Comfort Eating from the Guardian Podcast
Grace Dent is warm and funny and sarcastic in an endearing way. She’s the Guardian’s restaurant critic – a real foodie - and she’s behind the radio series the Untold.
But this podcast feels more intimate, like getting to know someone you’d want as a close friend.
There she is, on the podcast pic, scarlet lipstick and nails luxuriating in a bath full of fat chips and clutching a gravy boat dripping with gravy.
And it is gravy, intimate chat between Grace and a guest.
The food that matters most is that snack you cobble together when you snuggle on the sofa, says Grace.
You can hear the crackle of toast being spread with something … fish paste.
“The one in the jar, only God can judge me,” she whispers.
As for her guest who’s joining her via video call: ”Thank God he’s miles away… smells like cat food actually“.
The podcast, she explains, is “not really an interview, just a chance for me to be very nosy”.
Her first guest is screen writer Russell T Davies, the man behind the Doctor Who revival, Queer as Folk, Years and Years and It’s a Sin.
They hang out over a video call. Before Grace is Russell’s comfort food of choice… pull off the foil and ta da, it’s a bowl of butter pepper rice.
“It should be Uncle Ben’s rice but really it’s an excuse to eat butter … a lot of butter and pepper,” says Russell.
“A wadge of butter … only weirdos have a sliver.”
Grace loves the rice. She brings so much of herself to the table and they share their stories of caring for someone they loved through serious illness.
Russell’s husband Andrew got brain cancer and he stopped work to care for him.
Grace looked after her mother until she died in February.
Russell said he cooked healthy food for Andrew – fish, eight vegetables a night.
He felt privileged to care for him and he could afford to take the time off.
“I saved and saved and saved for a rainy day and then one day it rained… “
What he served up for Andrew was “very tasty stuff”. Being able to do that for him was “an honour”, he said.
He recalled one of Andrew’s last meals.. “the old overnight oats”.
“He said ‘it’s delicious’ and that was one of the last sentences he said to me.”
The beauty of this podcast is in Dent’s ability to reach out to people. It never feels like there’s a recorder in the corner, or all of us in the world outside listening in.
Comfort Food is a revelation … it’s the kind of podcast that finds you at the top of the queue, holding up your plate and asking: “Please sir, can I have more?”
