Tony Blair

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1:53I'm often asked about the quality I look for when interviewing a chef. Is it the way they make an omelette, bone a fish, or perform under stress? For me, the answer is easy. The quality I look for is quite simply curiosity. The world knows Tony Blair as a visionary leader, prime minister. I know him as a close and loyal friend. But most of all, he is curious. And the first dinner we had for him in our home in 1996, he went straight into the kitchen to talk to a young, inexperienced chef, Jamie Oliver, asking how he was making the rotolo di spinaci. Tony Blair has been interviewed countless times, but tonight on Ruthie's Table 4, we're going to look at his life and his career through memories of food, food and politics, food and family, And tonight, the curiosity is all mine.

2:47Thank you. There you go. So the recipe that you chose is grilled and roasted wild sea bass. Would you like to read the recipe? Sure. I could have chosen 15 different things, but I'm just delighted on this because I like its kind of simplicity. Grilled and roasted wild sea bass serves four to six. one three kilogram wild sea bass, two tablespoons fennel seeds, two lemons sliced, parsley stalks, fresh fennel bulbs trimmed and sliced, juice of one lemon, 75 mil white wine and extra virgin olive oil. Preheat oven to 200 degrees, season the inside of the fish with fennel seeds and season well. Brush the skin with olive oil and grill on a cast iron ridged or oven grill for five to six minutes on each side.

3:44Put the lemon, parsley, remaining fennel seeds in a roasting tin and lay the sea bass over. Drizzle the lemon juice, olive oil, white wine and the remaining herbs and vegetables. Bake for 30 minutes or until the fish is firm to the touch. Delicious with salsa verde. Well done. Thank you. I can read. I just can't cook. I was really, really pleased that you chose this recipe because it's two methods. It's grilled. So you have the char grill on the outside, but then you have the juiciness of actually baking it. Was there a reason you chose it or did you just? Yeah, I often, if I'm in a restaurant, will order fish, just simple fish.

4:26And especially when you, if you get a nice white fish, which I've just been in Greece recently and they do that very well you know you take it from the sea and it's it's a white fish you add a little bit of olive oil and and lemon and it's it's it's very simple but it's beautiful and tasty yeah that's I mean that is the difference I think between Greek Mediterranean food Italian or the south of France is that there's not a lot of sauce you know you just have the great ingredient and then you trust it to be it's like yeah I think it's it's you know It's fantastic when the food is just very simple but well-cooked, well-prepared.

5:05And, you know, it's things like if you – even if you like a tomato salad, which is a very simple thing, but if the tomatoes are really nice and it's done with a nice dressing on it, I mean, it's beautiful. So I'm not a great one for very fancy sauces, to be honest. No, no. Yeah, although sometimes go to Paris and have a delicious kind of turbot with beurre blanc, because it's not bad. By the way, one thing I always say to people, because sometimes people will say to me, what's your favorite type of cooking? Yeah. And I say, I don't have one. Yeah. I mean, I like good food. I appreciate good food.

5:41And I could eat Thai. I could eat Japanese. I could eat French. I could eat Italian. I could eat Greek. And I could eat English or Scottish. So Downing Street is an office. It's a public space. It's a governmental space, but it's also a home. And you were there with young children, and you presumably, they came home from school, and you sat down to meals, or did you not? Did you have a certain way that this was work, and then you would have family time at the weekends? Was there a routine or structure for being a family? Before going into Downey Street, I mean, we did have a much more structured life, but then once you become Prime Minister, frankly, your schedule's just packed and so at the weekends usually when we were through in checkers we would eat all together and that would be great but otherwise it was pretty hand to mouth when my kids knew I was coming on this podcast they said to me are you gonna tell them that you used to cook for us and that your cooking was terrible and I said well no what I might just do is just say that the meals I cooked for my children were memorable.

6:52Memorable, that's a good word. I can't believe it at that. So, yeah, I mean, no, Downing Street was just too busy. There wasn't, or maybe there still isn't a Downing Street chef that cooks breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No, there wasn't. I know at the White House they have the residents, and I know that the State Department is very careful with ambassadors about what they can spend on parties and food. But to have the office of the prime minister, you would think that there was a... Yeah, and by the way, in our embassies, you can eat very well. In British embassies abroad, in the Elysee, you get, I think it's a high quality food, actually.

7:30And very traditional French cooking. You didn't give very many steak dinners at Downing Street that you would be at the palace. I almost took the view with dinners. I mean, occasionally I would do it, and if someone really wanted to have a dinner. But with other political leaders, I mean, I just know what I feel like. You know, when you're engaged with the political leader, I mean, you know, maybe you have a drink together and so on. And maybe you do have a meal together occasionally. But you want to do business. You want to sort out the business of the day. And then if you're a foreign leader and you're visiting and you're in London and, you know, maybe you frankly would like to go out and spend some time with your friends or colleagues.

8:11rather than be within the formality of these dinners, which on the whole I never felt yielded a great deal. Was there any in your memory that was in China or in Russia or in Germany or France? Was there a state dinner that really rings in your memory? There wasn't a state dinner where the head of state, so the only state dinner in the UK would be the Queen, obviously, giving the dinner. And again, the food is pretty good, actually. but I do remember one really memorable meal so France and and the UK and Germany we were all together in this consortium to build the Airbus 380 okay and we visited Toulouse which is where part of the plane was being being built and so the leaders all went there and Jacques Chirac was the president at the time.

9:06And I remember we, after we visited the plant and saw the plane and so on, we sat down and we had a, I think they call it a cassoulet. Cassoulet, yeah, yeah. I mean, it was unbelievable. It was completely fine. What was it like? What was it like? Just with the beans and the meat and the sausage. Yeah, and the sausage. And it was unbelievably good. And the funny thing was, so Jacques Chirac, who's, you know, a big, big figure and someone I actually, despite our disagreements politically from time to time, I lied greatly. But the strange thing about Jacques was he didn't drink wine. He's a French president, didn't drink wine.

9:42He didn't drink wine. And I don't think he was very interested in food. Yeah, that's strange. I mean, and so I was saying to him this, he was talking to me about the Airbus 380, and I was saying to him, Jacques, you've got to understand, this food is absolutely unbelievable. And I think he thought it was a bit eccentric after a time because I was calling the chef over and talking to him and saying, okay, that is a memorable meal. I went to, Richard and I were living in Paris, and David Owen was given a dinner at the Quai d 'Orsay, and we were invited. We'd been to various dinners here, but that one was, there was a footman behind every plasmo.

10:24Everyone had their own liveried footman behind you, and the service and the grandeur of the palace was, it was something to behold. What about in Buckingham Palace? Was that more? It's pretty grand. Did you ever have to have the Queen to Downing Street or would you always go to the palace? Well, we did once have the Queen to Downing Street when myself and the other prime ministers, people who've been prime minister, we all had a dinner with her. She said, well, you all know each other anyway. But yeah, that was true. I don't remember the details of it. And now on your travels, you know, coming up to now, do you have a kind of routine or do you have a way that you eat when you're travelling, when you know you're taking a long flight?

11:13Do you eat on the flight or do you not eat? I mean, I will eat on the flight, but I think if I go to anywhere, I mean, you know, for example, in the Middle East, I will try and, if I've got some spare time, then I would try and have a dinner in a good restaurant. And what is it like, the food? I mean, a lot of the restaurants you get in the Middle East will be restaurants where they're serving international food, if you like. But I think one thing that's happening around the world is a lot of, you know, you get emerging new cooks and chefs cooking traditional food from their culture, but they're doing it in a much more innovative and exciting and interesting way.

11:52I had actually a great meal not so long ago because my institute now works in over 40 different countries. We're very busy around different parts of the world and we have a project in Guyana. And there was a restaurant there that it was suggested I went to. I said I knew I had an evening free in the capital city and so I said, what's a really good restaurant to eat in? And they said, well, you know, there's this place and there's that place, but the very best food is this place, the backyard. But it's not suitable for you because it is literally a backyard. I mean, it's someone's, it's a small house and it's the backyard.

12:30It was a backyard, but the chef was fantastic. There were fruits that I'd literally never tasted before. And the food was just exceptional. and I think wherever you are in the world, you can today, you will find people who are innovating in food and I think it's a very good and healthy thing and I often say to the leaders I'm dealing with, if you are giving a dinner for visiting foreign leaders, serve your local produce and your local cuisine. I remember when I first went to China, used to go there and they would serve you Western food, They'd serve you a very sad-looking lamb chop. And I remember having the conversation with them saying, you've got one of the great cuisines in the world.

13:16Serve that, which I think they do far more now. But it's an important thing if you want to showcase your country. The cuisine's an important part of the culture.

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15:24You grew up in Edinburgh, was that right? Well, I was born in Edinburgh. I went to school in Edinburgh. My family came from Ireland, but we spent a lot of time in Glasgow, and then Durham, the northeast. So we were kind of a bit of a mix. And what was your memories of food in your house? Who cooked? So my mother cooked, and when I knew I was coming on the podcast and going to speak to you, I could remember some things, and then I asked my brother and my sister for any of their memories. And, oh, my goodness, there was a whole explosion of information. Family Blair here. Yeah. And I've completely forgotten things like my mum cooked curries, which is quite unusual for British people to do in the 1960s.

16:10She introduced me to Kedgeri. She did a wonderful Toad in the Hole. Toad in the Hole. Yeah, Toad in the Hole. That sausage with a kind of custardy batter. Sort of batter and things around it, yeah. Spaghetti Bolognese, you know, the classics. Did she have a career? Did she work? No, but she was actually a super good cook. Yeah, sounds like it. Yeah, and gave me that love of food. What was it like in your house? Would you come home and start doing your homework and then have dinner around the table? Yeah, we'd have dinner around the table. Every night you'd have dinner. Yeah, pretty much. And I always remember when we would go in, the seaside was not so far away from us in the northeast of England, and we'd occasionally go up from Durham to Northumberland and go by the seaside.

16:50And the great treat was to have fish and chips in the car at the end of a day when usually it was too cold to swim. Cold, freezing cold. Yeah, but she was interested in food, and all sorts of memories came back about pineapple upside-down cake. Is that? Yeah. Baked Alaska, she did. She made it. Yeah, which is actually quite, I think, quite difficult to do probably. What would that be? What year, what decade was that? These would all be in the 60s, early 70s. And would she have come from a home that cared about food? Well, she came from her father, who died when she was quite young, was a farmer, actually a Protestant farmer in the south of Ireland or in the Republic of Ireland.

17:35And then when he died, her mother remarried a butcher in Glasgow. So we always had good meat. So that was your step grandfather? Yeah, that was my step grandfather. And I remember he'd had an accident when he was young. So he had a limp and walked with a stick. And some of my earliest memories were going down to the Glasgow meat market with him when he would go in. You know, you go down these great rows of carcasses hung up and he would tap them with his stick and decide which ones he wanted to take for his business. Yeah. So, yeah. And my grandmother cooked as well. You know, she cooked stews, roasts.

18:17I mean, very traditional stuff. Yeah, but to grow up in a house where one night you had baked Alaska and one night you had pineapple upside down cake and a curry. So was the curries, do you think that was just from her ambition to cook or did she? Yeah, and I think it was because she was, I mean, I think at the time not many people were making curries. I mean, obviously later it became completely different. I think she had the Fanny Craddock cookbook. I have a chef here who said that she's from Wales. and her mother entertained, she had to do those kind of rolls of butter. And there was a kind of, I think there was probably a resurgence, you know, of cooking maybe in the 60s.

18:59Also probably after the terribleness of rationing. Yeah, the rationing, the war. But people did, although the great leap forward in Britain, I think, came later, late 80s, 90s. It really started then and then, you know, because, I mean, Britain today, you can eat well. But there was a time when, frankly, it was a struggle. But I always, I never come down hard on the British for that because they did come from a war and they came from rationing. And so I always say cut them some slack when people say how food, what bad food was until. Yeah, it was also, I think there was this thing at the time.

19:39I remember I used to have this debate quite often because I represented then a northeast constituency near to where I was brought up. And, you know, now it is much, much better, by the way. But at the time when I first came there, I mean, the food was poor. And I used to have this debate with people where they'd say, yeah, but, you know, working class people, they're not so interested in fancy food and all the rest of it. And I always used to say, I can't believe anyone's not interested in food. And, you know, it's a ridiculous piece of snobbery to think that if you come from working class background, okay, maybe you can't afford some of the fancy dishes.

20:14but why would you want to eat bad food rather than good food? And it's very patronising and, as you say, kind of... And it turns out it's wrong because now a lot of these places have got good pubs and restaurants and do well. Did you go out to restaurants as a child? Would your parents take you out for celebration? Yeah, occasionally. Would they be for special occasions or would you just go? But, yeah, we'd have to be pretty special occasion. And then when we would go on a holiday to France, for example, we would eat in restaurants there and that was great. So your parents took you to Europe? Yeah, took us to France.

20:48All three of you? Yeah, all three of us, and we would drive down there and usually rent a little place. Certainly then, in a lot of the small villages, we used to go to the Pyrenees a lot, and in the small villages there, you would go to a restaurant and there wouldn't really be a menu. Sometimes you'd sit at a long table and there'd just be whatever they had, but it was always good. What did your father do? What was his job? So my father was a lawyer. He was also an aspiring politician. He was a conservative, in fact, and he was head of the local conservative association. And then just before the 1964 election, he was going to become an MP.

21:26He'd been selected for a good conservative seat. And unfortunately, he had a very serious stroke that kind of ended his career altogether. Did he? How old was he? He was 40. No, he had a stroke when he was 40. How old were you? Ten. So it was quite a big moment for our family, obviously, because all our circumstances changed overnight. But, you know, he then lived for, you know, another almost half century, actually. And was able to travel to France and take you on trips. Yes. I mean, he never fully recovered, but he recovered enough to be able to work again and so on. But I remember conversations around the table.

22:05My earliest political conversations were around that table. Were they? They would have aspiring conservative politicians would come and pay him a visit because they would want nominations in the local constituencies and so on. Usually young conservative, those who wanted to be MPs. So some of my earliest conversations around politics were just absorbing that, I guess. Yeah. As a child to be around the table. I did an interview with Valerie Biden, President Biden's sister. and she described having, that was orchestrated in a very, there were I think six children, there was a very Catholic Irish family, and that every night there was a conversation about a political issue.

22:47Did that, meals around the table, did that matter to you? Yeah, I mean it was, I guess my earliest political memories were doing that. I mean I wasn't particularly part of the conversation, I was just listening to it, but I was aware of it and I remember things from it and I remember some of the people that came. And your mother would cook. And she would cook. And the children would be there. They'd be present. I mean, I also had a feeling that my mum was not fully signed up to the conservative course, actually. Maybe not, yeah. I mean, she never sort of expressed a view particularly on it. That was always my impression.

23:22But, you know, the food, I mean, she would cook the food, obviously. When you were young, you went to boarding school at what age? Thirteen. Was that a big change for you to go from these very domestic, cosy dinners, family dinners to a boarding school? I mean, the absence of good food was only one of the changes, as it were. It was quite a, I mean, look, I always say to people I got a good education at the school. So I'm grateful to the school for that. But the food was awful, I'm afraid. The only thing they could get just about got right was the breakfast. Because you got porridge because it was a Scottish school.

23:59and the one thing I do remember is that the bread rolls that they would have would usually be fresh. The breakfast weren't too bad but some of the other meals. Did they force you to eat as well? Did you have to finish? When you're a young teenager growing up you're hungry so in the end you'll eat pretty much anything. Which we did. But you know during holiday times of course I'd come back home and you'd have half terms. I remember I also had, this is interesting, So my father was actually brought up as a foster child. He was, his real mother left him with someone because she was on the stage. She was an actress.

24:42And anyway, it's a long story, but he never got given back. So he stayed with my foster grandmother. But we used to go through, because the school was in Edinburgh, we used to go through to Glasgow where she would live. and she lived in one of the corporation flats in Glasgow. And I remember there was always a treat with her, Scotch pie. It's kind of like a mutton inside a crusty pie, and you'd have it with baked beans. And Scotch pies, I mean, it's years since I've had one, but they're actually really good. I remember that. You'd have it hot. It was a hot dish. They'd make them, you know, it's like the Scottish loaves, I remember as well.

25:24they had a different type of loaf in Scotland where the outside of it would be much, the crust would be much firmer and stronger. It was very good bread to toast. From Fettis, coming home and going to that school, you then took a gap year? What did you do? I took a gap year. I came down to London and I did various things, you know, with music. Well, tell me, what did you do? Well, for a time I worked in Barker's food store down in the basement. Is that in Kensington High Street? It was in Kensington High Street. And then myself and a few friends used to manage some groups and put on some gigs and things.

26:11And we started to make enough money so I could give up the Barker's job and did that for a year. And you had your own flat. Do you remember any of the food experiences you had as a young adventurer in London? I do remember that I... Can you remember a meal that you had? Yeah, what I do remember was that I had a girlfriend whose mum was a fantastic cook. Oh, that's good. Yeah, it was good because I wasn't eating very well during that. When I wasn't eating there, I wasn't really eating much at all. Do you remember what you ate when she cooked? What I remember is that for the first time in my life, I ate spinach and broccoli and liked it.