Episode 165: The daylight murder of Belfast drug lord Sean Fox

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That's code PerfectManny20, P-E-R-F-E-C-T-M-A-N-I-2-0, at oliveandjune.com, because true luxury isn't the little things. (upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to White Wine Question Time, the podcast that for the last seven years has been asking our guests three thought-provoking questions over three glasses of wine, and this week, finally, sees me pop a court with a man who has been more than qualified in this space. Having spent the last 40 years as the UK's leading wine expert, helping to turn us into a nation of wine lovers along the way, as he talks to us through the world of wine, with a palette like a scalpel and the delivery of a marching brass band. He grew up in a canterbury in Kent, the son of a physician and a nurse, and it was a Oxford University that his love affair with the vines began. He kept in the university's wine tasting team, for which it was evident that he had a gift. What he did next was far less predictable. He became an actor and a singer, he did rep, and then the Royal Shakespeare Company, and then the West End with great success. And it was whilst he was appearing in a production of Dandy Dick, they began writing about wine for the daily express and then the daily telegraph at a time when, well, wine writing in British newspapers was still rather novel. Then came the moment every career story needs, when the wine expert dropped out of a new BBC television show called Food and Drink. The producer, a television legend in his own night beaten Basil Jett, said at the time, "Get me the actor, you know, the one that knows about wine." And they did, and the actor never quite left the stage. In fact, he just found the bigger one. Food and Drink made him a huge star in the '80s, and he since become the nation's wine tutor. His books, his television work, and his live shows, saw him awarded an OBE for services to broadcasting in journalism in 2023. Away from work, he's been married for almost 30 years. And after 17 years of marriage here in his wife, welcome their first child, giving him a whole new circle of life at an age when, well, most of us would be warming up for retirement. But as we're about to hear, at 77, there are no plans for retirement. In fact, he has his new book out. One of many that he's published across the years, it's called A Vine Is A Wild Thing. The Guide to Grapes, Growers, and Gloriously Good Bottles. So, Corkscrews are out the ready. It's Oz-Clock. (hip hop music) I'm all right. Just having listened to that, I'm actually feeling slightly exhausted. So I may go and have a kit, but you can keep chatting for another five minutes. I love a kit. That's a lot, isn't it, that you packed in? Or with a glass in hand? Well, the lovely thing is it's been about avoiding getting a job. That's what I've managed to live my entire life. I made that decision when I was eight years old. I mean, when I was eight years old, I was with my dad and we were reading the local newspaper and this bloke standing there with his shiny bald head and his smart suit and his smile on his face. But I could see he was absolutely miserable and he was being given the gold watch. And I said, "Daddy, what's wrong with him?" And he said, "Oh, he's retiring from the local gravel pit." And I said, "But he looks so unhappy." Why is he retiring? And he said, "Oh, you have to retire." Yeah, when you get a job, when you get the 65, you have to retire. I said, "But he doesn't want to." Does he said, "Nobody has to." I said, "Daddy, I'm never going to retire." And my father said, "You'd better never get a job then." So I said, "All right, daddy, I won't." And to be honest, if I had to say, what terrifies me more than anything else, all my life, it's actually putting a suit on five days a week and going into an office. I think I would have survived a month. It's the one thing in my life. I've always felt, I've always felt two things. I wanted a freedom to do whatever I wanted, but I had to find things I could do, which I enjoyed. But also I wanted to make a difference and I was just terrified of being office worker number 567 in the 15th floor of some building, in some enormous corporation. Now, whenever you, who you were, what you did, whether you've made any difference, what's everybody existing on this world? And I just thought that of all the things in the world is what I don't want to be. So I thought, well, I got lucky. I went to university, I became an actor, I became a singer. I discovered wine when nobody did wine. Even even to this day, the old time has still get at me. They still nibble at me and bicker at me for how I've ruined the world of wine and how I've changed it all and life was better in the old days. And you'd just say, you know, you boring old sods, you know, you wouldn't have a business if it wasn't for the kind of stuff that Julie Gordon and I did on those television days, waking the world up. We just saw, I'll tell you what we, I mean, I met Julie Gordon on a, I was doing General Peron in a Vita at the time and I managed to get a week off from General Peron in a Vita to go to Australia and back and Robert Stigwood, the producer said, you better be back by Friday morning because we've got a new photo session for the new Vita. So I did the Thursday afternoon matinee. Robert Stigwood, formerly of the Bee Gees Management. Did I manage the Bee Gees? No, no Robert Stigwood. No Robert Stigwood, I thought you meant I managed to be, I mean, my memory is normally very good and I thought I managed the Bee Gees and I wonder how many years I missed. Obviously I missed several years of my life, Kate, that you know about, no I don't. That's a good bottle. No, he was a massive, he managed, he produced things like Sweeney Todd, which was my big, big break. That is talked about breaks getting into television. My big break in the theatre was Sweeney Todd and it's still one, do you know the show? It's just the greatest piece of musical theatre that's ever been written. And I remember I was at the National Theatre at the time and I heard this pirate tape. I remember lying on the floor, this bloke's flat, listening to this pirate tape of Sweeney Todd from America and I just said, I've got to do that, I've got to do that and he said, well actually I'm the rehearsal pianist when they come over for the auditions and he got me a sort of pirate script of one of the songs called These Are My Friends. It's a love letter to his, to his, his, his razors and he said, these are my friends. See how they glisten, all this stuff, you know, and I did it with a tuning fork. But I went, I went on to the stage and there was Robert Stigwood and Hal Prince and Stephen Sondheim just sitting there, all three of them there. Oh my goodness. What are you gonna sing? You thought, oh it's gonna be some Gershwin or it's gonna be some Bernstein or something. And I said, I'm gonna sing These Are My Friends from Sweeney Todd and there's a long silence. And then Stephen Sondheim walked down the front of the stage and said, okay, went back to his, see how they held it, this bloke, a hold of this, and I sang These Are My Friends. And I sang, I sang, I sang, I sang, I sang. to the pianist, just follow me, just follow me because he'd never seen it before. And I collapsed on the floor, cutting my throat with my tuning fork. And then there was a very long silence, and how Prince-and-Walked. And he said, "Arz, we've no part for you in this. We've cast Swini. But if you want to cover Swini, come and sit with me and Stephen and listen to the other guy's sing. And I spent the rest of that day with the great how Prince and the great Stephen Sondar, my young actor, sitting, looking and listening to all these luminaries from the from the London stage. I was never been sitting." So I did it. Of course, we started in the Western, and I just thought, Dennis Quilly was doing Swini. He was fantastic. And Sheila Hancock was wonderful. But I think, "God, you can't do this eight shows a week. No one can do this eight shows a week." And I thought, Dennis is going to be off soon. And I learnt every syllable of it. I learnt every piece of music. I learnt every move. And I kept saying, "Can I have a rehearsal? Can I have a run through?" And I kept saying, "No, later, later. Can I please? Haven't had a rehearsal? Haven't had a run through? Please give it to me." Eventually, a Saturday afternoon, I thought, "God, Dennis, he's tired today. Hope he lasts out tonight." And at the half hour call, I said, "I heard." And tonight, the part of Swini totally played by Oz Clark. And I just thought, instead of panicking, I just thought, "I'm ready. I'm absolutely ready for this. I've been ready all my life for this." And I went out to see Sheila Hancock and said, "Hello, dear. You all right?" I said, "I'm fine. Just do you want to do a rehearsal?" I said, "Can we just rehearse? Have a little priest, which is a wonderful duet about what kind of person's corpse makes the best meat pie?" And at the end of it, she said, "Oh darling, we're going to have some fun tonight." And went on and did it. And I just gave the performance of my life. And I remember you dropped to the stage at the end when you just killed the woman you love and you're cradling the corpse of the woman you love that you killed by mistake. And you're singing, "There was a barber and his wife, and she was beautiful, a foolish barber and his wife. She was his meaning and his life, and she was beautiful. And she was virtuous. And he was naive." And at that moment, Tobias Rad comes along and cuts your throat, and I fall to the floor. And I just thought, "I've done it. I've done it. My life will never be the same again." I thought, "I am never sticking back into the chorus line." And so it got standing evasion that night from the audience and from the orchestra. And then I drank a bottle of, it was Pomeranino champagne, I remember. The chap calls Stuart because he was the only one left at the end of the show. I said, "We're having a bottle of champagne." And I was lucky. Stigood was in that night. How Prince saw it. Patrick Garland saw it. Trevor Numb was in that night, Peter Hall. Everybody was in that night. And at the next morning, on the Monday, Stigood just rang out and said, "Oh, by the way, when we need a new Quran in a Vita, we have one here. Just give them the job." And it all happened from there. And Sheila Hancock was just sensational. And then I went on and did, dandied it with her. And it was fantastic fun. But that was when the writing started. And so there was a time when I was just thinking, "When is real life gonna suddenly kick in?" Because I'm on the West End stage eight times a week singing these fantastic roles. I've just got myself a job as the Sunday Express wine writer. So I'm going to all these wine tastings and writing about wine. I'm doing everything that everyone's hobbies are all about. And I'm earning more money than I've ever earned in my life. When's it all gonna end? And it sort of never has. Because I'm back on the stage again now. I'm doing a whole series of shows with Baroque music concert called the Armonico concert. And we're doing two shows called Oz and Armonico Drink to Music. And we make the audience, we play lots of wonderful Baroque music. And we make the audience drink. And if they don't drink, we get it. It's security to throw them out. Come on, you're out. You're supposed to drink. You're not drinking out. There's someone else waiting at the door to take you. And we do that. We do a show called Gin and Fonic, which is bloody brilliant. It's a history of gin and music. Great. We do a show called Aileruio, which is a history of beer and music. And we've got a new show now called Oz you like it. And I said, you can't call it that. And the producer said, yes, we can. So I had all the great Shakespeare speeches. And then these brilliant musicians come and do fantastic Shakespeare music between each of my attempts to be or not to be or Macbeth or a fellow or full staff or all these people that I think, God, I'm never going to get through this. Luckily, the music keeps coming along and saving me. So I'm still doing it. It's just it's the old thing. I'm doing it. Why? Because it means I don't have to get a job. Aionos helps you get your business online without the tec headache. With Aionos, you just describe what you need. And a real online menu goes live the same day, no developer, no code. 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For my first question, I want to know who are the people that have changed the course of your life, the ones that have really made you turn left or right or led you to the experiences that have formed to you? I think probably the first thing I ought to say is the people who let me into Oxford, because I was supposed to be doing economics at Oxford, and I thought this is absolutely wonderful. It's so cool to do economics and look at this, economics is a level as a doodle when I was a kid, and I remember I went back to the headmaster and said, "Isn't it wonderful I'm going to do this?" And he said, "Right, you better do Advanced Maths class." I said, "Fine, fine, fine." And I went for three days to Advanced Maths class, and I went to the headmaster and said, "I can't do it. I haven't understood a single word. It's a completely different language. I cannot do this." And he said, "Well, you can't do economics without Advanced Maths." I said, "Nobody told me that. Economic say level as a doodle." And he said, "Okay." He said, "Right, I'll make a couple of phone calls." And he rang up this college that I was supposed to be going to and told them what happened, and they said, "All right then." And I went back to him and I said, "What can I study then?" And he said, "What's interest? What interests you? What is your life around you all about?" And I said, "Well, I've been in the cathedral at Canterbury, all my life as a choir boy, as a senior boy, my whole life has been revolved around cathedral life, around music, around performance." And he said, "Why do you do theology?" And I said, "I don't want to do that." He said, "With psychology." I said, "Oh, with psychology, that'll be interesting." He said, "You made this phone call." And I said, "Can you re-interview this guy?" And I went up, and there were three people there, standing there, sitting there. This is the second college. I went to the first college. I went to the bloke, said, "Oh, no, you're, I hear your captain of hockey. We've never had a captain of hockey here. It'll be lovely to have you." And I kept thinking, "When are you going to ask me about psychology? When are you going to ask me about theology?" And he never did. And he said, "He said, by the way, my dear boy, it's entirely up." And he kept saying, "Have a glass of sherry. Have a glass of sherry." I said, "No, thank you. No, thank you. I don't want a glass of sherry." "You're making that now." And he said, "Imagine it now." And he said, he said, "It's entirely up to me, whether you'll come here next year." And he said, "And all I can say, my dear boys, I so look forward to our first dinner on high table." I went out and thought, "Air, I can't go there. I'll never do any work. And B, I've got there, if I want to." And I then went to the next college, which is the original college. And there, there were three cold-faced tutors there. And they said, "You're a pretty funny bloke." He said, "We thought you were going to do economics." And now you said, "You want to do theology inside ecology? Why?" And I tried to explain. I said, "All right then, pick an economics subject, a history subject, and a theological subject." He said, "Now go outside, prepare a presentation on each of them. Come back in ten minutes and give us three presentations. Absolutely put me to the sword." And I just, when I crawled out of that into, I said, "If they have me, that's where I'm going." And they did have me. And letting me into Oxford, when they could easily have said, "No, you haven't got the maths, you're out." It was the most important thing that ever happened, because at Oxford, people go on about Oxford and Cambridge and oh god, it's all full of elitism and all full of this and that. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But it is bursting with opportunity. And it's a wonderful place to go to. If you're not quite sure what you want to do, you're surrounded by exciting people, you're surrounded by things happening, buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. And I just discovered wine. And at the same time, I was discovering theatre and music and all these things. All the things that were my hobbies could suddenly, I realized, could become my career as the acting came first. My final show at Oxford was I was doing Toby Belch in 12th Night. It's a wonderful, wonderful play. Patrick Garland came down, I did it from London. He was on the great directors in the London West End. He came down it because it so happened at Oxford, people who'd been at Oxford came back 20 years later and just tried to relive their youth by directing a show or something. So I got there and I got to Northampton rep. But before I had done that, I had started this wine tasting thing in Oxford. And the reason was simple. Well, excuse me, anyone listening, I came up to Oxford, you know, I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted sex. You know, I come from a single sex. How we all get here? I just thought I've been trying to get a girlfriend for about eight years, complete failure, failure, failure, failure. I thought, how on earth do I get a girlfriend? Then I discovered this thing called the wine society and looking through and I discovered you can have four wine tastings a term, 50 pence of wine tasting. And then I saw in a small print, you can take a guest for nothing. And suddenly it wasn't 50 pence of wine tasting. It was 50 pence of date. And I just thought I can be so sophisticated, I can be irresistible to the opposite sex. And I remember the first taste first, the first tasting I went to. It was a boredot tasting. And I took Francesca. Francesca was green. She had green hair. She had green sequence, a lever of face. She had green, a tiny green top. She had a minuscule green level skirt. And the rest of her, which was frankly most of her, was covered in green body paint. And I put on my best t-shirt, my clean jeans. I mean knocked on the door of this great big college dining room. The doors opened by a man in a pinstripe suit. Everyone else in that room were male and wearing pinstripe suits. And there was me, where the girl was green from top to bottom. So my attempt, but she didn't, got on a date with Shrek. She stopped talking to me halfway through the tasting. I never talked to me again. I took four girls to taste that, none of them ever talked to me again. So my social life was still doing absolutely nowhere. But I discovered I was thrilled by the possibilities of wine and flavour. And it was good at it. That's the thing. I was like, hey, I can remember those flavours. You guys talk about it. I can remember that wine we had two months ago. That one, the third one along on that table. I could remember those things, which was a brilliant piece of luck. Because that's what blind wine tasting is all about. So we did university wine tasting, and I managed to win them. Then we had to become an actor. But the crucial thing there was that I became an actor. And then someone rang and said, we've got an English wine tasting team getting together. You've got to come and try and get into it. So I had to get out of rehearsal in Sheffield to go for a wine test. You can imagine what they said in Blueley Sheffield going to a wine tasting. It's supposed to be rehearsing. You can't go wine tasting. Anyway, let me offer an afternoon. I got into the team. And then it all changed. Because the first thing we threw out this gauntlet to any country in the world, we will taste your wines against you. And we will beat you in blind tasting. In blind tasting means just you have six or eight glasses of wine of red and six or eight glasses of wine. And that's it. That's the glass. So what is it? You know, it's just eight glasses of red liquid. No, what is it? You've got to go right down to who, what year it was made, what the bloke's name was, whether his wife and his dog had a moustache or not, all that kind of stuff. You've got to go right down from the detail. More detail you give, the more marks you've got. Well, luckily I was good at it. Got into that. And that's when this whole actor who knows about wine came. And that's why it was sort of like Peter Baseljet. Peter Baseljet, yeah. Because Peter Baseljet was very important in your world. And he's somebody that I had been very good fortune of working with as well. I love Bas. He is, he has this incessant enthusiasm for life, for television. And he's somebody that you talk about the Oxford environment creating the sense of possibility, yeah, and opportunity. And I feel like Bas brings that to everything in my experience with him. But obviously he really took to you. And that, that sliding door's kind of phone call moment to book you on the show, sort to change the course of your life forever, didn't it? Forever. I love Bas as well. I think he's an absolutely smashing chap. And he's a dear friend of mine who I absolutely adore. We just love just sliding out somewhere and saying, okay, let's go to some bar around the corner and drink a bottle of wine. He's a wonderful, he's a brilliant television man. He's achieved astonishing things. But he's also a fellow who is just bursting with almost juvenile enthusiasm for any good ideas. And it was like that with the television because I was doing general piranha, I think I was doing piranha probably. And this bloke dropped out of the thing because he'd been asked to do a blind wine tasting in front of an audience live in front of the cameras. And of course, he immediately developed a terminal disease which he magically recovered from about two days later. And because Bas think thought, let's try wine tasting to see whether there's a competitive element that little work. And so he, when he dropped out, Bas just said, right, this is 24 hours notice he dropped out at. And Bas just said, get me the actor who knows about wine. Didn't know what my name was. But because I'd been in all these wine tasting competitions against Germany and France and Italy and America. And luckily, because I was an actor, it was always my picture in the papers. So whatever I was doing there, I was the actor again who wins wine tasting competition. Didn't always win them, but I was always in them. And he said, get me the actor who knows about wine. And I dashed down the next day. And I had a bit of a cold, but I thought I've got to do this. This is a great chance. BBC prime time show young actor. And Bas said, you've got to go on there and then blind taste this wine in front of an audience. Blah blah blah. And I thought, I'm not sure I can do this. I thought, hang on. Bas, I said to the audience, do the audience know what the wine is? And he said, yeah, the audience will know. And they'll have a big border of what it is. But you can't see it. So you won't know what it is. And I thought, I don't pantomime. I can do this. And I must have met a winter out. God, I'm not sure if you should be saying this, but I have to say it. I went out and I saw this wine glass full of gold and liquid wine. There weren't many Australian wines around at that time. And I just thought, that's an Australian shardon there. And I thought, well, there's only about two I've ever come across, Tyrells or Rosemount. And I just said, I looked at it and thought, that's very golden and the audience said, yes, it must be from somewhere warm, little titter. I said, it might well be that Australian shardon. So I said, when you know, oh, France is warm, silence. But not that warm. Spain's a bit warmer, silence. And yeah, I think it might be sudden hemisphere, a little bit of a titter. And I thought, it's just Australian shardon. So I then I said, eventually, I said, I think it might be Australia. And a great big roar went up and I thought, it's just Australian shardon. And then I said, what kind of grape variety could it be? Well, the Sauvignon grape silence is not very golden. The Riesling grape silence is not very golden. The Shardonnay grape is a little titter. I thought, it's a shardonnay. It's a bitch. I got down and I said, I think this is Teryl's Vat 47, Shardonnay from the Hunter Valley in just north of Sydney in Australia. And it's made by a book called Murray Teryl and you can get it for $5.99 in Waitrose. And the place he erupted. And of course, I went off stage and pass it. I had no idea that we could make showbiz out of wine tasting. Do you want to become a regular on the series? And I went, yes, please. And he said, one thing, by the way, you realise you forgot to taste the wine. I forgot to taste the wine. Hold on with the nose. It wasn't him done with the nose. It was done with the looking at it and playing the audience. I'd spent so much time blathering on. I forgot to say this away. But it was just one of those wonderful lucky moments. And Baz has been an absolute star. And he made, he's made many great shows. But he made food and drink was dying. Food and drink was about to be cancelled. And Baz just as a young researcher. to Esther Ranson's husband who was the boss of BBC 2. He said, "Just give me a chance." And Baz got the chance, and he's flown ever since. And thank you, Baz, because I've flown to. Yeah, in the slipstream. You know, around the time that he reinvigorated food and drink, he also brought changing rooms, ground force to our screens, and then, of course, big brother. He brought us a Dutch format and imported it to these shores and turned it into a television phenomenon. Yeah, absolutely. And that just, you know, his sense of populism and how to every man a subject, I think, is quite extraordinary. I mean, I remember we were doing a show called "Dishes" and at the time, and I'd come up with an idea for an item called Sniff My Fish. And he thought it was the funniest thing ever. And every time I see him, now, he still looks at me and goes, "Sniff My Fish." It's just because it's ridiculous. And I'm thinking, "You're one of the most educated men I know, and you start thinking, "Stiff My Fish." He's one of the most educated men in the world. There hasn't changed his sense of humor when he was at school. No! But, you know, what he saw was an opportunity to bring something he loved, wine, and you, to the masses. And at the time that you started on food and drink, we were, as a nation, we were five cent of us as a population, we're consuming wine, we're accumulating. We are now 85 percent as a population, knocking it back. And so many would be quite right in attributing a lot of that rise in popularity to the work that you and Ginny did on that show. Yeah. I remember we, we joined Ginny and I as a talker at the beginning, we saw what must we do? And we thought we've got to democratize wine. We both were most no-interest at all and going into the traditional wine world. The traditional wine world didn't want us, and we didn't want them. But we just saw, there's a wonderful world of them. And I've been to Australia twice, firstly with a raw Shakespeare company. And that was when I was doing Heather Garbler with, with Linda Jackson, six months with Linda Jackson, enough to drive a trip to the gym. Wow. And it sort of did. But Patrick's, Patrick's, Patrick's, Patrick's, Patrick's too, Patrick's too. In those places, or strong with Glitter Jackson. She's a hard cookie. I was, I was the young squit, you know, in the, in the show. I was, and I was understudying. I had to, I had to know the entire play by word. And I have to say I did. But she gave me no quarter on stage. Never gave me any quarter. The slightest mistake I would do. I would make, so maybe, you know, she said she'd been through the School of Hard Knocks and she was going to put me through the School of Hard Knocks. That Patrick's too, also, he, he, he, he found it hard. Because we used to, we kept, became good drinking buddies on that. But I suppose, I mean, again, it was, but as just, he said, the secret of television, he said. And most television only has one of these two secrets. He said, tell a story, have a relationship. He said, the great thing about you and Julie, I've managed to find that you have, you can tell a story and have a relationship. And, you know, we used to 10, 11 million people, 12 million people somewhere I used to watch that show. She was audience. She, she treated me abominably. And she treated me like the henpecked husband. And she used to, she used to, when I would be talking on stage and she would come and put her hand over my mouth on television, another time I remember, she pushed me off the camera because she wanted to talk about something that I was talking about. And Baz said, are you okay with that? Because my mother was going potty. And I said, Baz, I'm an actor. I know what's happening. I'm absolutely fine. He said, please because he said it is television gold. He said, this relationship is going nationwide. And if you're okay with it, please stick with it. And I said, Baz, I'm absolutely fine. I said, I've got no ego in this show at all. I just want the whole thing to work. And it's right. If I stood up and said, don't treat me like that. The whole thing would have flocked. You were a double act for sure. It happened again with James May. Yes, James May, again, and I'm likely pairing. Yeah, now again, it was, I went into the BBC to do a, some kind of gastronomic quiz and it wasn't very good. And an hour or two later, James went in to see, to do a car crash show and it wasn't very good. And this is before he was a big star. And but somebody, one of the producers just said, those two. Those two, he'd seen both of us walking. And for some reason he said, the odd couple, those two. And within, within five days of me walking into the BBC to do something entirely different. And James walking into do something entirely different. Within five days, we had a show commissioned. Nowadays, six or 12 months is what you normally need. We did, we got commissioned in five days. And it was, again, it was transformative. I'm not funny. I mean, you literally just drank your way around England. We had a very strict rule, though. I mean, basically always, one of us would do the drinking and one of us would not. And we'd, I connect the drinking if I need to. And James would, oh, I'm not going to call him directly. Of course you can, he's a very good performer. And he's a brilliant person to work with because he's always looking for the smart remark. He's always looking for the slightly jolly, unusual, little twist. He's just fantastic because he's proactive all the time. Whenever he's just looking like that, his brain is going, he's got a most individual sort of brain. He's fabulous. I still do bits of stuff with him. We're supposed to be doing the show on Johann Sebastian Bach next year, which we may or may not do at all depends. But he loves Bach. Do you know he's got a musical degree? James made the petrolhead is an expert obstacleist. He thinks Johann Sebastian Bach never wrote a bad note. I think he wrote hundreds of bad notes and I had to sing most often. So we're doing this show about James being the protagonist and playing the Bach and talking about him full of passion and me being the bloke who's had to run through the mill of all the Bach cantatas and all the things, oh god, not this one again. And so I'm being the devil's advocate. So hopefully we're doing it next year. Again, that was transformed him. That was the most important of those people in my life. Meeting James was really important. And also meeting my publisher because that is, again, writing books is tough. It's hard, hard work. And it's lonely. And of course there's an action. I don't need to be done now, Oz. Because I can't get an accurate figure on this. You know, don't ask me. You know, under bloke who doesn't even know how old he is. I don't know-- I know he's more than 45. No idea. I'll honestly hate no idea. And actually, I don't care. OK, just keep writing that. I'm afraid I'm one of those bloke's who doesn't look back in life. I just think, OK, what's next? So I do something and I think, truly good, what's next? At the moment, I mean, a what's next mode. I'm doing a whole new series of films and tastings with a chap called Tom Surgy, which is a smashing bloke, called Oz and Tom's English Wine Heroes. Because we just thought nobody is taking English wine by the scruff of the neck and shaking it and saying, these are some of the greatest wines we've made in the world, believe in it. Come on, take possession, take ownership of your own country. This country is in a terrible state when it comes to believing in itself. So Tom and I thought, well, to hell with that, we believe in England, we believe in English wine, English beer. And so that's what we're filming. Going all around the country, I'm off again next week doing the same thing. But fun enough, the publishing, the book, this was a thing, again, I was in a Vita, and I've gone out. Are you talking about Adrian Webster here? Adrian Webster, yeah, he's sort of my long-term publisher. Old, old friend of mine now, we were at Oxford together although he was a terribly important sort of smart actor. And I was a little bloke sort of desperately scrambling around the fringes. So if he thinks we were bosom pals at Oxford, we weren't. I was frightened of him. I'm still frightened of him, actually. But I remember seeing him walk down the street. And I just thought there's only one person in the world who walks like that. And I was in my slap during Peron. I just got to get a cup of coffee at the bar, Italia. And I said, Webster, you turned on, hello? Good God, what are you doing? And I said, well, you said, I'm one publisher now. And I wanted to write a wine book. And I said, well, I'm governing Argentina eight times a week and getting a bit bored on Saturday, Matt and Ace. And he said, well, do you want to write this wine book for me? I went, I'm an actor, you know? But then, of course, I was an actor already writing the Sunday Express Wine column. And I met him the next day, and in a tiny office, there was one chair. And it shows the relationship to him publishers and authors. He sat on the chair, I sat on the floor. We opened a bottle of Austrian sweet wine from a village called Rust of All Places and drank that and talked about this book and said, what would you like to do? And I said, well, the only book I want to write is something which breaks down barriers, which some, just like me and Julie Gordon, stops this awful elitist world from just trying to say, wine is for us and you lock and bugger off. It's because the whole possibility of wine being a happy, a juice to make people happy, to make life better, that's all. It's about for nearly everybody. Just make me a bit happier in this tough old life. Glass of wine will help you do that. That's what Julie and I wanted to do. We also said of course, but it's got to taste good. And we didn't have any popular wine culture in the UK 'cause we didn't have any popular wine that tasted any good. It wasn't until the Australians came along, then the New Zealanders came along, then the Chileans came along, Californians, South Africans, the new world completely transformed the world of wine. And I have to say, to say, I was the me and Julie between us just standing there waving this flag and shouting into a deafening wind of disapproval saying the new world is the way forward, it's not France, it's not Italy, it's not Germany, it's not Spain, it's the newer, they only make wine in these new world countries because they're like drinking. The water's fine in Australia, the water's not fine in the South of France, the water's not fine in Spain, the water is more expensive than wine in someone at France in those days, so it's someone like Australia, you know the taxi driver drinks wine, she likes it, the person working on the on the docks drinks wine because he likes it and the reason they in France and Spain they drank it because it was the only safe thing to drink, not, didn't have to taste good, but in Australia if it didn't taste good, they didn't drink it and they had a popular culture which we didn't have, I said we can get those, those heroes, the old heroes were Australian, Californian, New Zealand, we can get those into our country and we can say drink these, drink these on television in front of 10 million people a week, we can change the wine world and that's what we tried to do. Well I saw it firsthand in my childhood else because my mum worked at St. Boasland, my mum worked on the tills and then she was a supervisor there so she could see what was coming in onto the shelves and I'm talking sort of mid 80s, late 80s here and then suddenly I noticed a change in the house, she'd invite girlfriends over in the evening and they would open wine and wine as, until then you know, wine didn't feature in our lives in our family fridge, it's never left by the way and it's the tradition I'm very keen that I carry on but I remember it feeling the height of sophistication and my mum discussing things like a rising for example out with her girlfriends and for a working class family it felt different in your world, it was dramatic, wasn't it? Late 80s to late 90s is when it all happened. I remember doing a revolution in wine wasn't it? Revolution, I was doing a book signing tour in the 90s, late 90s probably and I remember going out and went to Halifax and I got on the train at Halifax and this old fella said hey where's that blonde of yours and I said I was joking actually, she said we put her in a secure unit you can go and visit her, you know, she's my fatty blonde, really and he said she said I like that wine you know and he said he said I thought wine was not for the likes of us but he said now I retired I have a bottle of shardanae every Saturday with my wife bottle of shardanae and he said I thought wonderful wine is not for the likes of us, wine is for the likes of us, went up to Edinburgh and there was this young fella, I was just having a pint before a show and he said excuse me Jameh Favre the old chat with you he said you go to the wandler I hear and he said yes I said he said I like metal or I said oh really why did you like it now this split was an unemployed 19 year old wanted to be a farm and he said I like metal or cause a bit softer than the cabernet and I like the softness and I thought we're getting through we're getting through I was walking back home just from the tube and the old bill had got a couple of lads up against the cart they'd obviously been trying to scouser cart and the bloat turned to me as I walked by and said you're Aussie what should we drink with our dinner inside tonight and I just thought we're getting through we're getting through and and it was a great feeling to think that because most wine people aim at the top well they used to aim at the top end the market thing and that's the only interesting end well it the flavors are interesting at the top end but the people aren't necessarily interesting Julia and I just thought we've got a great opportunity here to to to make to make the I don't know it sounds really maybe it sounds simplistic but to make the world a better place yeah and you did thank you very much we are and remain very grateful for how so but my next question to you I wanted to dive into some advice that was imparted to you by your dad to us so I think you've written about before you said my dad did a lot of pro boner work with coal miners and fishermen and all people who would work tremendously hard he was a chess position and I utterly respected and revered him for it he'd take me down the mines to show me exactly what hard work was he'd say to me we're all in this together we're all human beings you may be luckier than them because you don't have to do this you mess but you must always regard them as your equals as your human friends and that for a child of being raised in in a world that was more privileged than the the the men he was treating that that was really profound wasn't it so I wondered how that's informed you but also what advice you've imparted to your daughter that you hope is as significant I my dad was a wonderful bloke and I remember vividly when he said come on robby robby was my name not not ours he's about where we're going down Betts hang of there and we'd go down and I'd be surrounded by we'd go down in in the cage with with with the miners speaking in very thick Welsh accents because they've been three generations in Kent hadn't integrated at all because probably because Kent didn't want them to and they didn't want to and I just was astonished and frightened and amazed by this human endeavour half a mile underneath the ground these these black city shining figures speaking this strange language and hacking and hewing at the coldest terrible violent savage life they seem to be living and my dad would not only take me down the mines but he was the only doctor then who was prepared to go out late at night if they were if they were seriously sick and I remember the phone off from going at two or three in the morning and sometimes he he'd come into my room and he said come on robby we're going to see my miners and he put me in the car and we drive off to one of these miners and and the miners wife would give me a cup of sweet hot tea and as I sat there and he'd go into the bedroom where this poor old miner with his emphazine morories lung cancer was coughing and splashing and my dad I remember he used to just he knew he couldn't cure most of these diseases in those days but he thought I remember him saying I can give them one more spring I can I can just get them through so they can see the sunlight again so they can feel the warmth on their face they can have one one last chance of of of the pleasures and the preciousness of life before it's all over and it's I've it's it's it's it's affected me all my life's affected me right now and it's as important as anything could be in life well thank you for all that you've done the countless books so many we can't actually keep account the brilliant television educations that you've imparted across the decades about something that sits in my fridge now all day every day but wasn't a part of my childhood you know you've been part of a revelation and a revolution was and thank you so much for your time today I really love talking to you and good thank you I think as we've established across the course of this conversation far too much wine has been consumed by most of us too but accurately ascertain how many books others published but I can tell you that a vine is a wild thing his new book which is a guide to great growers and gloriously good bottles is available now wherever you get your books and if you're in the mood for more chat with other experts in the food and drink space well we have episodes with Tom Parker bowls and our back catalogue James Martin Grace Dent at Tom Kerridge and so many others stars from the world of the kitchen and the restaurant scene just dive into our back catalogue where there are hundreds of episodes waiting for your downloading pleasure as always thank you so much for listening do hope you enjoyed that and I'll see you next time Dallas this one's for you Ionus helps 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