Hello and welcome to Out To Lunch. The podcast where in normal times you find me taking fantastic

guests out for a slap up feed in a top restaurant. In recent episodes you'll have heard me

dining on takeaways with my guest over webcam as lockdown prevails. But this week, well we've

got a treat for you. Recorded pre-lockdown at the start of 2020, I'm genuinely out to

lunch in an actual restaurant with a queen of burlesque, data vantes. I'm kind of famous for

like opening a bottle and having it explode, you know, pouring a big magnum of champagne down

myself and I'll tell you nothing hurts more than some champagne in the eye. It hurts. Really?

I won't lie, choosing a restaurant for data vantes felt like a challenge. She is so poised,

she is about the beautiful things and I need it somewhere beautiful. She, the only thing she'd

said to us was that she'd need meat which meant I had a wide choice. I decided to go for Italian.

We've come to a restaurant called Norma on London Charlotte Street. It was set up by the team behind

the Stafford Hotel. It's a Sicilian restaurant with Ben Tish as the presiding chef. What's really

key about it, apart from the food being delicious, is that the whole thing has a real art deco field

to it. It's vintage and so is Dita Vantes. It felt like a very good fit. Let's go inside.

You make it. I make it. I love you to meet you. How are you? I need your podcast.

Oh, well, it's a great, we finally get to meet. Thank you for agreeing to come and have lunch with me.

I'm going to throw a question at you. Okay. So when I was six years old, 1972, my parents took me to

see Gypsy, the Angela Lamisbury production which was quite a famous, a famous production.

And I remember it to this day. This is Giuseppe who is serving us today. I went to see this production

of Gypsy and it kind of instilled in me a love of musical theatre, kickily that one.

I mean, I love that musical and you said Angela Lamisbury. And so it was like one of my favorite

glamour girls of all time. I think people forget that she was so, so beautiful. You've often said

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