes with it? Always, ever since then when I then went on to work in farmer's markets and worked with Slow Food in Italy and came back and had my own restaurants and then setting up the farm, it's always been about that. And I veered away on different things so many times as you do as chefs, but I've always come back to myself of really, I'm most comfortable and my most love is the simplicity of dishes because you can really, it's so, when a chef cooks like that, it's like they're naked as in like they can't cover up anything.

13:47you they have to be able to execute it so perfectly your next charm is I think represents your mummy you said I'd like to I remember my mummy is dancing so I've um I've done it as um a pair of Irish dancing shoes yeah which is quite difficult to do I bet it's quite difficult to do um so i've done them really in white gold three-dimensional um a pair of shoes hanging from an outline of a shamrock three little emeralds in it oh so special and the shoes um are three dimensional but they're all uh with black pavé diamond and the and the and the white gold laceties And on the bottom, I've just engraved Mum.

14:38But I'd love you to tell me a bit about your mummy. I have her spirit and her, you know, which I really guard. So my mum was a dancer. She was an Irish dancer. She danced for three American presidents. Wow. She's so incredible, like such amazing rhythm and also an incredible voice as well. She and I have had this incredibly close relationship all our life, whereas we're mother and daughter, but also soulmates and best friends. And we've had that from as long as I can remember, this extraordinary relationship. And everywhere I've gone, she's come. So from when I started my career doing cookery demonstrations, she used to travel with me and sell my cookery books afterwards to photo shoots in France for my book.

15:31She would come with me and be there making cups of tea for everybody. But what she instilled me from the very, very beginning, and I was so confused when I was finishing school of what I wanted to do. She sat me down and she said to me, really don't worry about the exams. It really doesn't matter. I really don't mind if you become a hairdresser or a dancer or a banker. I don't care what you become and I don't want you to care either what I do want you to care about is that whatever you do you love it you know like as I'm growing up everything was work and not easy and and hard but she would always find these moments of just kind of like it's like craziness but like safe craziness I don't know she had this thing in elevators so every week we'd do the shopping in a place called Root Stores in Cork which was the big shop in Cork and we'd go in and we'd go into the elevator and the minute the elevator doors would go and she'd wait and she'd let other people go in and she'd go no need to take, I'll get the next one, we'll get the next one which would be standing there kind of place all the children so excited around hanging on to the trolley and then we would go in on our own and she'd be pressing the button really quickly and I'd think about it she was only like 30 something like with all these children and and she'd press the button and the minute thing would close then she'd go okay and then we'd all have to do the Irish dancing in the elevator and she would always park at the top level of the car park especially so we would have a long lift that created this like gave me this like love of and I still do it I still lock myself in a room and put on my head speakers and dance so that your extraordinary kind of effervescent spirit and your whole demeanour comes from this, it comes from this extraordinary confidence she gave you all and she gave me this she really developed a spirit for me and I remember her saying to my sister in front of me and she was saying we have to guard Clodagh's spirit you have to promise me the most important thing is that clueda spirit doesn't get damaged and I always remember thinking god that's like so self-indulgent to me as I'm like mom is like slightly obsessed with me and now I understand what she think and I always thought about it since then she said it and it was a big thing that she said to my sisters and my sisters have always been that way then about me always allowing me to do what I want to do and kind of protect me around it and generous on that and generous on their part as well I mean, your spirit is kind of infectious, I'd say.

18:20Clearly, you took that to heart because you went on and opened how many restaurants? Yeah, three restaurants. Three restaurants. Yeah, three restaurants in Ireland. You were on a cookery programme. Just tell me a little bit about. So, yeah, when I left Ballymaloo, I left Ballymaloo to open up farmers markets around the country. So I did a project for about three years where I went around the country opening up farmers markets and had a little cottage town in West Cork and I was just on this amazing journey of nothing could stop me from trying to change the food culture in Ireland and then all of a sudden television started and I Rick Stein was over filming his food hero show and he put me on it which was amazing and then I went on and I was offered my own tv series so I did I made five tv series and I wrote eight cookery books and then I thought it came to a point where I was all of a sudden a household name in Ireland yes and and I was very young I was like 30 and another thing to bring my mom back into this I was walking up Grafton Street in Dublin and all of a sudden And everybody knew who I was.

19:36And I was on the front cover of magazines and all the rest of that. And it was walking up and people kept stopping me to say hello and blah, blah, blah. And then I kind of, I put my mom to the side and I was like, God, this is just awful. And people stopping me. I don't think I can live like this. And she turned around and she looked at me and she goes, shame on you. shame on you are you the luckiest woman alive walking up the street where people want to stop and say something lovely to you how lucky are you at this moment I'm very embarrassed and she looked at me like that and she goes have a think about it and I'll talk to you soon and she walked off got the train from Dublin back to Cork oh my god I didn't see her for like a month oh my god yeah and now forget it standing there slow breath slap exactly and it changed me the effect that it had on me first I was so angry that she had left me in Dublin and I was there on my own and I was kind of standing there and all of a sudden it was lost and this was she didn't have a mobile phone back then and I was thinking what am I going to do and yeah I decided I needed to up my game and I needed to figure myself out so I basically two months later I was living in Italy without a word of Italian and I got a job at Slow Food which was an organisation that I was setting up in Ireland voluntarily and I got a job over initially then.

21:08But that was a moment where I thought I need to learn more about food. I need to respect the position I have more and I need to really embrace it and embrace the love that people show me and give that back.

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22:14Your next charm, I'm fascinated by this charm but you said to me that you'd moved to London and the coach house is obviously a really important part of your life. Yeah. But so so what I've drawn is actually an arch like a like an entrance to an old coach house, bricks, bricks around the arch and then big wooden doors. And I've actually put a horseshoe on the doors. It's in yellow gold and horseshoes got little little diamonds in it. and those are the handles and inside. So it's a locket. So inside it, it just says Highbury, is it Highburyfield? Yeah, Highburyfield. Highburyfield, London. But it could have it could be engraved with anything in it.

23:04But just tell me about this. Tell me about the coach. So you can hear it. Well, I'll tell you how I got there because I was initially Then I came back at the restaurants for seven years. And then all of a sudden I hit a wall. I was exhausted from the restaurants. I'd gone from being a chef in the restaurants to become a manager. And it was like 138 staff. And I had no days off. I was working seven days a week. I was so exhausted. I completely lost who I was as a person. So I went to London thinking, I'll come here for a few months and then, you know, go back to Ireland again. But I didn't. And I found this coach house, which I fell in love when I walked in the doors in Highbury Fields.

23:54Everybody was like, are you mad when I walked in there? Yeah. And also the coach house itself was like this windy stairs and it was literally a staples of like three floors. and it was so beautiful and so charming and the feeling when I walked in there I knew it immediately this is going to be my home I moved in there I made it mine and I decided when I was in there that I was going to get back to myself and do everything to um to kind of give myself love basically to fall in love with myself again I made a baked bread every other day I had people over for dinner my little supper parties that I did I had about like four or five times a week and we did sing song afterwards basically how my mother grew up so I'd cook all the way during the day and then I used to have a supper then because then I had to pay the rent as well so I decided that I would have supper clubs where people paid to come in and have supper at the coach house so I did about eight of those a month and that covered my rent and my little pocket money and that's all I needed and so I just got creative cooking cooking making friends and loving myself and there were definitely dark times during that time as well where I felt low and very alone you know weekends and things like that when everybody's doing something and but I got through all of that and it made me so strong and it made me be okay to be on my own the next thing I know is we're talking about your next charm which which clearly is all about new york it's the logo for n bc how cute describe the logo listeners for nbc but i think there's a peacock yeah it's a peacock clamor um and it's all its uh its wings are out and it's all different colors and so i've done each part of the wing as it opens in yellow sapphires and the next one in orange sapphires all kind of pavé and really small tiny little micro pavé stones and then we've got little rubies and then amethysts pale uh pale purple amethysts and then blue sapphires and then Savorites, which are lovely green colour.

26:21And the actual bird in front is textured yellow gold and he's holding from his feet a little, a tiny little seed pearl. That's just because I love movement in my charm. But, I mean, Clodagh, it's quite a thing to go from being, having a tough time. Yeah. To the next thing you're on NBC, cooking on the Today Show. Were you absolutely terrified? Because it's live, isn't it? I was terrified. Yeah, I was. So it was Rainy Farrell, who was the producer on the Today Show, and still is. Right. She's such an amazing woman. And she had seen me on the Rachel Ray Show. I've been on the Rachel Ray Show. Also American.

27:06Also American. Huge daytime show. All my TV series I had made in Ireland got all bought up by NBC, and they made them into one long series called Clodagh's Irish Food Trails. that got huge viewership in America 15 million views on that one and that opened up the gates to America for me and I got right up in Forbes and all the rest and and I was on Times Square Billboard on Times Square and everything so it was really exciting time and then the Today Show asked me to start coming if I would come on the on the Today Show and I was so excited flew over well I didn't realise that that would begin me becoming a regular on the show which then happened afterwards but the very first time I went on that show and I was so used to doing pre-recording, not so used to doing live, which is a completely different game to doing pre-record because pre-record you're relaxed, everybody's quiet and wet, when you're in an atmosphere of live television there is, the energy is up here as an audience is there a live audience no there's no audience but even so um and which is probably harder because you've got nobody but you've got to remember all the time applause yeah exactly and with the and with the today show at the time watching you it's about 20 million this morning is 5 million and then worldwide by the time it finishes about 50 million because it goes all over the world yeah and so it's um huge pressure and I arrived up early in the morning like six o 'clock in the morning walking up into Rockefeller Center and there was like everybody getting they always do a live once a week outside of a performance and it was Jennifer Lopez performing and I was like oh my god and they were like yeah it's exciting she'll be performing and then we'll go to the cook so I'm like yeah I'm following Jennifer Lopez here I am no little Irish girl here in New York just off the plane from London and I was like Grant yeah of course and I was up there and it was Al Croker who's the most amazing have you watched the Today Show ever yet you know the black presenter yeah Al Croker's always doing the dance yeah anyhow I was standing there with him and I felt overwhelmed with nerves and you're when you're doing the Today Show and you're cooking you're up on the second floor at least you know last few years I mean You're up in the second floor and the main floor is down here.

29:34So you're up in your own space and you've got about like 12 cameras all around you space like this. It could be a space like this. And you have you can't make you can't make a mistake. Like on this morning, you can laugh and all the rest. We made a mistake on today's show. It's like no mistakes, Alvin. Like we are the number one morning show in the world. Like this just doesn't happen. And we rely on huge sponsorship before you and after you. Yeah. and if anything goes wrong sponsorships go you know and I just got overwhelmed with nerves and I was like what am I going what am I going to and I said I have to talk I have to tell him so I looked at Al and I held his hand and I'd never done that show with him before I held his hand like that and I was like can I tell you something and he's like yeah quick baby quick he goes we're coming now we're coming I think we had like three or four minutes something like that and I was like I'm I'm overcoming her I think I'm actually going to have I'm actually having a panic attack right now I'm going to go into a panic attack I won't be able to talk I won't be able to do it and he looked at me and he goes that's okay baby he kept saying baby that's okay baby I'm going to show you something so I didn't tell you what he did did I no and the thingy okay so I'm going to show you this and this is everybody who's watching this I want you to show another person so that we all learn this okay so you look into your hand and in the palm of your hand picture yourself as a child beautiful beautiful child full of all the dreams in the world how much you love that girl you love that girl more than anybody in the world if you're going to be really honest about it take all that love that you have for her and her and put it against your heart and close your eyes and then follow me.

31:22I want you to breathe in for four, three, two, one, hold for four, three, two, one, slowly breathe out for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, In for four, three, two, one. Hold for four, three, two, one. And slowly breathe out for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. In for four, three, two, one. Hold for four, three, two, one. And then slowly out for eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Open your eyes. So what's on your mind? Calm. Yeah, nothing. Yeah. Nothing. It's completely calm. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Yeah, it's odd feeling, isn't it? Yeah. Odd. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what he did?

32:42Yeah. And you went on? And I went down. Flawless. Flawless. No way. Yeah. And that started my whole love of meditation. So do you do that now? I meditate every day, sometimes twice a day if I really need it. I do one in the morning and then I'll do a little reminder mental breathing when I'm getting my makeup done and then we do the show and the show's getting going and all the rest before I do my cook and everything like that the hype of the show is people running in and out and everybody the nervousness, the nervous energy because you've got so many guests coming in who have never done live before so there's a lot of nervous energy around I'm always thinking of my mum to protect my spirit so that's where it all comes back to protecting my spirit, who I am and so about 20 minutes before my life cook religiously I go and I put on my speakers and I go into a full intense anxiety meditation to release all anxiety um and it's it's like my my really intense one and I come off it and I go on to this morning and I'm like Mrs A Mrs A how's everybody yeah and I can be myself that's such a skill because one thing I've learned about about doing live television and it was Michael Parkinson that actually told me this one time at lunch and I was cooking a lunch for him at Fortnum's and he said to me the biggest challenge will be for you to be the same person all the time how do you stay the same person all the time which is really important for me as a person it really matters to me about like who I am all the time consistency in my life so I have down the camera the black camera down here yeah you know when every week of this four or five million people watching on this morning I have a certain woman who I talk to I'm not going to tell you about but I talk to her every week and I cheer up her day and she needs me she really needs me and she needs me to be me you doesn't need anybody fake or somebody pretending or acting like a different person she needs me to be me and I need and I have to show up for her I owe her it and so I have this person and when I go in when I start my live cook every time you might notice it when I do live but I always look into the camera and I smile and that's my smile to her and then she's in the room with me and then whoever's presenting at the time on this morning they're in the room to me and nobody else is in the room it's just the four of us my lovely person watching at home who really needs me that day and the presenters and we cook together and we have a gorgeous cozy loving time together because that's what food is it changed my father's emotions I know I can change her emotion at home I'm keeping my spirit I'm here and I'm doing what I love Clodagh is so powerful.

35:43It's so powerful and so lovely to hear. So I love this little charm. This is about representing broadsphere and the love and attention that went into creating the garden. So I couldn't really resist not doing these little proper miniature trowel and miniature miniature fork. and it's made of 18 karat gold, perfectly formed, exactly a miniature of a trowel and a fork. The only difference is they're both going to have diamond handles with black rhodium around the handle and it'll just be gorgeous. I think I'd really love to know how you met Harry. Yeah, it was one of those, Harry always calls it the sliding door moment.

36:33we were sitting next to each other at a boardroom lunch at Fortnum's Ewan Ventus who was the CEO at the time was a really good friend of mine and um and Harry was there Angela Hartman was on the other side of him so he was squished by two female chefs and we got on so well we were both at a stage in our life he had been um divorced and separated for two years I'd been on my relationship for two years he was emotionally finding himself I was the exact same I'd reached my two-year mark he was about I think it was a bit more than two years and but it wasn't it was just like we got on incredibly well and he had you know he was talking about his world that he loved theater and blah blah blah and I have I have a lot of friends that are in that world and all his friends were in racing and I was like do you ever you must know blah blah blah or do you ever go to this theater that theater and he hadn't and I was like oh my god you've got to do that you know that's your love and I was like come to a dinner with me and I was doing a dinner with Sally Green we were doing a dinner for the Old Vic Theatre together myself and Sally and and we had lots of people in the theatre industry coming and we were doing it at Sally's house the two of us were hosting it and I said why don't you come along to that and you'll meet lovely people and so he came to that and something just clicked that night and and all my friends afterwards were gathering around me going like oh my god you've got a date and he's so gorgeous and blah blah blah and I was like oh he's so different to me as in like oh we are so we're so different like from like the outside looking in backgrounds different everywhere yeah he you know grew up in a very old you know aristocratic British family I grew up in the most Irish you could imagine and so we were so different and I all my friends were either in music or actors or artists or blah blah so different and all of his friends were all in horses we were just so so different but we we we completely fell in love with each other and what we had which actually so wonderful speaking to my sister-in-law who's like my sister now, Carolyn, Harry's sister.

38:46I got so lucky, I got so lucky. But anyway, so anyway, we completely fell in love with each other. But what we realised, and I mentioned Carolyn, my sister-in-law, was that our values are the same. Our values, I love family, I love kindness, I love loyalty, I love that wonderful peacefulness. so I come home and there's never a moment of anybody being anxious or angry or frustrated or whatever he's always kind he always picks up the phone and goes hello my darling in that soft voice he'll never leave the phone call without saying I love you so much like this is like eight years on he is says this every single phone call and he is so calm all the time I can tell him everything in my life I don't hold back on anything he knows every single you know light secret dark secret everything in my whole life and and I know everything in his whole life too and we and with it came three beautiful children who are now my stepchildren and I'm so lucky as well you know with that the charm that I designed really to represent that is it seems a bit trite now having having heard all of that so I've made this like a like a little tiny miniature hamper and inside it's got a little champagne bottle a little red heart because that comes from their chocolate department and obviously amazing totally um sums up um you're meeting Harry and a little uh a little horseshoe to represent his but you've created this incredible life at Broadsby which yeah is all on the High Clear estate.

40:34Yes. So tell me about that. So yeah in High Clear we all have you know or patches and we and or is broadsphere. I mean it really is so magical Anishka a sustainable farm and we have woodland pigs and cattle and chickens and ducks with fluffy bottoms that walk up and down the parade and we've cleared out all of the laurel we have the most beautiful view so all of the beautiful capability landscape is now all back to how it should be and we live off the land we have our own beef and pork or own eggs all our own pickles or garlic or onions or vegetables fruit everything and we pickle for the whole winter time as well so pickling sheds and and our really come back to your version of ballymaloo it seems yeah i know i know it's so true created a version of Ballymaloo.

41:30Yeah I was talking to Doreena about that actually last year or honoured my 25th anniversary when I was over in Ballymaloo this year and at what stage did you put the pub in? So the pub we would walk through the woods and when everything was on its way and we were building the wall garden and restoring it and all the rest and the chickens all in we cut through the woods we've got most beautiful woodlands on our property and so cut to the walkway through the woods and at the very top of it was this fallen down shepherd's hut which had this beautiful view down one of the really big fields that went on to um temple lake and i the foundation is there and you know when you in old buildings i thought about that when you have foundation foundations there well let's go for it we can do it and it had all fallen in and everything and I kept walking past it and saying oh Harry it'd be fabulous to have like in a pub here because we have no good pubs around us and he kept on saying no no no we have enough going on no and he kept walking past walking past and walking past it and then all of a sudden lockdown came lockdown came and I we we in between do you remember there was one lockdown that opened up and we had those few months?

42:50Yeah, in the summer. In the summer. Harry asked me to marry him during that period, which was all very exciting. I never thought I was going to get married. All of a sudden then, I just fell in love with the idea then of being married, of getting engaged. But it was a bit of a shock at the beginning. And then we decided we were going to get married the next year. During that whole period then, I started looking at how much it would cost to do really lovely marquees for our after party, or thingy. I wanted to do it in the woods. And it was so expensive. I said to Harry, I'm not paying 40, 50 ,000 for a marquee that's going to be here for three days.

43:28Anything that's happening to Broadspear has to be here permanently. So I found true or the wonderful wood surgeon brother and I had always had a dream of doing a pub and had a little bit of experience in carpentry built it with me and the two of us did it together over a period of like four months physically you physically back in the nails yeah yeah he did most of it and I was his like assistant every single day we worked on it because I'd no work during lockdown so I could do it everything else everything was built on all our own wood and fallen trees that we'd seasoned so it's completely built sustainably and the most magical tree that broke our hearts that fell down during a storm we seasoned for about two three years and anyhow it is now the big bar so it lives forever the curves and everything every time I go in I hold it I remember the tree and it's there and it's got a fireplace it's got a kitchen it's a full-on pub like a full-on pub and it's called the Cork Arms and we have a magical party there which you are going to be there this year is our St.

44:41Patrick's Day party where we get all hundreds of oysters come over from Ireland and everybody from Bob Geldof to Imelda May to everybody, you know, all the Irish lads are all there in full musician form with their instruments and singing and we dance on top of the bar and it's a whole celebration of Ireland and our culture and everything that night and that's, it's magical, it's really magical. you've got you've achieved so much and you've done so much eight books the today program this morning I mean you could just just say okay enough yeah you could but it doesn't strike me that it doesn't strike me that you're going to say that no I mean I think that women like you and me you know we we don't want to be put out to grace um but and I I really I love doing tv I love the reach and all the rest um but it's like i am i'm really okay with my love is love for life i'm would be really okay if i had to stop if my tv career ended in a few years time or next year i'd be really okay with it it's not like my everyday like my my love is is is growing and having animals around me and cooking at home and and if I can you know pay my bills with that I'm so lucky that is my core like if you took that away from me I'd be really sad anything else is grand genuinely really grand Soda it's been such a joy yes I feel like I've learned so much I've absolutely loved it anyway I could actually talk for another three hours but I know you got to go um but most importantly um as a thank you for coming and chatting to me um i'd like to make you one of those charms and i'd like to know which one you would like it's easy okay it's the can you guess i think so but you told me it's the dancing shoes i thought i thought it would be the dancing shoes so magical so magical i'm so well when when you said to me that that's how you think of your mummy.

47:01I'm like, okay, well, that's what I've got to do. So we'll make them beautifully. Thank you. We'll make them beautifully. Thank you. And we'll just talk about what you want on the bottom, whether you want mum or maybe you want her name or whatever. We can talk about that. Thank you for joining us on My Life in Charms. If today's conversation has inspired you to reflect on your own story, a memory, a milestone, a moment worth cherishing, we invite you to begin your own Life in Charms journey and visit anushka.com to learn more. or get in touch with us at bespoke at anushka.com to start crafting your very own 18-karat gold autobiography.

47:38Until next time, thank you for listening, and don't forget to follow or subscribe to hear more extraordinary stories told in jewels.