Tom Kerridge talks to William Gadsby Peet about his career and upcoming music and food festival, Pub in the Park
For a journalist it’s a nervous moment, preparing to interview someone for whom one has a sneaking regard. What if the entire public act is just that – an act? What if this putative pillar of the community turns out to be some sort of puppy-kicking narcissist who has an entire nation fooled?
For me, Tom Kerridge is just such a person – a celebrity I like, that is, not a puppy-kicking narcissist. So it came as a relief to find him just as friendly and down-to-earth during our real life encounter as he had always seemed on TV.
A Gloucestershire lad born and raised, Tom Kerridge owes a great deal of his success and affable nature to his mother, Jackie, and the values she instilled in him from an early age. A remarkable woman, Jackie Kerridge worked two jobs whilst simultaneously acting as both mum and dad to Tom and his brother Sam. Their father suffered from multiple sclerosis and, once he and Jackie divorced, could only see the boys once a week at best.
Jackie’s qualities of industry and humility have clearly been inherited by Tom, as evidenced by his grafting ascent to the top of Britain’s culinary ladder and the truly bewildering array of restaurants, events, cookbooks and TV shows he is involved with at any given time.
Funnily enough, however, it was one of his mum’s attempts to keep her occasionally wayward son in check that almost launched him down a different career path, thereby robbing the culinary world of one of its leading lights.
“Mum sent me [to youth theatre] with one of my best friends, the idea being that it would stop me from hanging out with the naughty boys. After three weeks I ended up with an agent,” he explains smiling. “It was all very bizarre. Before you knew it, I was filming a Miss Marple Christmas special.”
Fortunately for the Great British taste bud, Kerridge found acting not to his liking – “It just wasn’t where I wanted to be” – and instead, as an 18-year-old in need of a job, “wandered into a kitchen to do the washing up and have been there pretty much ever since.”
His true passion found, Tom moved to London in his early twenties, honing his craft under influential chefs such as Jon Bentham, Phillip Britton, Steven Bull and Gary Rhodes. However, it was a chef with whom he has never worked that had the greatest impact on his career.
“I think one of my biggest influences was Marco Pierre White and his White Heat cookbook,” he explains enthusiastically. “Cookbooks before that were very textbook-like in style, but the imagery of White Heat changed everything.”
“The photographs were done by a guy called Bob Carlos Clarke and showed a chef with scraggy hair in a butcher’s apron, smoking cigarettes and wearing trainers, and it was just a lot more rock n roll. It related way more to the kitchens we all actually worked in than those tall, white paper hat cookbooks.”
Moving to London proved serendipitous for Tom, both professionally and personally. It was here that he met his wife – the sculptor Beth Cullen – and they have one of the best ‘So how did you guys meet?’ stories ever.
“The first thing she ever said to me was ‘Give me £3 for the stripper,’” recalls Tom laughing. “It was a mutual friend’s birthday and Beth had organised a stripper for him. I said ‘Hello, I’m Tom’ and she replied: ‘Great, I’m Beth, now give me £3 for the stripper!’ That was in a comedy club in North London.”
Whilst the stripper never turned up (Beth technically still owes Tom £3), it proved the start of a beautiful romance. Six weeks later Beth proposed to Tom at 1am in the middle of Leicester Square. Tom said yes and they’ve been happily married ever since.
After a two-year stint up in Norwich, where Tom was head chef of the single Michelin star restaurant Adlards, the couple scraped together enough money to buy the Hand and Flowers in Marlow – helped by Beth’s earnings from a commission for four sculptures to go on a traffic island in her home town of Stoke-on-Trent.
That was in 2005. Next year the pub was awarded a Michelin star, and in 2012 it became the first gastropub ever to gain a second. It was a feat made all the more impressive by the fact that Kerridge regularly describes himself as “not a Michelin star kind of guy”.
For Tom and Beth, purchasing the Hand and Flowers triggered an absolute love affair with the area.
“I’ve lived in Marlow for 12 years now and there’s nowhere else I want to be,” enthuses Kerridge. “It’s perfect, it’s amazing, it’s beautiful and it’s definitely home. I’ve massively adopted it and, fortunately, the people here seem to have taken to us too. We try to do as much as we can for the local community and I wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else.”
Unsurprising, therefore, that Tom’s latest venture – a music and food festival aptly named Pub in the Park – is to take place at Higginson Park, on the banks of the Thames, in his beloved adopted town.
“It’s kind of showcasing Great British culinary talent from up and down the country, but at the same time trying to embrace a lot of local stuff as well,” he explains. “Then it goes on to some cracking live music.
“We’ve got James Morrison, Tom Odell and Sophie Ellis Bextor playing, plus The Brand New Heavies, which is great, as I’m a big fan. Then we have a few more of my favourites: The Rifles, The Milk and New Street Adventure.
“It’s a brilliant marriage: cookery demonstrations by great chefs, lots of food to eat, fantastic booze to drink, plenty of great music and all set on the river in Marlow. All we need is the sunshine and we’ve got a perfect weekend!”
Sounds good to me. Now, who has £3 they can lend me? It’s for a burger. Promise!
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