Jason Isaacs

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0:35Hello and welcome to Table Manners. I'm Jessie Ware and I'm here with Mum and you're looking glorious in a striped... Would you call that Breton? It is of a Breton range. Of a range, what? M &S? It's sea salt actually. Oh, how are you Mum? Poor M &S, don't even touch them, don't go there. I had to go to Colliers Wood this week. Oh my goodness. But I realised I have an M &S addiction and it's dreadful not being able to order online. Please M &S, sort it out. For people that don't know what mum's talking about, M &S have been cyber attacked. Attacked, and they're not taking online orders. So you actually have to schlep to...

1:10I have to schlep to Colliers Wood. It was quite interesting. Where's Colliers Wood? It's right beyond Tooting. There's a big area. It's got loads of shops. It's kind of fantastic because it's got a huge M &S. It's got necks, boots, all of those sorts of things in Colliers Wood. OK, well, we have... We haven't recorded for a while, have we? No, I want to talk about, first of all, thank you, Ravinda Boger, for inviting me to the launch of the Giacchone. At Fortnum & Masons. At Fortnum's. Oh, my goodness. So good. Yeah. What have I been doing? I've been working on music. I have been eating out a lot of really great restaurants.

1:47You've seen, don't you? I know. Oh, I sung with the Scissor Sisters at the weekend in Glasgow. Looking glam. The most incredible show. Was it fun? And great crowd. Just amazing. Scissor Sisters are brilliant. You can listen to Jake on our podcast. Jake Shears was on a few years ago and has such a beautiful story about the song Mary. So we have Jason Isaacs coming on today, who people will know from being Lucius Malfoy in Harry Potter. He was in The Patriot. He was in The Death of Stalin, one of my favourites. Obviously, the new White Lotus series. Quite a fab storyline in that. and we are talking to him about his new film that he's in which is a best-selling book i've read the book did you yeah when a long time ago okay so the book is called the salt path and it's by rainer wynn and it's about rainer and her husband moth losing everything and being homeless and deciding to just walk the coastline i've never really worked out i might ask him what was the impetus behind walking the coastline what made them do that they had this book didn't they they had a book but i don't know what gave them the urge or motivation to do it so i might ask him that but the character that the character the man that is still alive that jason plays is called moth and he has this degenerative disease and so he's completely brilliant in the film yeah he was absolutely amazing i thought he was and it's really touching film it's with gillian anderson who plays Raina, another former guest.

3:19And it's quite a gentle film and it's quite peaceful. I couldn't work out how they went that far with such small rucksacks. I know. With their clothing. Imagine. Actually, Gillian wore a top that was the same material as a pair of trousers of mine. Oh, fabulous. Well, let's talk to Jason Isaacs about this. I'm going to ask him about that. Now, we got Jason's dietaryism. Well, I think he's going to be my favourite vegan ever. Okay. so you know we love vegans by the way yeah we do mum has completely and we don't mind fussy eaters at all do we darling no we don't um but we got told that jason didn't have any dietries and then we got told that jason did in fact he was a vegan that didn't like um well a lot of things just so we were like okay right what are we gonna do now one way to shut lenny and i up is to deliver the most charming email ahead of saying that you have quite challenging dietries.

4:21So this is what we got. We got an email from Jason Isaacs. Hi ladies, Jason here. The other side of the world on my knees in marigolds, cleaning up my mate's flat I've been staying in. The glamour, the filth. I'm really looking forward to sitting down and yakking next week, but wanting to give you a heads up that I'm a total fucking nightmare to cook for. Genuinely, I'm so, so sorry. If it's any consolation, I don't shut up so you two can just munch away and point me at a mic i'd be really happy with a bowl of crisps and a jam sandwich or we could get deliveroo however if you are going to torture yourselves i'll wash up honest here's the nightmare made flesh i'm a vegan for a start i could stop there obviously as that's bad enough and i hate it why are you a vegan then mate we'll ask okay um but i'm madly fussy like a toddler too i basically only ever ate meat and potatoes my whole life till a few years ago so I don't like most vegetables um which ones I hear you groan I'll tell you here is the list guys courgettes celery in brackets and it's nasty cousin celeriac okay fennel asparagus cucumber brackets I know I know it's a fruit I'm an actor not David Attenborough olives capers definitely other stuff I can't remember well now I'm scared that he doesn't like tomatoes so fingers crossed everybody quite partial to a bit of tofu in any context because I have to be and all the really shit for you fake meat products that will kill you quicker than smoking and spicy stuff especially if you need chopsticks to eat it Jews and Chinese food what is that about bet you wish you'd never ask me now don't you nonetheless I can't wait to meet you um so yeah we were like oh you're forgiven it's fine so I gave him three options because I was just like look let's just make this simple so I gave him three options and one of them was mushroom lamarjuns.

6:07So lamarjuns are Turkish kind of pizzas. You have them and they're so delicious and they have kind of mince meat and pepper on them and onions and they're delicious. Do you say it lamarjuns? My Turkish best mates say lamarjun. Anyway, we're having lamarjun sorry to all the Turks that are listening but mushrooms. So instead of the mince meat we're having kind of grated mushrooms and then I've made some homemade baba ganoush. I've made homemade hummus with crispy shallots on top. And then I've also tried to make homemade flatbreads. But I have got a backup of M &S flatbreads because mine look quite rustic.

6:48No, they look great. They look rustic, darling. But I don't know. They look fab. So that's what we've got. Thanks for cooking, darling. That's all right. And then my son made some vegan cookies yesterday that I thought we could do vegan cookie ice cream sandwiches. Have you got ice cream? Yeah. Vegan? Yeah. So that is what he's getting. So fingers crossed, everybody. You've got a new lemon jug. I know, it's really sweet, isn't it? Lovely. I've even put a tablecloth down today. Why did you do that? Because my friend sent it to me and I think it looks really pretty. It's gorgeous. Jason Isaacs coming up on Tableman.

7:27Jason Isaacs, thank you very much for being here. Will you say that now? well yeah I mean listen you charmed us with that email oh thanks my apologetic email well played I don't eat anything yeah I hate food you hate food because I went vegan so now there's no pleasure left in life I've got a lot of questions for you and I hate all vegetables so okay firstly no I'm going to start with this I've come to your house you've cooked for me yeah I was well brought up and so I was told never go to a house I didn't bring chocolates I brought you both that there which is a little oh my god Oh my God, I love you.

8:01You give us face masks. Little face, steamy face masks. What are you trying to say? Nothing, I've not... I'll tell you. Ladies love a little face mask. That is amazing. I wish I'd had this earlier, actually. Thank you. It's a pleasure. Have you put one on this morning? No, I've not. I've done it this morning. Self-warming steam. I feel very wrong. Thank you. Glow getter. Yeah, it's not great for a podcast, obviously. There's a thing. I love that. I didn't want to bring chocolates or flowers. So you have to lie down for 30 minutes with this on your face. And will I look 20 years younger when I finish?

8:33You'll look like Parker Pace. You'll look nine years old. Exactly right. Anyway, sorry, I interrupted. No, I interrupted. We're all Jews, so we interrupt. Is that just a thing? Do you know what? I heard a brilliant podcast a few months ago about linguistics. And people from the East Coast, and I guess all Jews, interrupt each other. That's what conversation is. You talk until someone else takes the bat on. People from the West Coast or the Midwest don't. And so when they tested people's heart rate or whatever, when we got people from the Midwest to speak from people of the East Coast, they thought they were incredibly rude.

9:01Yeah. They interrupted. Whereas people from the East Coast thought that people were basically brain damaged for not speaking or were uninterested. Yeah. It's just a different kind of cultural habit. I'm just going to go with that. For all you haters on the comments and say Lenny and I interrupt, it's a linguistics actual thing. I think Jewish people do interrupt a little bit more than other ethnic groups. My wife is not Jewish and she grew up in Canada and she often thinks that I'm being incredibly aggressive when I'm just being passionate and Jewish. Exactly. About the salt or whatever the hell it is.

9:33No, but that sometimes her daughter thinks we're arguing and we're just talking loudly. But back to this email. Yes. You were in Australia, were you? Down under or on your knees? You had marigolds on. I don't know why you were cleaning up. Oh, this is not going to go well. So I stayed at my friend's place in Los Angeles. Yeah. And it needed a bit of a deep clean when I got there. So he's a very lovely man and he's very talented in many ways, but cleaning is not one of his talents. So I got there and I thought, I can't stay here. And so I went out and I bought marigolds and got on my knees and I was scrubbing and I thought, the glamour.

10:11In between podcasts and talk shows, here I am. But then I realised I was coming on your podcast and it's all about food and that not only did I go vegan a few years ago to punish myself because life was going too well, but I actually hate most vegetables then you wouldn't know what to cook for me. So I sent you a list of all the things I don't eat, which basically left crisps, essentially. That was quite helpful, and I appreciated that. And you did kind of select, I gave you three options, and you selected something. So I feel like... It was a dealer's choice. I said they all look good to me. Okay, that's really sweet.

10:40So can we ask why you went vegan? Because you seem quite resentful about the fact that you went vegan. If anyone's listening, don't do it. It's a nightmare. So why did you go vegan? Because it was the middle of lockdown, and my daughter, one of whom is sitting in the room, her lovely daughter Ruby, but she was, I guess, 15 and her sister was 18 who should have been spending her first year at university instead of spending her first year locked at home with her parents. And of course, remember, we didn't know how this was going to end, if it was going to end, if the world was going to fall apart and gangs were going to kick the door down in the leaders.

11:09So it was pretty depressing. Just spent New Year's Eve, which is not something you want to do with your parents, and it was New Year's Day, and I said to her older sister, who was isolating a bit too much, I felt, come on, let's do something fun together. let's sign up for martial arts or, you know, let's learn a language or something. She went, oh, just leave it, Dad. And I said, come on, let's do something together. It's January the 1st. She went, I'm doing something. I said, what? Oh, hello, a ghost just entered the room, no? I didn't know that. And she said, I'm doing Veganuary. And I said, I'll do it.

11:37She went, I said, Veganuary, Dad. It's vegan for January. I went, I know. She goes, that's no meat, no cheese. That's all I've ever seen you eat my whole life. And I said, well, I won't. She went, it's not going to happen. And that's all it took. She did it for 10 days. I'm still doing it five years later. I still hate it. Why do you do it? You're that stubborn that you just need to. Because I'm that stubborn. Jessie knows me, yeah. Wow. It's also probably better for your planet. You must have felt better after a month. Otherwise, you would have not kept it going. No, I felt pretty good before.

12:03I miss meat every day. I eat all that horrible fake meat, which is probably worse for you. It is. It's all gross. But, Jason, the whole thing is that it's Veganuary. You can stop after January. Where were you for the last four and a half years? I didn't realise. No, I know. It is pretty good. But I also led a very, very unhealthy lifestyle. And I fly all the time. I'm doing everything I can to ruin the planet in every other way. So I know to be vegan. I can eat one tiny bit of virtue. So you're always on a plane. So which airline does the best vegan food? No one. I don't eat on a plane. I buy the food at the airport.

12:34Oh, what do you buy? Or go to the lounge if I'm lucky enough to be flying business. What do you buy? I go to Pret or something. Or Leon. You know what I used to love doing? It was a terrible confession. Back in the olden days when I started acting, when it was all black and white, they would fire you first class places and now they fire your business but in first class I would always eat McDonald's from the airport I'd buy it, I'd sit in first class, it stinks you're that person and it would make people complain and ask if I had a first class ticket and they would always check my tickets as well and they'd be upset to find out anyway I don't do that anymore it's karma I've got two children one as I say sitting in the kitchen here oh my god Ruby, get on the mic now.

13:17Oh, Ruby, blowing my cover completely. Oh, wow. Come on, say what you just said. Ruby, please come on the mic. He's not vegan for dessert, is he? You left that out with your bloody email. I'll tell you why. So a very good friend of mine, his name is Gideon Raff. He's the guy that created Homeland and Tyrant and Spy. Fantastic. He's a wonderful writer and director. And he's a militant vegan. And the sign-off on his email is, someday we will come to look upon the slaughter of animals as we now look upon the slaughter of men. And he puts that on the bottom. It's a Da Vinci quote, so the bottom of all of his emails.

13:44and he was freakishly militant about it on set when we were shooting and it had like meatless Monday and if anybody broke it they were going to be sacked he said and all this stuff. So when I joined this mad, horrible, masochistic cult I wrote him a thing, no I spoke to him I think on FaceTime and I went, I've joined this mad cult, I hate it I don't know how you live with it, dessert's a nightmare he goes, oh don't do dessert, we can't do ice cream I went, I've known you for years, he went, yeah yeah we can't do ice cream and that little crack I have expanded to a huge open door now for all desserts.

14:14So you prefer dessert to everything else, I shouldn't say. I live for dessert. Yeah, of course you do. That's all I live for. Well, I have done dessert, but I've done a fucking vegan dessert. But I am doing... No, it's better for you. No, look, I've got... Maybe it will satisfy enough. Vegan cookies, that we're going to do cookie sandwiches with a scoop of ice cream. Awesome. But it was vegan ice cream, but I think maybe I've got some Haagen-Dazs in there if you need to have that. I like it when sometimes I'm given something and I don't ask and I assume it's vegan, knowing some part that it isn't vegan but what the hell I you know what like I don't know how this is going to go down with the vegan world that you are so disparaging about it I'm not look the truth is it's better for the planet it's better for you did you ever see Game Changers that fantastic documentary on Netflix yes so I did years ago I was in 2017 or something I was in Star Trek and I lived in Toronto and had this lovely house and so I had all the cast and crew over every weekend I did a huge barbecue and week by week there was always more meat left I could never understand it and they were all watching this documentary What the Health on Netflix which turned them all vegetarian but they didn't want to tell me they thought I'd be upset and said more and more animals were getting slaughtered for no reason but What the Health is a rubbish documentary because it makes all these claims which aren't true and you can just Google it and it tells you all these things that they said aren't true James Cameron made a documentary about plant-based eating he doesn't like to call it vegan he and his wife is their big campaign and it's fantastic it's called Game Changers and you cannot challenge any of the science in it and in it instead of saying this is good fuel this is bad for the planet or these poor animals suffer, they just go, do you want to meet the strongest person in the world?

15:44He's a vegan. Do you want to meet the smartest person in the world? He's a vegan. Do you want to meet the fastest people in the world? They're vegans. And they tell you why. And they have this martial arts artist who is looking to recover from injury. But the bit that all the men remember is they take all these football players, college football players, and they go, how good are your erections? And they go, what? And they go, we can measure them. Measure your nighttime erections. And they give them a vegan meal for three days. They go, I need red meat. And it turns out they've got much bigger, longer-lasting, stronger, as in you can hang weights on them in erections when they're vegan, whether they stay vegan, I don't know.

16:14But that's the bit I remember. Dude, I'm not talking about the prosthetic. That was literally the most perfect segue into that. I'm not going to do it. You're not going to go there. Not today. Excellent. Not today. We're going to bounce right off that piece of rubber. Oh, shame. No, enough. Thank you. Thank you, Mum. So let's take it back to childhood. Okay. Liverpool. Yes, that's right. I grew up in Manchester. Did you really? You both don't have accents. No. Why have you lost yours? I know I have lost mine because my parents weren't from Manchester oh where they're from yeah Northern Ireland and Birmingham wow you don't can you do those can you do them do the accents it's very modern that's great the only one it's great that's the only one I can do and Birmingham was nice fishing chips oh you can do I like fishing skills accents are musical can you do them as well I no she's South London no I think I'm okay no if you can sing you can do accents I can do a good you can sing I can do a miss out Miss Adelaide, yeah.

17:10A poison can develop a cold. Yeah, that's about as much as I can do. So I was offered that. I was offered guys and dogs. What, Miss Adelaide? Yeah, yeah. I don't see why you guys have been putting me in a box. No, he's Sky. I was offered Sky or Nathan at one point to a recast. I went to the, and I said, no, I can't possibly, I'm not a good enough singer. I love singers. I love your voice. When was this? This is years ago, obviously. Not that many years ago, but I said, I got the producer's phone number. I was going, what are you fucking mad? Is this like the producer if you've got too much investment?

17:37are you trying to shut the show down? He said no no I'm sure we can transpose it down and up and I went I can't sing well enough he said people always say that I go no no I love voices I love musicals I bet you can sing I'm the gayest straight man you've ever met in your life all my playlists are show tunes so anyway I said no thanks very much you should do your research and then my wife's grandma was coming to stay for Christmas as she always used to do and my wife goes can you get us tickets for Guys and Dolls and I went and I just turned it down she goes well phone up and see if you can get house seats and I went that's a bit awkward she goes do it so I phoned up and I went, listen, I'm definitely not doing the show, but just so I can make 110 % sure, can I have some freebie seats for Saturday night?

18:13And they said, yeah. So I went with my wife and my mother-in-law and my grandmother-in-law. It was in a wheelchair, so they made a special entrance for us. We got there and they put a side room aside with champagne and oysters on ice and the producer came in with the score and the cast and I went, no, no, no. Honestly, I swear to God, you wouldn't want me in this show. He goes, Anna, just be open-minded because Nathan just talks, essentially. He was ready for a stand-up. So me, so me. Yeah, you could have done it. Nathan just goes, Adelaide, Adelaide. It's not really a song, but Sky's the good part.

18:41So anyway, we watched the show. It's clear within two bars. It's way out of my, I couldn't possibly do it. But they give us the cast CD, which I keep in the car. And it stays there for weeks. And I'm singing this stuff to myself. And my kids are singing along with me and stuff. One day, my mistress goes, you're not thinking of doing a show, are you? And I said, no, no. She goes, but definitely. I said, yeah. She goes, are you sure? And I go, yeah. She goes, then stop singing those fucking songs. You're driving us all mad. I'm like, is it that bad? She goes, yeah, terrible. I mean we can keep on talking about theatre and everything but we need to talk about growing up where you grew up in we were talking about accents Liverpool go on you get it back on track girl sorry I've got to go on then Liverpool who was around the dinner table and what were you eating?

19:23the kind of Jewish food that gave my father two quadruple heart bypasses ten stents and three ablations deep fried and then fill in the blank it doesn't really matter so chopped and fried fish yeah filled fish well so I've got a brother who's allergic to fish so one day a week he would be I don't know what, he was farmed out somewhere and the whole house would stink of fish That's the big problem about cooking a filter fish It stinks You have to wear a shower cap and no clothes because everything smells a bit Thank God my mother didn't do that because I need therapy even more than I do already How was her chicken soup and matzo It was fantastic, all those things were fantastic The reason they were fantastic is they were so rich with taste and spices and flavour and that nothing ever tasted like that.

20:06Nothing I've ever ordered in public ever tasted like that except the stuff that I have made myself. But it was, I mean, we loved grivenous, which is deep-fried skin, but we loved anything that was so thick with grease that when you hit it with a fork, the grease would spray all over the room. We loved potatoes that were, you know, thick with oil. She never learned to cook. No one ever showed her. Her own mother was a horrendously abusive person who didn't cook and also dismissed her all the time. So she taught herself, and there weren't cookbooks. I can't, what am I saying? Of course there were cookbooks.

20:34but whatever she was cooking for four boys and her husband who all ate like pigs wanted two or three portions she had to cook these industrial quantities of food and i think to my shame that i'm not sure i ever thanked her i was fussy my brothers were all fussy about different things i didn't like it if i could see the tomatoes in bolognese or whatever for instance but but it was she made all those things that are peasant food you know she got from her grandparents holland stuff which is carl's foot jelly which seemed then to me as disgusting as it seems to me now saying it but whatever it felt it was the fabric of our our life but i had this amazing experience, I don't know, 30 years later we were doing Harry Potter publicity and we were sent all over the world and I could never do it, and then the last year they said, you know, do you want to do it this year?

21:15And I said, actually I'm free, I was always working they said, you can go to Copenhagen, and I'm like, bloody hell other people went to South America, but I went to Copenhagen, and my wife came, and they sent us some very fancy restaurant one night No, we couldn't get into that one, there was another one called Shea Paul, I think, and the guy comes up so he comes up, he goes, hello mate I'm Paul, from Essex, amazingly and he said, tell me about your childhood tell me everything you ate, tell me the songs you remember tell me the smells you remember and I said well I grew up in Liverpool and I told him the stories and then Emma told the stories about growing up in Canada and each course was some haute cuisine, some Michelin style version of what we ate but it would have a song to go with it and it would have a smell to go with it and he'd come and say close your eyes it's Friday night and your mother's cooking fish Nancy Snouch was playing on the 8th record and then each dish was the greatest possible version of what although it wasn't as tasty as my mum's do you guys watch Hot Ones ever?

22:05I've watched it have you been on it? no I wanted to go on it this year with the kids who play my kids in White Lotus but they had Lisa on you like spicy food mum do you know about Hot Ones? no it's this guy Sean who yeah and he eats different wings and it goes hotter and hotter I can't even have the light one at Nando's but so the most amusing version of Hot Ones this one's season 17 or something it's phenomenally successful on a YouTube show. But the best one ever was Gordon Ramsay because Gordon Ramsay couldn't take anything because he's a proper chef. So he's got a very subtle palate. So he was crying, he was snorting orange juice and eating donuts and the rest of it.

22:44So I'm just too accustomed to my mum's strong taste. So he made us this beautiful meal, but the taste was too subtle for me. I've burnt my taste buds out. I need stuff to taste. Speaking of food, I'm just going to put my lama, I don't know if that, we're discussing whether we think they're called Lama Jöns or Lama Turkish pizzas but anyway I'm just going to deal with that whilst mum asks you more questions so you know White Lotus sometimes they often bring people back in from previous series are you going to be back in it well obviously I would do Mike White's shopping list if he asked me to but if I was, people who saw it I can't imagine that character, I can't imagine who would squeeze him back in well you could, you might be a born again good person yeah well he is a good who says it's that person you've just come out of prison prison yeah and then you why is he going to go for a holiday where is he going to get the money from you've become a priest or a rabbi or something in prison and then you're going to do it in something else do you know what I think Mike is short of ideas you should send that off as a suggestion on a postcard yeah like Jonathan Aitken you know who I'd bring back who Christian who played the hotel manager Fabian he didn't do enough stuff he's a genius he'd disappear all the time go back to Germany he didn't have a giant part and I'd say where are you going I'm just going back to Germany and one point I said what do you do back there?

23:58He goes, I'm doing some work. And I went, what? He's been playing Hamlet, Macbeth and Dorian Gray in rep for German National Theatre for 11 years in productions built around him and his band because his band have had six hit albums out. Oh wow. He's a renaissance man. And that's quite a small part in White Loads. It was, but I would like to see his part expanded because he's a genius. He's an acting genius. So who was your best friend on the set? Well, my wife was there. Oh, she was there. She doesn't normally come to him for some... So you didn't have to chum up with anyone? No, I did chum up.

24:25You know who I chummed up with because she didn't arrive for the first month? It was my kids. Patrick, Sam and Sarah Catherine became like my kids, you know, by proxy and I fell madly in love with them. I still, we texted each other all the time. They are gorgeous, yeah. They're gorgeous people. I didn't expect Patrick to be nice because he's son of a famous movie star and he's such a fabulous grounded person and all three of them. I mean, I became friendly with Christian and John Grice who played Greg slash Gary. Spoiler. Not Walton, is it Walton Goggin? Walton and Amy had the you shoot when other people are off and you're off when other people are shooting so everyone's storyline, you don't get to mix with the other storylines very much Oh how odd Yeah we see it all as one story Sometimes we're all on the beach together mostly, no, you shoot when other people are off and you're with your kind of story group Was that hotel as gorgeous as it looked?

25:16Well it's not one hotel Yes, Jessie's on it It was like ten different hotels so people, mostly the exterior is the Four Seasons in Koh Samui and a lot of people are going there now they're massively booked out particularly our villa they only used the Four Seasons because I've been to the one in Hawaii that they used Maui well that was during lockdown I didn't stay there but I went there so that was all done in one but now they move around different ones so people who go there and go wait a second this bar looks different the rest of the one looks different are going to be very disappointed but it is still gorgeous all of the hotels are gorgeous had you been to Thailand before?

25:47no but I've done it now how did the food? tell me do you know what all my mates said to me oh you'd be in heaven and they're vegan heaven. No, it was bollocks, was it? No, no. We're in these fancy hotels, so they make all these super fancy buffets, and I go, you've got something vegan. They put potatoes out, or they put onions out, and they go, I could do with a meal, you know. Anyway, I ended up having tofu curry pretty much every day for seven months. Green tofu curry. Yeah, green or red, yeah. What about the noodles? Do they have noodles in the same time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pad thai. Pad thai.

26:14They could make you a vegan pad thai, shall we add that? And? And, you know, when you've had it 600 times, it's a bit boring. And you're not really on holiday, really, are you? We weren't on holiday. So I got in a lot of trouble because people go, what was it like? And a lot of the other actors, they're very good kind of brand managers. They go, it was wonderful. Thailand was fabulous. No, you said the most iconic line that has, like, travelled everywhere now. Oh, it's a bit like Lord of the Flies. Yeah, summer camp and theatre camp and Lord of the Flies. Or summer camp and Lord of the Flies. Yeah, because it's a lot of people away from home for a long period of time, away from their families, and it was everything.

26:44It was all the things you would expect in a group of people. anyway all these online Sherlock Holmes has read a whole bunch of bollocks into it and started extrapolating from what they thought they could see in people's photographs about where the fault lines were in our on our friendships it's just complete bollocks they've no idea you're here to talk about a different film oh well that was oh yes I am you're here to talk about you're so professional Jessie it's very impressive yeah she's very good thanks but I'd read the book have you yeah she should have Ray on she's fantastic so the book sorry the film's called The Salt Pole yes and it's a memoir it's not a fictional book It's a memoir of this extraordinary time in the life of Raina Wynne and her husband, Moth.

27:22And it beggars belief. You wouldn't write it as fiction. It's so extraordinary. Have you met Raina? Yeah, yeah. I've spent time with both of them. Does she look like Gillian? She looks enough like Gillian, yeah. I wish I looked like Moth. He's so gorgeous. He just radiates Bonhomie as well. He's so handsome and striking. You were so incredible in it. I'd just gone from watching you play this corrupt guy, Texan, who's about to go to prison and then you're this salt of the earth, warm, it was so beautiful to watch you. That's so lovely of you to say but I honestly feel like I'm 1 % of how gorgeous Moth is in person.

27:58It's like meeting a Slim Father Christmas. You cannot help but fall in love with this man. He's the most extraordinary person. Did you meet him before you started doing the art? Yeah, oh God, yeah. One of the great things about my job is that sometimes this stuff doesn't end up on screen but you get to walk in people's shoes or you get to shadow them, you get to hang out with them, you get to ask them really inappropriate questions that no journalist would ever ask. People tell me things they'd never told their family. And so Moth particularly, well, let me tell the story to the people listening just in case, without spoiling it.

28:25Moth and Ray were farmers, actually from Staffordshire, and they're in Wales. And they had a little Airbnb, but they have two kids who were off at university and his friend, his childhood friend, offered them an investment opportunity to give their kids a better future. So they did it because they trusted him and it was a con. And they ended up in this terrible court case that went on for years and they were completely in the right, but they couldn't get legal aid. They were trying to do it themselves and it's really out of their wheelhouse. And finally it came to this big court case where they had a piece of paper that was going to, all the other people who had been conned in the same way were going to hand this letter over and the court was going to go, oh I see, it's a con, you're fine.

28:59But they didn't give it in time. So they got to court and they were told, I mean really blindsided them, you've got to get out of your house in a week and you've got to give up all your money and you're broke and you're homeless. And they just were in shock. And they went home and in that week when they went to pack up their house, they had a doctor's appointment he's he thought it was the stress of the court case coming up and also he'd fallen through the roof of the barn about a year before so his leg had stopped working his arm would stop working his memory started going and he was kind of his bodily functions were failing and they went to the doctor they thought they'd be told it's arthritis the doctor sat him down and said it's a it's called cbd it's corticobasal degeneration it's a terminal neurological condition and you have possibly weeks or months to live you need to go home avoid the stairs and say goodbyes well they went home but it wasn't going to be their home much longer and they just kind of froze they didn't know what to do and before they knew it the bailiffs were banging on the door they were hiding under the stairs he's a you know grown men and women man and woman and uh and they just didn't know what to do and and this is where the film starts they just were quivering on the stairs and they were holding a box of books he has a brain like wikipedia he's loves books self-educated thousands and thousands of books in his library but he had one book in his hand, Beowulf in his hand and had this box and sticking out the top of the box was a book of a tour of the south-east coast of Britain, a guided tour of walking it and Ray said, let's just walk, which is a bit of a bizarre thing to say to a man who's got one leg.

30:24He's got one leg and one arm. And it's quite hard to watch you as Moth walking because it looks such a struggle. He drags his left foot like, is it his left or right foot? His left foot. Yeah, and he drags it and it's kind of, you think, he couldn't hold the rucksack, he couldn't sell it. it took half an hour for her to move his legs and arms every morning to get him out of bed to be able to stand up but they had nothing and no friends would put them up they spent their last 300 quid on two rucksacks stupidly really thin sleeping bags in a tent and they took off and they froze and they starved and they were rejected by people and they were welcomed by people they encountered acts of extraordinary kindness and extraordinary cruelty and one of the miraculous things that happened apart from them discovering each other their stuff wasn't who they were is his condition started to, I'm going to cry now, sorry.

31:09His condition started to reverse. No doctors understand it to this day. They've scanned him many times. He's done many walks since, but it's not too much of a spoiler because it's not the secret of what happened in the film. It's watching this love story unfold, this mystery. And when they got to somewhere, when it was after six months, they couldn't survive anymore. Someone gave their barn. Because he started to forget again. He forgot all the things that happened to him on this walk that just happened. she wrote down as a 50th birthday gift him a memoir this 500 page memoir of him 300 page memoir and their daughter who saw it went it's really good mom you should try and publish it don't be ridiculous i'm a farmer well it i am gonna cry i'm pathetic anyway it sold millions of copies she's now on her fourth book they've had to do many many walks moth is still alive he's not particularly well but he's alive and he's extraordinary and uh and the film is such a love story to them, to nature, to the mystery of the human body, and to the kindnesses they encountered en route.

32:05The one thing... Don't just spoil it for everyone. No one ever going to see the film. Do you think the motivation was to do this coastal walk? She's mental. Rave, you're listening. What's the matter with you? Yeah, but what... That was the only thing that I couldn't work out, to be honest. One of the great things that I like about the book, and it's up to people if they like about the film, is that I've been in lots of films, obviously in TV shows, and they're constructed. You construct screenplays, and people contribute. They develop. People give them the money. They suggest a traditional narrative structure.

32:36This is what happened to them. And a lot of the things they encounter, I remember seeing one of you going, why would they stick in that bit about the guy who's being mistaken for a famous poet? I know. Because that's what happened. And sometimes it's nice to go and see a story that actually happened, because we're so used to well-structured stories. We know where they're going, and this is what happened to these people. Why did she do it? I don't know. I mean, they wanted some time to clear their heads. I thought I'd missed it. No, no. Why she'd done it? Because I thought... They couldn't get a council house.

33:04Yeah. Because he wouldn't say, I know I'm going to be dead within a year, which is what they'd been told. Yeah. Because he felt guilty saying that. They didn't have friends. They felt they didn't want to impose on their friends and they were ashamed as well. They were embarrassed. They felt disgrace. They stayed briefly with his brother. But essentially they were on their own. Have they got a house now? She sold four books very well. But the irony being... No, no, she doesn't make a fortune, but the irony being, you know, once they live somewhere, his body starts to pack up and his mind starts to pack up again.

33:33So talking about Moth, how lovely he is, when I met him first on Zoom and then in person and then on Zoom a few times, I'm asking him these difficult questions about his body packing up, his bodily functions packing up, his mind packing up. He's a super bright man. And the first time I watched the Zoom back to try and nail down his accent, it's complicated, it's kind of half Staffordshire. I think he had a dad from Burnley and stuff. It's just a mixture of accents. I realised we were laughing all the time laughing and laughing and I felt in a good mood it's like when you listen to one of those laughing machines that laugh people put you know you can't stop laughing and then I realised we were laughing while he's telling me about the most terrible things that a human being can go through what it's like to not remember the beginning of a sentence what it's like for things to blank out what it's like to need help going to the toilet or what it's like and he wanted me to feel comfortable he wants anyone he's talking to to feel comfortable so I go you'll laugh at this Jason it's so funny when I go to try and brush my teeth.

34:25It's not funny. But he's such a lovely man that he doesn't want to impose the pain of what he goes through on his wife or his kids or on a stranger. Where does the name Moth come from? Aha! Should I tell you? I wonder if he'll mind. It's short for something. A very common name. Come on, you can do it. Timothy. Fuck me. No one ever gets it. She's good. She's good. Class act. It's the only one I could think of. No, no, you're right. She does waddle every day and it's working. So I do Wordle, Quardle and Octodal with various people around the world. What's Quardle and Octodal? Quardle's four, Octodal is eight.

35:00I do Jeff Pope who wrote Archie, the Cary Grant thing. I do Wordle, Quardle and Octodal every day. I also remember you looking very dashing. I think I first fell in love with you when you were in Death of Stalin. Oh, you found that? You were very handsome in that. Very dashing. You wore a nice uniform. He's a monster. But you look so good. You've got issues. Yeah. You look so gorgeous. Well, you like a man in uniform, obviously. No, I didn't think I did. I'm learning a lot today. I like a Jew in uniform. A Jew in uniform. Can I tell you why I'm not flattered by that? Why? Because I had my chest and arms and shoulders padded in that uniform.

35:35Oh, I wonder. To look like Zukov. And I'm so much more like Charles Hortree than I am like Brian Glover, which I modelled it on. Who directed that? Amanda Yannucci. That's why I went. Yeah. It's fantastic. But also my daughter acts and she'd been in a film with Rupert Friend. Oh, Rupert, who's so funny in that. I didn't he was very funny he practiced spitting the character tries to spit at somebody on his back and it lands in his face he practiced and practiced and practiced he lay there on his back in the trailer spitting in the air making it land on his face over and over again talking of which look at this delicious food yeah okay very good would you like to do a podcast when you're no I've been asked and I feel the public shouldn't know who I am they won't believe me in character what I do like about you is that you are an open book which I do think is quite refreshing well this is the public version of me I'm much more of a dick in private anyway here we are is he a dick?

36:29don't ask my daughter yeah but she would be very honest and say oh god so Rube honestly you've heard me do a million interviews and stuff like that do you think that it's really me that the public hear come on well now I'm offended that we're not getting the real Jason Isaacs I think I'm less I'm much bitchier I've been asked to do a memoir for instance and all the stories I've got I think you're being quite a bitch today am I? Yeah, I don't... But I'm not naming names. I'm not naming names. Sorry, Rupert. I do think in private, you are a bit of a gossip. Oh, no. It's true. It's true. Yeah. It's true.

37:02Yeah. Don't mime at me, Lenny. I am too, she's saying. Okay, so listen. We have Lamajans. People listening, it looks amazing. That's very sweet. I've tried to make homemade flatbreads, which I've never done. That's an M &S one, so you can take your pick. I won't be offended. I'm not touching the M &S one. Okay, fine. But that's a mushroom pepper. It's quite spicy, Mum. I'm sorry. Awesome. Some homemade hummus with some crispy shallots, baba ganoush. Fantastic. And then a kind of onion, tomatoey sumac, nigella seeds. So this reminds me of a fabulous showbiz story, I can tell you. Yeah, great. So I did this film, Black Hawk Down, for which we all went training with the Rangers in Fort Benning in Georgia.

37:40It was a real honour. The survivors of that battle came and the family members of the dead. And we felt a keen responsibility to try and not be showbizzy and tell their story honestly. and they gave us all a ranger coin and this note was passed under the door supposedly from their dead colleagues and it said, please tell our story true. I don't even remember the bad grammar of it. It's very moving. So anyway, we arrive in Morocco and I've been, it's like a week-long improvisation. I've essentially been like their commander for the week. All the boys played along with it, you know. So we get there.

38:09We're on a big coach going from the airport. We pass them at McDonald's and the Americans are like, ah, it's going to get McDonald's and I go, no, come on kids. We're in Morocco. Let's have Moroccan food. So we arranged this meal that night where we all go to a proper old Moroccan Riyadh and the guy with the Tommy Cooper hat and the lantern leads us down the alleyways and stuff. We go into Riyadh and they bring all this mezzet and lovely Josh Hartnett, who's a very sweet man, very sweet boy then, at 21, he goes, hey, Jason, can you order me some, like something vegetarian? I'm vegetarian. I said, well, Josh, those are carrots, mate.

38:37Those are onions. That's eggplant, aubergine, you know. He goes, I know, but it might have touched meat. Could you ask? So, you know, so I, they all speak Arabic or French there in Morocco. So I speak my schoolboy French And I said, can we have something? He's vegetarian. And the guy says to me in French, well, that's a carrot and that's an onion. I go, I know, I told him. But he said, just something that doesn't touch me. So, okay. So it brings out some other, like a purple puree thing. It's aubergine, some kind of, because they do everything with egg yolk. So it's this purple thing. And Josh eats it.

39:05He goes, this is delicious, man. What's it called? And I said to the guy, what's it called? And he goes, some Arabic name. And I said, I don't understand that. Sorry. What is it in French? And he goes, I go, I'm so sorry. and Josh goes I really like to order this thing again man it's fantastic so I said maybe someone else can write it down the chef comes out also speaks tries me in Arabic and French I said I don't understand he said not meat Josh is like two bowls in now he goes not meat it's brine I go it's in brine is it salt water he goes no brine brine from red poor old Josh chokes on his food I said I said not meat he goes it's not meat making you very clever Josh starts crying God bless him Oh my God.

39:45I haven't eaten since I was seven years old. Oh God. That was that. But it looks like this is my point. It looks like what we're eating now.

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41:29Oh, God, that's fantastic. I love a mushroom. Right level spiciness with onions. I love the whole onion. Best thing about being married is that you could have every member of the onion family your whole life. Onions, garlic, leeks. Oh yeah, and then have a... And not worry about it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. She's not going. She can't cite that in court. It's not enough, is it? So your wife is Canadian, did you say? Born in London. Yeah. And then moved to Canada for most of her childhood. And then did a run, I came back when she was 18. Yeah. And what food did you have at your wedding? Well, our wedding is a bit of a...

42:03Ruby's going to pull the face out as they're desperate for us to have a wedding. We were in Los Angeles. she was pregnant, Emma. She'd been sick. She had lung problems and we wanted to fly home. And I phoned my brother, who's a doctor, and he put us onto a lung specialist and the guy said, you need to go to a hospital and have a check for pulmonary embolism right now because you shouldn't get on a plane because she's had two cores of antibiotics, she's still got a lung ache. And we went, and I didn't have medical insurance for her, but I get SAG insurance, Screen Actors Guild. So we went to a registry office in Los Angeles and then we went straight to the ER.

42:35And then she was entitled to it. and then she got medical insurance not that I ever put the paperwork in some rubbish and never claimed it back but we didn't know and you go to hospital there it could suddenly be a million dollars after a week it turns out they did a bunch of scans she came out soundly disappointed she went I haven't bloody well got a clot and I went that's good love that's actually good anyway that was our wedding that is so bonkers to avoid that is an amazing story to get health insurance in America you don't want to go to hospital if you haven't got health insurance my mate Daniel I took him there for the night once took him They just had a baby, so his missus couldn't take him.

43:09So I drove the other side of LA, took him to hospital at like 2 o 'clock in the morning. We left at 6 in the morning. It was 40 grand. Oy. And he had to pay five of it or something, an insurance back the rest. And it was like$60 for each Nurofen and$10 for the cup and$20 for the water. It was a bunch of nonsense. So, yeah, that's why we did it. So do you think Ruby is owed like a proper wedding? They've asked a lot. Ruby and her sister, they've asked us a lot. So the thing is, that's just our wedding anniversary, January the 3rd. but the truth is our real anniversary was Halloween. And we were at drama school together and we went to a stage manager's party and we got behind these Venetian blinds and we started snogging on Halloween.

43:43And that's, for us, that is the night that we became a couple. Were you dressed up? No, we weren't dressed up. Although our feet were sticking out from under the blinds and I do remember other members of our year going, who's out behind the blinds snogging? Someone said Emma and Jason. They went, Emma and Jason? You're fucking kidding me. Give that a week. Anyway, here we are 37 years later. So you should get married on Halloween? That's what I'm saying. I said we renew our vows at a Halloween ball we're all dressed up and Emma goes I'm not dressing as fucking Frankenstein's wife and I went you can dress as anybody you like marry onto an Emma she goes no I'm not doing it but now she's come around she said she will do it and I've said the kids now I said do you want us to have a nice big wedding or would you like an apartment when you're older so we haven't had one can we talk about I'm interested your mother had four boys that's four different Nightmare Four different bar mitzvahs?

44:32Yeah, yeah Like what was your theme? Were you allowed a theme at that time? My theme? I'm not your outfit and your hair Oh, Ruby's burying me Oh my God Were you living in London? It was the 1970s It's not a good look I'm glad that folks are So you're living in London then? Living in Edgeware, yeah, yeah I'd like to know about the outfit That Ruby's talking about Which show? Stonegrove Is that orthodox? It's a reform show I liked it My mum was a very ardent feminist And the fact that the women Made to sit separately In all sorts of synagogues She wouldn't have And neither would I I mean, I saw that to be wrong too.

45:02But what I looked like, I had huge, overblown, hair-dried kind of bouffant hair, a gigantic white collar on a blue shirt, a velvet jacket, large, what looked to me like clown shoes now, and flares, it being 1976. And a gold chain. And a gold chain, of course. Oh, it was a present. It was a Vomits present. Was a mug and david on there as well? No, it was a little ID thing. In fact, years later, I thought, a footballer called Tony Kay in a Paul Greengrass film and we filmed in Liverpool and I was in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool in the sauna and there was a gangster in there talking to me who was looking for Tony Kay because he owed him money from 30 years before but they're the ones, the Paul's guys?

45:44No, no, so he was a guy who, a whole other story you don't want to go into but the point is I was in the sauna with a guy wearing a chain like I'd worn for my bar mitzvah and an ID bracelet, it was 120 degrees in the sauna, I was thinking that is branding you and you're that tough that you don't care My friend got branded in the sauna last week. She had a little initial for her son, Louis. She's got an L backwards. She's branded her chest. Oh, backwards is a shame. Yeah, I know, shame. Same one on the right way round. Nightmare. Have you got any tattoos? Talking of branding. No. Have you? No, no, I'm too scared.

46:16I'd have a nervous break, though. I'm very indecisive. Most of the time I order something at the restaurant just for the waiter gets to the kitchen. I go, actually, you know what? So the idea that I would live with a decision on my body, it's not that real. Are you a Libra? You said that with such insight. No, I'm not. Oh, okay. Do you not believe in astrology? It's not whether I believe in it or not. It's like do you believe in gravity? It's utter bollocks, Jesse. Shut up! Come on then. Of course it is. Tell me why. Jesse's a rose quartz girl. I bet you're Libra moon rising. That's what you are.

46:41Oh, Jesse, shut up. I now sound like Chelsea and White Lotus. The idea that people can be divided into 12 categories of human beings, it's nonsense. Tis nonsense, Jesse. The idea that your personality is determined by where the stars... Or crystals. This was going really well until I just, you know. Let me ask you this, though, because I just stayed in a haunted hotel and it scared the shit out of me. Do you believe in ghosts, then? I don't want to believe in them, but I'm terrified of them and I think one might have sat on my chest two nights ago. Oh, shut up. What happened? Do you want some more, darling?

47:10I don't want more, although it's fantastic. I'll move your plate. Firstly, why were you in a haunted house two nights ago? Well, I didn't know. I stayed in a hotel and I didn't know it was haunted. Which hotel was it? Jesus Christ, where was I? I was in Metz. called mess it's pronounced mess in France and I woke up in the night and something was pressing on my chest and a wind was kind of going through the room it felt like a plane was taking it felt like G-forces were on me and I fought and fought and fought to come back to the surface it felt like I was wide awake wait do you believe in ghosts because I'm terrified I don't want to I don't want to either I do believe in them and that's what scares me because I've stayed in a few so I was in this film called Cure for Wellness and we shot in this compound of buildings oh yes this is the one with eels and horrible.

47:54Well, that series of buildings is one of the most haunted places in Europe and ghost hunters arrive every day and they have to put a barbed wire fence up to keep them away. And it was a series of buildings where Hitler was rehabbed after the First World War and then he used it to rehab the injured Nazis and then when they lost the war, the Russians took it over and they sent all their political prisoners there and they lobotomised them. They called it a psychiatric hospital, but it wasn't. Oh my God. There had been loads of mass murders there and they refurbished one building for us to shoot him, but the other buildings were still dilapidated and I shat myself.

48:23I didn't want to look up any of the windows in case I saw a silhouette there. And I remember, I thought, is it? I looked up what there'd been loads of murders. And most recently, there'd been a serial killing there. A photographer had killed all the models on a shoot there. And it was, and I looked further, I searched online, and it was for a fetish magazine. And he'd killed them with a frying pan. And to this day, I don't know if the fetish included the frying pan or whether they're on lunch or not. Oh, is he going to fry them? no some of those cannibal people do those things that's what you did to the intruders when they came in yeah that's I hit them with a frying pan anyway I am scared of ghosts and I don't believe so I do magic lots of matter I like close up magic and I like magic I always have since I was a kid and you do magic I do magic yeah but my point is that so I know about what fake psychics is fake mentalism and fake cold reading and hot reading and all this stuff and so I'm disturbed by the fact that there are some things I can't explain because lots of things I can explain where people are on television doing stuff and I'm like, no, that's just a trick.

49:21But there are some things I can't explain in life and I'm relentlessly curious about those things. Can I do magic? Yeah. I'm never far away. What have you got? I've always got cards in my pocket. Oh my God, stop. Okay, well this leads us on to, you've just been at Great Ormond Street this morning, haven't you? I did magic tricks for kids this morning in the cancer ward, yeah, yeah. How did you get connected to Great Ormond Street? So I was in a film with Peter Pan, maybe one of the best films I've ever been actually, which is ironic because it was the biggest flop and it kind of destroyed everyone's career for a while.

49:47How did you play? I played Wendy. No, I played Captain Hook. Who do you think I played and played? Captain Hook and Mr Darling. Mr Darling, not J.M. J.M. Oh, no, but he's not in it. I got confused because you were talking about J.M. Barry and I thought maybe it was involved in it. J.M. I know he wrote it. So he left his royalties to Great Ormond Street Hospital. And in fact, the British Parliament brought in an act that extended his royalties because most royalties stop after 50 years. So money continues to go there. So I have a relationship with Great Ormond Street and I get to go and help them raise money.

50:19It's an amazing, magical place. It's the best place to send your kids if they're sick. Hopefully nobody listening will ever have to send their kids. If you do, there's no better place in the world to send their kids. And they're also a centre for incredible research. And at the moment they're building a brand new giant cancer centre so I'm helping them raise money. But also when I go, if anybody's interested in meeting someone from Harry Potter, I go around and I meet the kids and give them autographs and do magic tricks and stuff like that. So this morning I was with this lovely kid called Alvy and he's been there for a while.

50:47He will be there for a while and he was a Harry Potter man. So it's one of the great joys. It's a bit naff being famous. It feels empty and I get embarrassed by the social status you get when you meet people who are genuinely impressive and do extraordinary things. But if you can use it sometimes to lighten people's load or do something good, it just feels like it's swinging the pendulum. It seems like you do quite a lot, Jason. Growing up, my mum always did something of service. She didn't work. She was from that generation of women who didn't do jobs. I'm sure she would have run a country if she had.

51:15But she did Samaritans, for instance, growing up in Liverpool, where you weren't meant to meet people, but they were always at our house for dinner. And then she did, during the 70s, she smuggled Jews out of Russia. We had a bunch of political dissidents staying at our house. The KGB were monitoring our house. Our phones were bugged. She and a bunch of other North London Jewish women pretended to go on holiday to Russia, and they smuggled in medicine and Jewish stuff, menorahs and stuff like that, and they smuggled people out. They demonstrated in Parliament. They were always doing stuff. When she was older, she never stopped doing stuff for other people.

51:44Now, she was a bit broken, my mum. She'd been broken a lot by a terrible childhood. She was a very damaged lady, but she had a huge heart. She always sided with underdogs everywhere. And she worked for them all her life. And being an actor, I enjoy it. I enjoy lots about it. But I am often ashamed of the way you get treated and the fact you get free shit. So any stuff I can do that offsets that, it's not because I'm a good person. and I'm essentially instinctively rather selfish and I like flattery and all the other stuff that comes with it. But there is a better self in me that knows the more I can do for other people, the less shitty I feel about it.

52:20You really admire your mum. You've mentioned her a lot. She was a nightmare, my mum. She was a very, very typical woman. What was her name? Linda. Actually, her name was Sheila. She went to school and there were five Sheilas, so they called her Linda. Because of that, she didn't give us any fucking middle names. I've always wanted a middle name. I've got nothing. Oh, shame. I know. Did she have Linda as her middle name? That's what they are. the teacher went I'll call you Linda because there are too many Sheilas and she was Linda for all of her life and she resented it so she stole middle names off her there's no more Lindas in I don't know that it's a current name no but they do go in fashion so Lily and Ruby which are essentially upstairs downstairs names they're maids names it was my grandmother's name Lily and then Lily named her little sister Ruby when she wasn't brooking any change we said oh let's write that down and we'll become this she goes no Ruby we said well Ruby's that's definitely on the list and she then renamed all of her toys Ruby Ruby Teddy, Ruby Elephant, Ruby.

53:11So Ruby was always going to be Ruby. It's a good name, though. It's a very good name. When Emma was pregnant with her, we were at the premiere of Black Hawk Down, and a guy comes up to me with two assistants either side, he's got four assistants, and he goes, hey, Jason, how are you doing? Remember me? And tells me his name, which I don't want to say now. And I go, yeah, I do. He was an agent years before. He was the director of a film I'd been in, but he was an agent. I said, oh, sure. I remember, I went back, we came to your house for a barbecue. So I'd never seen a house with a tennis court and a swimming pool before.

53:35And he goes, yeah, could you remember? Is that your lovely lady wife I saw you with? I said, yeah. He goes, may I ask? Is she with child? And I said, she is. She's pregnant. He said, that's fantastic. And I decided, and the assistant went, it is. That's wonderful. That's great. He said, do you know what you're having? And I said, yeah, we're having a little girl. He goes, they're the best. And his assistant goes, they are. They're the best. Girls are the best. He said, do you have a name? And I said, yeah. Well, Lily, after my grandma, I goes, Lily's a beautiful name. And I said, well, thanks very much.

54:03So I said, obviously, if my grandma had been called Bertha, we would have thought differently. And he just stopped and he went, you remember my wife's name is Bertha. And I'm pretty nimble on my face. I can think of some way out of most things and I just had nothing. And I went, oh, yeah. Nice to see you. Right, whilst you talk about the last supper, I'm going to get the ice cream out. So I'm going to give you a last supper. Okay. But I'm going to allow you to transgress. Well, then I'll have spare ribs. For dessert? I'll have spare ribs, a slow-cooked lamb. Yeah. Say the exact ribs, because you have a specific...

54:42Well, okay, there was a restaurant. There was a hole in the wall called a manhong in Edge, where I grew up. Made these ribs. We never knew what they were made of. We never knew what the recipe was. They were so delicious that I have crossed oceans of time. I've driven for hours to go there. I would buy three portions, one to eat in the car outside, one to eat in the car on the way home, and wanted to then share with Emma when I got there for years and years. My brother-in-law, who was a brilliant chef, chef, he was a head chef in restaurants for a long time. Now he has a denim company. He, at one point, went, you know what?

55:11They're the best things I've ever tasted in my life. I'm going to spend a week and I'm just, I'm going to... And which is this restaurant? It's closed down now. It's a tyre shop. And then when I went, I went there and I had a burst tyre and they went, I said, you should come to this restaurant my whole life. My whole family came in. He said, you ate it from this place. Jesus, when we knocked it down, the kitchen was like four inches in cockroaches and dead rats and all. I went, well, whatever they did in there, it's that I've been in search of ribs that tasted like this in some of the most expensive Chinese restaurants in the world.

55:38Never had anything like it. So it's spare ribs to start. No, no, this is my dessert because I'll have a vegan meal. Okay. I still do care. To be honest, I make jokes about it. I do hate being vegan and it is a nightmare and I do miss meat every day, but I do think it is the right thing to do for the planet and probably for me too. So yeah, that's a vegan. Just because we are going to save the world today, it is vegan ice cream. I recognise it from a distance. do you know what vegan ice cream always is and most vegan sweet things are fucking coconut and you sit and you look and it's in tiny writing like they've written your name on a grain of rice who's coconut and you go I don't want coconut do you not like coconut no what not when you pretend it's vanilla or strawberry or chocolate and you look it's not my vanilles are definitely going to pop out don't do it I can't afford to my favourite dessert is actually sticky toffee pudding and ice cream oh really there's no greater dessert in the world do you think yeah with all the sauce that comes with the caramel toffee sauce and a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it.

56:30And your best vanilla is your favourite ice cream. Yeah, yeah. With that. Yeah, yeah. Could you give us a nostalgic taste that can transport you back somewhere? Take me back to my childhood. When I was a kid, I just couldn't go. I still can't get enough of sweet things. I can't have a whole packet of biscuits. I can't have a whole cake without even thinking about it. But when I was a kid, my dad used to, my dad still plays golf. He's 92 though. He rarely hits the ball. But he used to take us on Friday after school. All the men would go to this golf club and throw all the kids in a field with cut down nine irons, buckets of balls and Coke floats.

57:02We'd have a big pint glass with Coca-Cola in it and vanilla ice cream, which frothed up. And I just lived for Coke floats. I remember being in the field with kids. I remember the smell of the grass. I remember the sense of naughtiness. I knew my dad was having a beer with some other people. It was so evocative of other things. Obviously, the taste of my childhood is Friday night dinner. We had different things every night, but Friday night was always chicken soup, chopped liver, roast chicken and potatoes that would give you a heart attack. I miss that. I think that you should write the story about your mum.

57:35I do as well. I mean, it's just a no-brainer. She just sounds fabulous. She was so complicated. And those group of women. Oh, those, yeah, the 35s, they were amazing. These women, they generally smuggled people out of the country and they foxed the KGB. You know what else they do? They developed amongst themselves actual spycraft, how to keep things secret from the KGB, how to pass secret messages, how to smuggle things into the country how to win and how to protest they were extraordinary activists maybe, maybe I don't know, I can write my mum I had such a troubled relationship with her she had dementia at the end, I think I was waiting for an apology from her but in the end she turned back into the sweetest child and I was holding her hand when she took her last breath I didn't get the chance for I guess the big conversation I thought we needed but maybe I got what I what I wanted but I got what I needed in the end.

58:27All the layers of protection and spikiness and anger dropped away from her. Oh, Jason, it's been such a pleasure to have you on. I feel like we could do a part two. I feel like we could be friends. With Jason Isaacs, yeah. Thank you so much for coming on, for being so transparent, for being so opinionated, for being so fabulous. You are welcome any time you have to promote a film and we will feed you well. I'll be back every week. And I've resisted objectifying. You did really well. But I do think you're very happy. No, you fancied a man with a fake chest. And a fake willy. You know, and a fake willy.

59:18Well, I feel like we were just getting started with Jess and Isaac. I think we need a week. Thank you so much to Jason Isaacs for coming on and for giving an anecdote about literally everything. Everything. I loved it. I loved it too. And although self-proclaimed fussy eater, ate everything. Yeah, he was good at that. Yeah, it was good. Lovely to meet his daughter as well. Oh, yes, Ruby. Food was absolutely delicious. It was a bit spicy though. Bit spicy for me. Could only have half. But it worked. It was a really nice lunch to make, actually. Really lovely. Flatbreads I need to work on. Quite chewy, but full of flavour.

59:56No, I thought they were gorgeous. Thank you to Jason Isaacs. His film, The Salt Path, is out this Friday, 30th of May. Go see it. It's really beautiful. We'll see you next week.

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