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Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Episode 77: Mary Berry

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Kat Rulach

Kids & Family, Arts, Music, Parenting

4.8527 Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Who doesn’t dream of sitting down to tea and cake with Mary Berry? Well luckily, that dream came true for me – and this week I’m asking you to join me. Tea with no sugar for me thanks, because we’ve also got a slice of salted caramel cake to get through too!

 

I visited Mary a couple of weeks ago, at her home in Henley. Her kitchen was a hive of activity, with her Christmas recipes being tried out, from her new book and TV series, Cook and Share.

 

Over tea and cake in the conservatory, Mary talked about growing up in the war years, with sugar and meat rations, and how her mum used to save up their sugar rations in order to make the odd pudding. She told me about her route into TV and the golden advice she was given about smiling and imagining she’s talking to just one person when presenting her shows. I was struck by Mary’s incredible work ethic and her overriding positive attitude to life. This is in spite of and alongside her personal experience of every parent’s living nightmare: losing a child. I was grateful to Mary for sharing her thoughts about what we can do if a friend experiences bereavement – or indeed if we do ourselves.

At 87, Mary remains full of enthusiasm for life, work, cooking, teaching – and was even positive about my suggestion of a surname change – one of my zanier daydreams!


Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis Bextor, it is produced by Claire Jones and post-production is by Richard Jones.


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, I'm Sophia Lusbexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to

0:09.6

to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work.

0:14.0

I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years,

0:20.2

so I spin a few plates myself.

0:21.6

Being a mother can be the most amazing thing,

0:24.6

but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions.

0:27.6

I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything.

0:31.6

Welcome to spinning plates.

0:35.6

Hello. Richard asked me to record this time somewhere that's not too loud with the traffic.

0:43.3

I think you can probably tell from the sound effects I have not succeeded.

0:49.3

I've sat on the green opposite our house. I'm not on my own. Ray's here. Ray, do you want to say hi?

0:55.0

Hi.

0:56.0

Hi.

0:57.0

And I'm just back from picking up some bits for our supper for tonight. We're going to, oh, what was that Ray? Your phone?

1:06.0

I'm going to try, sorry, dropped his phone. We're going to try and make a Chiritsa and squid thing that we found in a recipe book. And I've got some nice new wrapping paper because we were running a bit low. And tomorrow I'm going to see my sister and her boyfriend and it's his birthday, so I've picked up some wine and chocolates for him. So it's one of those kind of Saturdays. Pretty mosey. I like these sort of Saturdays. It's been a really busy week. Quite eclectic.

1:28.3

For example, on Thursday morning I took Ray around a school because he's about to start secondary, so we're looking at our options.

1:35.3

Then in the afternoon I flew to Portugal with Richard. Then we DJed until one in the morning in Portugal,

1:40.3

got up the next day, swam in the sea, flew back to London, got in the car, went

1:45.0

straight to Cheltenham Literary Festival where there was an event last night for our cookbook.

1:49.6

So that was quite a crazy, um, 36 hours.

1:53.8

Oh, it's getting windy now.

1:54.8

Rich is going to kill me.

...

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