You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.

One of the many things I love about cooking is collaboration, sourcing, prepping, presenting, delighting, and healing each other with the food we choose to eat or to cook.

Ask any of the friends of Kiera Knightley and James Ryden as I did, or people have worked with them as I did, and they talk of them as almost one person.

How they parent their children, Edie and Delilah, bringing music and acting into their home, immersing themselves in the communities they live in, and most appealing to me, investing a large amount of time and deciding what and where they're all going to eat.

Kia and James love and they are loved.

We've seen Kiera as Jewels, bend it like Beckham, Elizabeth Bennett, Pride and Prejudice, Annacrenna Collette.

We've listened to James as a keyboardist of indie rave Sensation that Claxon's He's now sold artists working in TV, film theater, recently helping Benny and Bjorn create Abba Voyage, two worlds joining together music and theater.

I last saw Kier and James a few months ago in the River Cafe with our close friends Erdam and Joseph, after an evening of NonStop talking how to raise children in a tumultuous world, the movies we've been watching, and above all, where and what we've been eating.

We vowed to meet soon.

Schedules, families, work and travel got in the way.

But here we are on a Monday morning in the River Cafe, three friends together.

Now that's the best collaboration.

How do we speak after that?

So we do talk a lot about food.

But you did choose, of all the recipes in all twelve cookbooks spaghetti I love Angelais and Imogen is here to bring us the recipe?

Did you make it?

Imagen?

Is this?

Do you want to just tell us about this?

What do we have here?

Got fresh taglerini which has just been made now with eggs and flour and semolina and the clams.

The bongolais from Cornwall, very fresh, and this is one of my absolute favorite dishes.

It's cooked finished off with butter and our lovely olive oil, and it's got a little bit of lemon, and it's cooked with fiano white wine.

Yum.

Now, can I ask everybody how would you if you've got the bongolate you're the professional.

Do you use the shell to take the clams out?

Do you know?

Or do you just like get it.

With the Yeah, I mean they normally sort of fall out as you cook them.

That's delicious, woe.

Yeah, they're gorgeous, aren't they.

Initially we cook them with fresh chili parsi stalks, which are really sweet, and then you once you've got them coated in the lovely olive oil, we finish it with the white Fiano white wine and just let them steam open.

They always say, you know, take take the pursa out of the cupboard and then decide what sauce you're going to have with it, because they're very clear about different sauces.

And also and then we just love it with the tag.

And so we've broken the rules a few times.

There's so many rules to break.

But is that actually then you find out it's not breaking a rule, you know, because spaghetti vongelais comes from the south, and so you know, butter is really no, not the north, so you know, but it just makes that sauce a bit richer, doesn't it.

All Right, let's read the recipe then, so we have.

No I'm going to do the list and then you're going to read the difficult bit.

I find recipes one of the most with dyslexia that it all okay.

Spaghetti ali bongola for six seventy five grams butter, extra virgin olive oil, two garlic cloves peeled and chopped, one dried red chili crushed, one kilogram small clams washed, half a bunch fresh flat leaf parsley, picked and chopped.

Two hundred and fifty milli liters Vermanino wine.

Four hundred grams dried spaghetti.

Check over the clams and discard any that are not closed.

Place half the butter in a wide pan with two tablespoons of olive oil.

The garlic and chili, season with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Fry for a minute and add the clams and parsley and toss over the heat.

Add the wine and cover with a lid.

Cook for about five minutes.

Shake in the pan from time to time.

Cook the spaghetti and plenty of boiling water until al dente.

When the clams are open, discard any that remain closed, mix them with the drained spaghetti and toss in the remaining butter serve there you.

Go go beautiful.

So growing up in your house, what was food like?

Did you my mom's down?

She was, yeah, but she of full time.

No, she's a writer.

Yeah, so she's a writer.

My dad's an actor.

But my mum was the cook and it was very seventies.

We were not allowed sugar.

It was very like brown ricey, but it was very very good.

Mum's bastard pasta sauce.

He was very when he's gone for his like you go for your purest moments and you go very anti.

My mother's bastard pasta sauce.

It delicious, but it's delicious, delicious, Yeah, yeah, delicious.

What is it?

It's everything that I wouldn't do, That's why I love it.

Onions and garlic, like literally everything.

Me and my brother ate everything.

There were roast chickens, there was fish, there was fish cakes.

There was I remember she made a green sauce with fish cakes.

But we had a very tiny kitchen, so you could never cook with her.

But it meant that, I think for her, the private time was the cooking time.

So I never learned to cook from her because you couldn't be in the kit you couldn't both be in the kitchen cooking.

Did you cook with.

Your No, No, I was a different kind of I grew up with my dad who had a little kind of business that you ran at the same time, and so I grew up on it.

Probably killed me for saying this, but it was, you know, Marks and Spencer's Carbonara ready meals in the.

Microwave fair enough, which is you know, but I have to say, he makes me shepherd pie incredible.

Every time we go back.

I asked for his Shepherd's pie.

Because it's it's really good.

It's really great.

But my nan would cook for me like she was kind of a real old school lots of lard.

She the mother of your father.

No, no, my mother's mother, your mother's mum.

But it was a lot of kind of sausage rolls and that kind of British kind.

Of where were they from area Strafford upon Avon, and so it was this a kind of cooking that she'd grown up with.

So, yeah, there's lots of pastries.

It was terrible looking about cakes, sausage rolls.

Cheese on toast was the big thing.

Crust off the cheese on toast, the whitest of white bread with had It was amazing.

Though it still kind of feel I still miss that.

I still don't know how she made that cheese on toast taste?

Did she ever let you go in the kitchen if you just hang out there?

But I have to say, when we first met, you did You've always made an amazing roast And that was her.

She an amazing roasting Yorkshire puddings, you know, classic there was it was.

They were always incredible, and she used to I had a job where I worked on a boat on the River Aven, so be a boat boy and like these mini like cruise ships that do these half hour towards the River Aven.

And every time I'd always go into a bridge, she'd be at the top with these sausage rolls in a little kind of tupperware, and she dropped them and I'd have to catch them.

And with my mom, I just remember being this kind of I mean, she's amazing my mum.

But a lot of my food phobias stemmed from kind of her slightly chaotic but wonderful kind of kitchen lots.

What was it like There were a lot of kind of jars of things with like Hellman's e jars that were kind of oozing, and.

He has condiment issues.

Amazing, no condiment in America.

Being in America, I think I heard the word condiments, you know, or we just had probably ketchup and mustard work.

But the condiments, condiments, anything's at the end of it.

Mustard, can't stand it.

Catch up.

Butter, there was a butter.

No butter you'll have when it's when it's melted.

Not that makes sense because it doesn't.

Can't get you.

Why did you?

Why did you begin?

I think I, like I said, I think it was maybe because I don't want to blame my mom for it.

She did she did, She have a refrigerator, yeah, but it was just she put it in the but don't you know it was kind of like that Helman's he must have thing, and.

It was it's mayonnaise, mayonnaise, that one on the same I banned them all together in this.

But so this was when when we first got together and I really found out about the issues, and I knew that it was serious when he very seriously turned around to me and said, you know, if you want to keep mayonnaise in the fridge, you can, And I was like.

You know, it was the one that was that was Yeah, I get it with the mayonnaise and the ketchup and the mustard and all that.

But it's interesting that you have butter.

Is that you know, it is a shame, but this is it as well a ketch up.

You know when you see on a table mayonnaise that's had some ketchup in it, and it's that swirl of like this is your dad.

Your dad, You've got a big there's a butter.

And jam issue which I found out again when I stayed with his dad, And like you must now maybe you agree with this, but you must never use the same knife.

The butter and the jam must never meet.

Yeah, say that's logical, logical.

I don't have my issue.

I never noticed that I've got one knife.

Maybe I don't know.

It's like that.

I would never be disproving of it at all.

You could do anything you want.

Well, no, I've now got I've got big.

I know.

Really, I'm very careful the separate.

Do you think you could ever fall in love with somebody who did care about food?

No?

No?

Yeah?

Did you ever go out to restaurants?

Yeah?

We did?

I remember one of my best My favorite Christmases was Dad took us to the local Chinese for Christmas dinner and it was just duck.

Did you go out to restaurants as a child.

We had the local Indian restaurant, which I loved, and then the local Chinese restaurant which I remember.

The name of it.

It's called Walk This Way.

Was brilliant.

That was amazing.

Yeah, so you do.

I mean, it was definitely like treats.

But we'd go.

No, we'd go once a week to the Indian restaurant, which I loved.

It's still a family thing, isn't it.

I mean, you guys want everyone there.

It's an Indian takeaway all the way.

Yeah, And I remember I have a love of spicy food, a deep love of spicy food.

But it was all from being ten and being there with my brother who is five years older, and his friend and them daring me to eat a spicy curage and me just like being I'm going to eat this, I'm and just sweating but eating it.

And every week after that, I'd go for the spiciest thing.

And now I still do.

I cy spice.

I do love it, you do love it.

I do love it.

The River Cafe Cafe, steps away from our restaurant, is now open in the morning an Italian breakfast with cornetti, ciambella and cristada from our pastry kitchen.

In the afternoon, ice creamed coops and River Cafe classic desserts.

Come in the evening for cocktails with our resident pianist in the bar.

No need to book, see you here.

What was it like when you left?

How old were you when you left home?

By the time I was sixteen, I was working away a lot, and then eighteen I was properly out.

Did you know that you wanted to add.

I'd wanted to act from the age of three, and my mom and dad had not let me because they did not want a child actress in the family.

Were involved in theater.

Yeah, so one's a writer, one's an actor, and they didn't you know, they didn't want me doing it at all because they wanted me to be a kid, you know, I think.

But I was absolutely desperate.

And then finally the school said, well, look, she can't read at all, and we need a carrot to dangle in front of us so she knows there's something that she wants.

And they said, well, she wants an agent.

They said, that's okay, I want an asia because they always had agents calling and I remember answering thing.

We had a landla and it would be it's your mum's agent can so I think it was like, well, if you've got an age of wine and I have an agent, that is so unfair.

But also i'd be with them, you know, a lot backstage at theaters.

So my dad, if they didn't have any childcare, then i'd be sitting in his dressing room and he'd go on stage, you know, I mean, And it was that was how it was.

So I wanted to be a part of that anyway.

So they said, right, there's your carrot.

And it was always if you read, if your grades go up, you're allowed to keep on acting.

But if they go down, then it stops it up.

Was a caracter.

Yeah, it memorized, memorized a lot.

Of well, yeah, this is the thing.

So it's still sit reading.

I find really hard, it really bounces.

But I listened to it again.

I mean I basically I record it and listened to it and listen to it and listen to it, and that's how I learn it.

But now we have a dyslexic kid, and she's doing the same thing.

Her memory is absolutely amazing.

She'll look at book, she'll have memorized the book basically.

Yeah, yeah, yes, it's amazing.

Yeah.

So you left home?

What age then to be an actor?

Well?

Sixteen?

So were you so bender light Beckham?

I did at sixteen, but I was living at home.

But I really remember on that one the because we had a lot of Indian actors and their their families would come and they brought food, and I remember Garnda Chada's family, she was the director bringing this amazing Indian food.

Did you have your own apartment?

When did you have your own apartment?

Eighteen?

I had my own apartment.

What was that like?

You know, I was doing quite well, so it was very nice.

Yeah, and I lived with my brother and his then girlfriend, and she was a great cook, and we had a lot of Indian takeaways.

Yeah, yeah.

You would you entertain?

Would you have friends over?

We had a lot because at that point I was ridiculously famous and I couldn't get outside and so the only way to see people was to have them around at my apartment.

So we had big Yeah, it was a big big parties were always around at mine.

When did you leave when I saw eighteen.

I went to UNI in Cardiff, and then I spent a year in Madrid, which was kind of fun.

Year after graduation, Yeah.

And then I moved to London and.

Tell me about Madrid.

I was amazing, but it was food Like in Madrid.

For me, it was like I get this beer and then I get free food with it.

This is amazing.

It's going to go where that pretty minimal condiments, you know, I can deal with this.

So I went there for a year and taught English, which was really fun, and just playing music at that point, played music since I was a kid, since I think I was ten or eleven.

At primary school there were there was this band at primary school like the other kids in my year, who are the coolest kids.

They were just amazing.

They're into Nirvana.

It is just at the time I think Kirkbaye just died basically, and my dad is a brilliant musician.

He didn't.

Yeah, he studied, got a scholarship at Durham clarinet, piano, guitar.

He just plays everything.

So you had a lot of music in the always.

Yeah, And I remember like in the house, like being in my dad's car just listening to like the Stranglers and like Golden Brown, and it was just music always.

And so then I was away, you know, and then at Union in Madrid, I just kind of made music on my own.

But yeah, it was just always something.

That Madrid was exposure to, food, to tap us to.

Yeah, did you ever live in a foreign country?

Were you when you were not?

Were always on set?

I mean I was always on set, so sort of but like early on Rome and and I mean America a lot and the Caribbean a lot.

I think catering on film sets it's the hard It is the hardest thing to do because you've got to be there so insanely early and then of and we do these things called running lunches, which basically means that you have to have all the food ready for like this three hour period where it just sits there and you grab it when you know.

So it's an incredibly difficult kind of thing.

But I don't think that you get a love of food from it, although that was the amazing guy.

Do you remember it?

Run it through the garden.

In America, they famously have much better catering.

You know, there's there's just more so they always had like a guy that would do like an omelet stand or something, you know, like he'd be the guy making omelet and he had this thing if you wanted like vegetables in it, and he'd say, do you want to run through the garden?

Put it through the garden.

Yeah, run it through the garden.

But it's really hard, and then you go back and you're always slower when you go back, are you Yeah?

Yeah, you shouldn't take You should always do it on an empty stomach, a vocal take any takes as a band, Yeah, yeah, you do want to eat and then do a gig, you know what I mean before and no one likes burping on the mark.

I mean, no one's going to appreciate that.

So you were in Madrid.

There, Yeah, and then I started this, well it was in his band collection, so we did that for I started that two thousand.

And five, touring a lot of ten years all over.

Them everywhere, which is Asia, everywhere, Australia.

I feel like, food wise unbelievable.

That was my favorite bit about kind of touring was to go.

To he's an amazing traveler, Like it's no but you are, like it's a skill that and you have, Like so when he used to be in the band and we get on the tour bus and so you'd only ever have like what a couple of hours in each place to do things, and everybody else would sort of stay and they'd be on their computers or they'd be watching a film.

And he has researched the top things to do in the city and the top places to eat in the city, and he's like, right, in three hours, we can hit this and we can get there, and we can get there.

His band called it fear tours because you never quite knew if you were going to die.

We almost did die.

I didn't know this, but I was told there's a really good steak place in this bot near La Bocca in Buenos Aires.

So I convinced the band to all follow me on this like magical mystery tour to the restaurant.

I didn't know.

Leabocca is quite a heavy area of bus.

We're all dressed like Duran Duran or something, with our cameras out, you know, and then from out of nowhere, some guy came over and whacked our drummer with something and his camera went flying and we ended up in a police car going around.

We actually police quite a lot with him.

He's had two year old in a police car as well.

What happened five minutes before?

You went into the police car with your two year old?

But I was working in Boston.

He's looking at the six year old we put in school.

It was COVID.

It wasn't the best, but anyway, so he's with the two year old.

Winter in Boston, very cold.

I'm on set and all I get is I get an assistant coming again.

Don't don't worry.

But James and Delilah are in a police car.

Why Why?

And James, we were fine.

They were like, we're all good.

Well, basically, I'd heard in Boston that there was this place that did pizza, pizza, that it's it's open, opens at like eight am, and the minute it sells out of the pizza, and.

It sells out by.

So I was like, Okay, Delilah, our youngest, who's then one, I said, you know today the Daddy Adventure, We're going to go get pizza.

So we drive at like seven am in the snow to this Italian district of Boston.

It's minus twenty wrapper up.

We get out the car it's like a blizzard storm into this pizza place.

Order a couple of slices of cheese pizza.

We sit there, we have a lovely slice of pizza.

Breakfast, breakfast.

Then I get out the restaurant or the pizza place, and I walked down left like this, walk down there's no carca'd walk down the other way back the there's no car there.

Okay, go back into the restaurant.

But what I love is what he's very vocal.

So they wouldn't have just been, oh I'm chilled out because I can't find the car.

It was it's more like I'm with my two year olds taking our car.

Yeah, drove there in your car.

Yeah.

And then and then and then you know, it was the police came.

I went out.

I saw the policeman and I said, look, I've had my car still and said get in the car.

So get in this car.

And it's like plastic seats with the one year old, and we just you know, so then and they got the Boston accent, a thick iron, you know, and we drive out and we drive a little bit around the corner, just walk a little bit, and they've got the key and they're pressing.

I didn't know you can press a button on a on a car remote and here with the beep, it was there.

They hadn't been stolen.

Four year old jaw when we were in the back of the police car.

Yeah, it was really fun.

Can I just very simply ask you how you met?

Where do we meet?

We met at Dean Street townhouse in London, which was okay.

So that week my agent said to me, I've had this dream I was single.

I've had a dream that you're meeting your future husband.

This week's exciting.

So I got invited out to loads of things and I have to say I'd met a load of people that week and I was sorry, this.

Is happening anyway.

So the end of the week was an oscar viewing party, which anyway, so I was like, really didn't want to go.

It was a Sunday night, I was in the theater.

I couldn't be bothered to go.

And then I was like, but I meant to meet my future husband, so I'm going to go to this thing that I don't want to go to.

And I sat down and I didn't.

I was like, again, everybody's very nice, but my future husband definitely isn't there.

And my very good friend Tim Phillips, who is a composer, he phoned me up very drunk, like incredibly drunk.

Hey man, I'm in Sohomeman and with friends.

Where are you?

And I was like, no, no'm I sit down for and you're not allowed to come?

Where are then Dean Street Town?

Okay, then I'm coming.

Please don't come, please don't come.

No, please don't come anyway.

And the door of this private room opens and my friend Tim's head comes around like this, and my friend's Curran's.

Head and I'm like, oh my god.

And the third head come around with.

James, and James grabbed a seat there was a seat and he just grabbed it around and said he I'm your.

There he is.

And then and then you just hate and drank and basically and drank until we got married, got married, well drank until I got pregnant.

And so you just knew that you had this love of food and alcohol.

Yeah it was alcohol, but it was at that point it was alcohol, but it was a food.

No, but how did you food if you were playing, you were you were a musician, you were like, I know that you loved alcohol but you had to get up in the morning and work.

So how did you know at that point?

Was yeah, And I think actually maybe if I'd been filming at the time, we never would have got together.

But because I was in the theater and it was I was doing a show.

With a lot, it was great.

It was a children's it was Helmut Lillian Hellman children.

Yeah, and it was with Elizabeth mass and it was great because it was a bunch of girls.

We were all like in our early mid twenties.

We were all single, and we were having a really really really really good time.

And so I met him in the middle of that when he was also having a really really really really good time.

But the food thing, he was not into food and he wouldn't try because of the condiment pre previously mentioned condiment issues.

There were other food issues at that point, like he really wouldn't eat much apart from the cheese on toast situation.

And I was like, this is not going to happen if we can't go at it.

So again, my very my oldest and very close friend who's a big foodie, Charlie, he met him.

He was I really like him, but the food situation is terrible.

So we used to take him to all of our favorite restaurants and we'd yeah, we'd order for him and we we'd be like and he'd look at it, go no, no, no, and then we'd be like, close your eyes and eat.

So basically.

Education and then created a monster overtook both of us.

Wowkay, No, it's literally the passion and the kind of Yeah, I have to find it's a recipe.

I can't substitute that ingredient for that ingredient.

That's a problem.

It is a problem because you kind of end up around London.

Yeah, ingredients.

Can you go places if you're in a film or you're doing something, do you try and all uplift and go or do you one of you stay home?

How do you manage?

You know, we have done since children, We've all we've traveled together the whole time to.

Just take the kids to Boss.

I mean with our first, since our second because then COVID hits, so I haven't done as much since the second one was born.

But the first one we were I mean everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, we were everywhere.

Tell me about a day in the life of your house and you get coffee.

And coffee make the coffee, good grind it, you know, fresh B sixty pour over coffee.

She gets black coffee in the morning.

Get the kids to school, children breakfast.

Do they have breakfast of anything or just cereal?

Cereal apple, that's fine.

They have to finish the fruit they do, so.

They get an apple or you know, blueberrithes.

That's the only.

And then I go to my studio and work.

You go to your office and work, and then we pick the kids up, and then.

What might you both have your lunches?

Do you know what I mean?

I'm a picky kind of I'll buy antipacity from our local lovely Italian Debdi and I'll do that.

But actually, I mean again, he's the cook in the house.

So there isn't ever a moment where you don't go, I want to make something lovely.

When you wake up in the morning, do you think about what you're gonna do that night?

Yeah?

Yeah, always, all the time.

It's literally I found the way.

I've got some really great and that will go with that.

But it's not a million miles to away from maybe right now song or.

Something, it's the same, Okay, let's talk about that.

I don't know, it's creativity.

I guess that you're kind of trying to make something from nothing.

Say if it's like at the moment, I'm doing a lot of scoring, so I know the kind of world scoring composing for film or TV, and so you know the kind of you know, this is the palette of instruments we'll use for this project.

Let's say, just like the these are the ingredients you've got, and this is what you can do with them, and that limitation that you can put is good.

You know, that kind of restrictions are restrictions are great, like restrictions always.

So I think that that's that's one of the similarities.

But I think because you know, he's obviously a musician.

We have a lot of musician friends.

What I'm really noticing with all of them is that there is an obsessive collector's quality.

It's like rare records, right.

They all go through a period where it's like I've got this nineteen seventies Japanese synth music from blah.

But you know, it's that thing.

And wine is a similar thing.

And that's why like the natural wine really to musician because they're like, great, there's this weird producer who will only make you know.

And it's the sharing of that knowledge that the getting off on, like sharing, Oh you don't know about this, check this out over here.

It's sharing of the knowledge of getting excited.

About you'll do it, you'll do it about ingredients.

So sorry, but the totally I mean the funniest one with the Totally Citrus Foundation, which you probably know about.

So there's a okay, So James found out about the Totally Citrus Foundation that is in Valencia.

But he hears from Layla Leila.

Her name is Lilah's shop in.

And she's got all of the citrus fruit and so going, oh, wow, what's the citrus and she says about the Totally Foundation, which is basically that a load of the citrus.

They can't grow all of the different varieties of citrus fruit anymore in Valencia because they're building on all of the land.

But somebody has bought this plot of land and he's trying to bring back all of the different varieties of citrus fruit.

So James comes back from this shop and he has an entire box everything of like every single so many but there's only two of us.

Wow, this is an intense amount of citrus can't waste the thing.

They were eating everything.

I actually get to the point where I'm like, no, I care, I actually can't.

I mean it's amazing, amazing.

Did you squeeze them and everything?

Some of them you can eat the skins, you know, it's kumquats.

It was this one lemon that I got really excited about that you can eat, you cut it and the skins aren't bitter.

It is it like a mouthed lemon with admirer.

There are some lemons that have just a huge amount of piths.

A huge amount delicious, and you did, like you eat the pith.

Yeah, yeah, it was amazing.

But he ate so much that.

He vomited everywhere too much acid, as he found out.

But it's funny because there is a lot of things.

There's a lot of musicians who do I remember going to a wine fair and there will be like a bump into a guy like, weren't you in a band like ten years ago and we played together?

Like yeah, now now I got a you know, a vine yard in the middle of France and I go this indigenous great you know it's.

Like or who is it from groove Armajo?

Yeah, amazing, it's also collaborating.

You know, it's probably started out, yeah, about collaboration, and we do solitary work in the opposite way.

Michael Caine said that he loved a garden because every time he acted it was with you know, so many, so many that this is something he could do in a solitary way.

Sometimes if you're in a band, then you can be solitary.

If you're cooking, if you're solitary, then it's all to do with the.

Going back to the Lemon Foundation, for example, is one example.

It's it's stories and it's it's it's story.

It's stories which connect for me, both of us.

It's like, you know, a wine maker just finding out about how that wine is made, the winemaker's story.

There's we used to have a place in front pants where we grew wine, we actually made wine, and we went to visit this one wine maker who was just unbelievable, and she was a nurse who tended to the vines as if they were as if they were people.

And so she took around and she didn't it was all done by hand or horses, so it's really old school.

It was in the foot of a mountain and she'd grow like wild roses up next to it, and I mean it was so beautiful.

But she she talked about each plant like it was a person, and she wouldn't pick the fruit or she was tending to some of them and she wouldn't use it.

And the wine was the most beautiful.

You know.

But that story is something that's so kind of powerful, and you see somebody who's committed their whole life, and particularly I think with wine, it's like it's so I mean, a hailstorm comes and you've lost the whole thing, you know, So it's really on the edge agriculture.

You go to go, you know, very involved with olive oil and wine.

A lot of the people who produce you know, wine produce olive oil.

And then you'd go in a year and they've had had as of hailstorm in August and then the crap is over, you know, and so they're living on this creativity.

But it's based on especially now especially.

She was amazing because also she was in an area where there's a lot of big wine, little hot wine.

She was getting really fresh, beautiful wine that she's.

Arguably because she was farming it naturally, so the roots had to go down, so far so instead of like spraying it and the roots are on the top, so you're getting those really big heavy ones.

It was like, really the roots were deep, so it was like very very light, amazing wine.

But all of that, Like finding out stuff like that is incredible.

You know, it makes you enjoy it all so much more.

You're like, this is actually magic.

Yeah, what are you doing now?

I just finished a Netflix six part series called Black Doves, which is about Tory MP's wife who is actually a deep undercover secret agent selling government secrets.

I'm basically a complete two faced psychopath and I've been having an affair and the person I've been having an affair with gets murdered, and my best friend played by Ben Wisher, who's gorgeous and he's an assassin, and we go on a murderous rampage trying to avenge my boyfriend.

There was an amazing I went to set one on one day and there was an amazing, amazing, juicy scene between Ben, yourself and Tracy Ullman, which was I was so lucky to watch them.

Just masters, all of you are brilliant.

Nice.

You had to flow that saved it.

Okay, James, tell me what you're working on.

Well, I finished a TV show called Daddy Issues, composed of music for that, which is coming out in August on BBC one, which is a lovely six part series with Amy Leewood and David Morrissey.

And then I'm just doing the music for a documentary on a cappella singers in America.

It's an intercollegiate competition that they have in America, very American college in America.

Ye.

They all saying that, yeah, and you can be very you know, you could be cynical and go oh.

A lot of them, you know, singers, they just want to be stars and stuff.

But actually these people do the work and they're very, very good and there's a lot of kind of very touching human stories behind a lot of their journeys.

Great.

When is that coming out.

It's been made right now, so it'll be finished in the next month and then it'll probably go to the festivals.

What's the connection, Oh, this is a weird one.

So we have a mutual friend called Johann who is a director, and we were on holiday in France and I was at a supermarket getting food for the kids and they get this cool from Johann saying, hey, James, Abba are reforming, They've made a new album and they're going to do shows.

Do you want to be involved?

And I said yeah, sure.

So the next thing you know, I'm I met up with Benny and Bjorn in London and they tell me about their album and what the plans for what they would do in and this is the Abba Voyage show.

And then I had to kind of put the band to find forty odd musicians in London.

We had to rehearse them and audition and pick pick them, and then I went to Stockholm for a month with Benny and Bjorn in the band and we kind of figured out the set and how it would work, and I spent it was like the most magical month of my life just hanging with Benny and Bjorn and getting to deconstruct Abba songs and listen to all the individual parts of bing A.

Phone calls from you and you were like like this.

Is the actual sense, that's the one.

Yeah, And they're the most lovely people, and it was all a bit of a kind of no one knew exactly how it would work out.

So I suppose if we're thinking about all your stories and all your thoughts.

Is there a food that you would go to if you needed some comfort?

Spaghetti bolonaise?

Yeah?

Is it?

Yeah?

I mean that's the thing that's come like, Yeah, I love it.

I mean, if I could have a bowl and that's what's going to be in it, I'm just going to be like the happiness, preferably with the glass of red wine.

But you know, but if not on its own is fine, that.

Would be I don't know, wh do you know?

I know the first thing came to my head was actually one of those toasty machines, which we don't.

Have that little pattern.

Yeah, nice, isn't it?

But let's go back to why the cheese sandwich?

I guess because it goes back to maybe comfort.

My NaN's house was comfort.

It was that probably because there's no risk, there's no condiment involved.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you're so wrong.

What do you mean because you have to put a bit of mustard in there?

Because that's what?

Can I tell you?

The best cheese sandwich that you've ever had?

Come on?

It was Charlie's Charlie Charlie again, Charlie really good where he did the thing?

And yes he did of course, Yeah, I mean, I know he told you he didn't, but I was like, was there Mustard?

That was Muster.

We were just talking about comfort and you're in an argument.

Come on, guys, I think we have to do another one part too, don't you.

Yeah, we're still together.

I think you will be.

Thank you so much.

Great, let's go have some lunch.

Thank you for listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair