Orlando Murrin, author of 'Knife Skills for Beginners' - Chef, writer and all-round doer discusses the perfect keyboard, going on tangents, and why kitchens make the perfect place for murder
Writer's Routine
Dan Simpson
4.9 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2024
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Orlando Murrin has had many careers. In the early 90's he appeared on 'Masterchef', reaching the semi-final on a show watched by 12 million people. From then, he's worked as a chef and hotelier, written cookbooks, edited magazines, made podcasts, and now has a novel out.
'Knife Skills for Beginners' sees Paul Delamare investigating murders at a high-end cookery school in Belgravia, London. We talk about why the kitchen has the perfect recipe for crime. You can hear why his protagonist very rarely did what he was supposed to, how he researched the novel while writing, and what made he keep going on tangents.
We discuss why Orlando is extremely particular about his keyboard, whether magazine writing influences story-telling, where his drive to do comes from, and why a little bit of wine sometimes helps alot.
This week's episode is sponsored by 'Who is the Cheese Wire Killer?', a new true crime podcast putting you in the heart of one of the UK's most famous unsolved murders. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, welcome along to a brand new episode of writers' routine. This week we're chatting to Orlando |
| 0:13.7 | Murren. He is one of those people who has done everything, written for magazines, written |
| 0:18.8 | cookbooks, run hotels, and now he's got a novel out. |
| 0:21.7 | It's called Knife Skills for Beginners. We talk about why he's always going on tangents. |
| 0:27.3 | Also, why he plotted at the start, so he'd have something to look forward to at the end. |
| 0:32.0 | And as a chef, I bet they say right what you know, he talks about setting a murder mystery in a kitchen. |
| 0:39.3 | It is a death trap in there. |
| 0:41.0 | I mean, quite apart from the knives. |
| 0:43.1 | You've got the gas. |
| 0:44.5 | You've got the gas playing around a pot of oil, |
| 0:47.6 | which is the most inflammable thing that you can possibly have. |
| 0:50.8 | You've got machines whirring that if you put your hand in, you can, you'll take off a hand. |
| 0:57.1 | What about a mandolin that terrible slicing machines? They are absolutely terrible things. |
| 1:03.0 | But I've known so many people who have taken off half a finger on a mandolin slicing potatoes for |
| 1:07.2 | gratin dovina. It is a hellhole of kitchen. |
| 1:16.1 | And that's before you even set some professional chefs in there, because they are very, very hot-blooded, competitive, unpredictable people. |
| 1:20.7 | So throw that lot together. |
| 1:22.8 | A food setting is a wonderful idea. |
| 1:24.9 | There is more with Orlando Mourin in this week's writer's routine. |
| 1:35.1 | Yes, welcome along. My name is Dan Simpson. This is writer's routine where we take a look |
| 1:39.2 | through an author's working day. We see where they work, how they work, when they work, how they do everything and |
| 1:45.2 | sort their life out to give them the best chance of getting words down on the page. And this |
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