Floyd and Stein with John Merrick - Last episode!

The Full English

In this final episode of The Full English, Lewis Bassett and John Merrick discuss the legacies of legendary British chefs Rick Stein and Kei

Key takeaways

• Rick Stein is described as a literary figure whose shows provided a comforting, relaxed guide to seafood and global travel.
• Keith Floyd acted as an unreliable narrator, often using performance and 'trolling' to engage his audience.

Main topics

• Legacy of Rick Stein
• Personality of Keith Floyd

Notable quotes

Rick Stein is someone that I've been kind of obsessed with for a long time.

Conclusion

The episode concludes that while these chefs may not have fundamentall

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Hi, I'm Lewis Bassett, and you're listening to The Full English Podcast, and you're listening to the last episode in the series on cooks that have changed the way that we eat. I wanted to get this episode out late last year, so sorry for the massive delay. But hopefully it's worth it. It's an episode on Keith Floyd and Rick Stein. Keith Floyd especially is one of my favorite celebrity chefs and just a fascinating, fascinating guy. I'm speaking to John Merrick who is a writer and an editor. You can find more details about him in the show notes and I'm not going to lie, me and John both somewhat indulge ourselves in pretty long conversation about Stein and Floyd. I think it's pretty interesting, hopefully you will too. I think they're just such fascinating characters, both of them. And as I say, this is the last episode in the series and it's going to be the last full English episode in a while I'm taking a pause from the podcast to write a book which will be about some of the themes in this show. I expect to have that done by the end of summer and hopefully we'll have more episodes of The Full English or maybe another show based on some of the themes in this podcast, but slightly different. That's why in this episode, I'm not going to be telling you to go to our Patreon and sign up and give us some money. But massive, massive, massive thank you to everyone who signed up to our Patreon and has helped to support the show financially in the couple of years that we've been doing it. If you want to continue to follow me, however, you can do so. I'm lewis.bassett, B-A-S-S-E-D-L-T on Instagram. And then there's also Forrest DLG, who's made all the music and done the mixing in the show. You should know him by now. And you can follow him at Forrest DLG. But yeah, thank you to everyone who's listened to this show so far. I've really enjoyed making it and I hope you've enjoyed listening to it. And so here it is, our final episode. Speaker 1 (1:57) John, welcome to The Full English. Thanks for having me, Lewis. This is a real special episode, not only because it's about Rick Stein and Keith Floyd, two people I find, and hopefully you will by the end of the show, also find completely fascinating, but it's basically the last show in the series and potentially for now the podcast at all. We wanted to get this show out before the end of last year. Here it is now anyway. There's no interesting reason for why that's the case, but here it is. Hope you enjoy it. John, you wrote a really interesting article for Vittles all about Rick Stein. We'll start by talking a bit about that, and we'll move eventually to talking about Keith Lloyd. But imagine that someone listening to this doesn't know who Rick Stein is. How would you describe him? Give me a picture of the man. Speaker 2 (2:46) No, it's a good question. It's, you know, Rick Stein is someone that I've been kind of obsessed with for a long time. I feel like he's been... a presence in my life since I was quite young and therefore, you know, taking that kind of big picture, kind of zooming out and describing him, I find actually quite difficult. And I found writing this piece for Vittle was pretty difficult trying to get some kind of distance and clarity on who is this kind of weird figure who also feels so kind of like woven into British culture. So, you know, he is a, he's a kind of a literary figure or self-described literary figure who is obsessed with... seafood in particular but food in general and alcohol um Speaker 1 (3:27) he he does there's going to be loads of commonalities between rick stein and keith floyd and that's that's the first one yeah Speaker 2 (3:34) it's quite i think actually the rick stein keith they have lots of kind of similarities there's there's lots of you know points of connection between them there too are kind of their stories are kind of completely intertwined Speaker 1 (3:44) but Speaker 2 (3:45) also it's almost hard to describe rick stein without describing keith floyd and the kind of Even the differences between them, I think we'll probably get onto in a bit. But, you know, Rick is, he made his name really doing shows about the UK and about fish cookery in the UK. His first three or four series, mainly on kind of parts of the British coastline, travelling to them, eating fish, cooking fish and cooking seafood. But I think the shows that really show Rick as Rick are the ones abroad. He is this kind of figure who stepped out of a Rudyard Kipling novel. He is this something. out of time about him he shouldn't exist in this kind of moment that we have now of you know but he is he kind of set the template for a lot of kind of food shows to come he is you know he travels around the world it's outside of the studio it's not kind of studio based it's not demonstrative kind of here's how you cook something he'll show you how to make a recipe but it tends to be him eating things in different parts of the world and talking to chefs and it's it's you know both the kind of template for what came later in food cooking including people like Anthony Bourdain but also I think his farm what kind of food rooted in food and eating than someone like Bourdain became later on where it's more about the kind of travel he goes to places and he almost seems to not really care about the places he's at but he does care about the food he's eating and it's there's something really joyous about that so I you know I find him this you know sometimes kind of elusive figure he's he's quite divisive I know a lot of people don't like his shows yeah i personally love them and and what i set out to do in this vittles piece was was to understand why i and other people like me who shouldn't like him you know he is this kind of anachronistic figure he's this kind of you know posh boy he travels around the world telling chefs how to they should be cooking their own foods better than they they do it themselves um you know we shouldn't like him but why is he such a kind of charismatic figure despite all of this Speaker 1 (5:43) Let's give some vital statistics on Rick Stein. So he was born in 1947 in Chipping Norton. That makes him 78. But he's not really known for being from Oxfordshire. He's known for his Cornish connection, right? That's right. And there he owns a bunch of restaurants, I think two or three, a pub, a chip shop, a gift shop. He also has a foot in Australia. We'll probably come on to some of this stuff. And I carried them up and he's done 30 TV shows, written 28. cookbooks, it's a lot of cookbooks, plus a memoir. So he's a big, he's big news. You know, whether you like him or not, he's had a big impact. And you were saying in your Vittles article, which obviously I'll link to in the show notes, but you were saying that you were re-watching some of his shows. And I just wonder, like, why? Like, what drew you back to the guy? Speaker 2 (6:37) It's a good question. And it's one that I... I'm trying to work out still, I think, why I go back to him. You know, he is, as you say, he is, you know, he's known most of all for this small part of, he's kind of synonymous with a small part of North Cornish coast. See, this town called Pasdose is a fishing village, effectively. And he is the main kind of economic force in this. this small town now, this small village. Speaker 1 (7:03) So his impact there has been so powerful that people call it now Padstine. Speaker 2 (7:05) Yeah, that's the thing. People say Padstine. And he is this part kind of notorious figure, slightly divisive there, but also he is the kind of main economic driver of this part of North Cornish coast because people travel there because of his restaurants. And he started the restaurant there in... In the 1970s, he moved there in, I think it's 72. And since then, he's kind of, he is Padstow. Padstow is Stein. But yeah, why did I go back to them? I think, as I said, you know, his first show was in the mid-90s. And I remember watching this at my grandparents' house. It was on on the weekends. And this, you know, there was something incredibly comforting about it. I think I heard a very strong... childhood association with Cornwall myself going on holidays there and my family kind of really identified with it too and therefore when his shows were on it became kind of required watching and Speaker 1 (8:07) there's Speaker 2 (8:07) been I think I can kind of track this through my life now there's I think these moments in my life where I've been you know particularly kind of meaningful moments in my life This year I had my first child. In these kind of meaningful moments, for some reason I keep going back to Rick Stein. Speaker 1 (8:26) I always Speaker 2 (8:27) had one in my early 20s where I didn't really know what I was doing. I had just finished my Master's. I was working in Lush, the soap shop. I had no idea what I was in. And I just used to watch hours and hours and hours of Rick Stein on UK TV with my housemates. And it was, yeah, I think these moments... there's something incredibly comforting about him, Speaker 1 (8:48) about Speaker 2 (8:49) watching his shows. And I think that's the thing that I was trying to understand with his Fistula Species. You know, what is so comforting? What is so kind of joyous, I suppose, about his shows and his love of food? Speaker 1 (9:03) Because you say in the article that there's, and you say, if I was to be pretentious, I would say this is a bit Proustian or something. And so, yeah, that is a bit pretentious. So let's clarify what you mean by that. Yeah, exactly. There's a disconnection between food and memory, right? That's exactly right. That's exactly right. But then there is also like his style, because again, we're going to contrast this with Keith Lloyd. His style is also quite like, it's so, I don't know, relaxed. There's like, there's not a worry in the world. Like you can kind of fall asleep on the sofa after like watching, you know, Rick Stein and you've had your Sunday dinner and you feel very full. It's that kind of energy, right? It's very relaxed. It's also, you know, it has this kind of light. Speaker 2 (9:40) lightly cerebral aspect to as well he'll you know he'll read some graham green when he's you know on the balcony in hanoi or something you know he'll he'll you know quote you some kipling or you know some john betchamon or something like that there's something incredibly yeah he's a he's a comforting quite mild mannered presence on the screen and quite a kind of relaxed guide to these places He's also this slightly red-faced, sweating figure. There's a real... I think he really likes the imperfections of his show as well. I think when you listen to his interviews, he talks a lot about not wanting to be a polished chef. Speaker 1 (10:23) His Speaker 2 (10:24) food isn't particularly polished. His food isn't at all perfect. It's good home cooking, I think, the stuff that he does on the TV at least. Speaker 2 (10:35) And there's something about his shows as well, which is kind of revels in the imperfection. And that I think is also, and we'll get onto this, I'm sure, something he gets from Floyd, but he does it in a much more relaxed manner. Speaker 1 (10:45) Via the director they both have in common, a guy called David Pritchard. We'll come back to that as well. But in terms of like, yeah, he didn't have any formal training as a chef, right? He worked for like six months at a hotel in London, hated it, went back to, well, went travelling. And then went to Oxford and did English. So quite peculiar way into the industry. Even more peculiarly, he started out, you mentioned, I think he went to Cornwall in the early 70s, opened up a nightclub there. That went really badly because everyone was getting beaten up all the time. Yeah, Speaker 2 (11:17) exactly. I Speaker 1 (11:19) think the local police had like called it the Wild West or Dodge Town or something like that. Dodge Speaker 2 (11:24) City, yeah. Speaker 1 (11:24) Dodge City, that's Speaker 2 (11:25) it. Speaker 1 (11:26) The council took away his license, but what they didn't take away was his license to sell food. So that's basically how he ended up becoming a chef in his own restaurant. The restaurant become called the Seafood Restaurant. Seafood Restaurant, Speaker 2 (11:38) exactly. Speaker 1 (11:39) Yeah, Speaker 2 (11:39) he's a kind of... Speaker 1 (11:40) Not an imaginative name. Speaker 2 (11:41) No, no, for a restaurant that sells seafood, it's quite a boring one. It's the one, yeah, Speaker 1 (11:47) that's what it says on the tin. Exactly. Speaker 2 (11:49) But yeah, he's kind of an accidental chef as well. He, as you say, he went to private school. He comes from this, you know, he grew up in Chipping Norton, you know, kind of a middle England kind of posh Chiltern's town in Oxfordshire. His family are very wealthy. His dad worked, I think, was the CEO of the distillers company, a big distillery in London. They also had a holiday home on the North Cornwall coast, just around the corner from Padstow, where he ended up moving to after he went travelling and went to Oxford. Speaker 2 (12:23) Yeah, he kind of, I think he fell into cooking. The big moment in his life, and he'll always talk about it, was he had this very intense relationship with his father. His father killed himself when he was, sometimes he says 17, sometimes he says 18, but around that 17, 18-year-old period. And afterwards he, you know, Rick, the story of his father killing himself is also incredibly traumatic. He went for a walk with his sister. So Rick's aunt. Yeah, yeah. And they were walking along the coastline at Traverse Head where they had this holiday home. And it's just around the headland from Padstow. And he turned to his sister and he said, I told you I would do it. And he jumped off the cliff, like in front of her. Incredibly traumatic experience, both for his dad suffered a lot throughout his life with bipolar disorder. And that's a real kind of shaping moment for Rick. So Rick, after this, First of all, he moved to London. As you say, he worked in a railway hotel for six months. He talks about it very funny in his memoir. I don't think he did a lot of cooking while he was there. He said on one weekend he was basically given the kitchen to look after himself on a Sunday. They knew he was going to be quiet. And someone came in and asked for clam chowder. And he was like, how the fuck do I cook clam chowder? No idea. You know, he's just like 17, 18-year-old. And he asked the pot wash. He was like, look, what do I do here? And the pot wash was like... don't worry, just in the cupboard, big tin of it. Just go and open it up and serve it up. And that's what they did. And the story about their signature dish was this, was duck a la range. And they served it. It was like duck that sounded like boiled or kind of like the most grossly prepared duck. And they dumped a load of marmalade, orange marmalade on top. And that was it. That's how they served it up. It's, you know, it's not, it wasn't cooking. And Speaker 1 (14:17) I don't think he learned a huge amount there. There's also just a, I remember reading about that and he says he never really got on with his kind of working class colleagues, which is odd because when he's asked about his slightly rural accent, which is something I didn't fully pick up on, to be honest, I didn't, but apparently he's got a slightly down at heel working class accent. He says that's because he hung out a lot of the time with farm labourers and he got on with the farm labourers so much. So he picked up on the accent. So he seems to have at some point decided that. You know, he actually doesn't like the kind of the people. Speaker 2 (14:51) Yeah, I think my read on his accent is that's the later edition. That's kind of like consciously put on later edition. He, yeah, he says he spent a lot of his time and his parents are also owned this farm as well as, you know, being kind of CEO of the distillers company in Chipping Norton. So he says he spent a lot of time, most of his time as a kid, with the farm labourers in the local farms, both his own and others nearby. Speaker 2 (15:17) And that's kind of one of his kind of origin stories for his love of food as well, was this kind of like rustic working class, even though he's very wealthy and went to private school and whatever else. How much of that is kind of self-mythologisation Speaker 1 (15:30) or not, I wouldn't like to say. You know, having done this series now for a year and looked at loads of these chefs that are often in the media, one of the ways I research is I just type their name into Google or whatever and find all the kind of news features that have been written about them. And what you find is that, like, unless you're insane, you're not really going to read one of these pieces, more than one of these pieces. And so for research purposes, and probably because I'm a bit insane, like, I will end up reading all of them. And they're the same stories being told over and over and over again. And so whoever it is, Marco Pierre White, Rick Stein, Delia Smith, whoever, like, they have a self-narration about themselves that I'm sure becomes bigger than themselves and isn't necessarily, like, actually what happened. Speaker 2 (16:10) Yeah. I mean, I imagine once Rick... Once he passes away, we'll understand how much of it is mythologisation or how much isn't. Because I think we'll talk about Keith Floyd later. We keep coming back to Keith Floyd because he is such a big presence in all of this. Everything we're talking about in Rick's kind of entire story as well. He becomes this big figure that he's kind of judging himself against and kind of working against. But Floyd's self-narration, his self-mythologisation, there's a great story about Floyd. He says he joined the army because he watched the film Zulu. Now... Actually, the film Zulu came out a year after he joined the army, so it can't be true. But it becomes his story. He tells everyone. On Desert Island Discs, he says the same story. In all of his memoirs, all three of them, he says the same story. And he kind of repeats it, and it becomes this kind of defining moment for him, but totally bollocks. And I think Rick, there must be part of that as well, like hanging out with the rural labourers. Maybe he did, maybe he didn't. I'm not sure. Speaker 1 (17:07) But it Speaker 2 (17:08) becomes one of these stories that he tells to kind of set himself up and who he is. And I think there was obviously, he does talk as well about, you know, I think he felt a bit of an outsider, both because of his father being this kind of, I think, overbearingly, I mean, a very intense figure. And I think Rick always felt like he couldn't, he would never live up to his own father. Speaker 1 (17:33) He Speaker 2 (17:34) was this kind of very overbearing, emotionally, not... physically or anything, but emotionally overbearing or over-determining figure in his life. Speaker 1 (17:42) Because his brother is incredibly successful as a neurosurgeon or... Or Speaker 2 (17:48) neuroscientist. A scientist Speaker 1 (17:50) of some kind. Yeah, exactly. Who has his own Wikipedia page, which I didn't read, but is big enough to have one. And I think I got the impression that his father was very proud of his older son and, like, Rick wanted to live up to it, but obviously absolutely flopped his A-levels. had to go to something I'd never heard of before, a crammer school. Speaker 2 (18:10) Yeah, a cramming school, yeah. Speaker 1 (18:11) To get his A-levels in the end, and then didn't go to uni, went travelling, which he said he did to run away from the trauma of his dad's death. Eventually does go to Oxford, but only gets in with the help of lots of private tuition and then doesn't do that well when he's there. Speaker 2 (18:25) And I think because he also, he applied when he was 22, and I think by that point was a mature student. Speaker 1 (18:30) Yeah. So Speaker 2 (18:30) I think it was purely done on his entrance exam. Speaker 1 (18:34) Mm-hm. Speaker 2 (18:35) And I think it was his, he did a description. I think he says the final part of his entrance exam was this question about describe a landscape that means a lot to you. And he wrote about, because he went, a big part of his travel,