Spanish Fry

Rick Stein has a terrible hangover when we speak. A very good staff party apparently.

Half way through the interview he bursts out laughing and asks if we can start again, because he can’t remember what he’s talking about.

Charming, funny and affable as ever, Rick Stein is much nicer than expected, because having been savaged in the press for leaving his wife, and fellow Padstow empire builder, Jill, for his Australian lover, the tabloids shredded his reputation. “I’m not nearly as nice in real life,” he laughs.

About to meet his three sons for lunch in London, he’s taking some well-deserved time out from work to catch up with family and friends and enjoy good old Blighty. “An old lady came up to me in Padstow recently and asked how long I was visiting for. I told her this is where I live,” he says in astonishment.

Back from a trip to Spain where he filmed his latest TV series and book, he’s as passionate as ever about his combined love of food and travel.

“Spain is where I went with my parents and that’s what we wanted to recreate, the Spain that I remember, not the Costas, but a downrate version of Laurie Lee all the way from The Cotswolds,” he smiles.

“It didn’t disappoint, Spain is still exotic and very interesting. We hear so much about its Michelin starred restaurants but not about the real rugged food of Spain. What I love about the Spanish is their lack of ceremony so that you have to almost unearth the culinary gems. For example their food has a huge North African influence you don’t hear about much so we really tried to bring that to light. But then it’s such a huge country that we were quite overwhelmed.”

So is filming his current BBC2 four part series as much fun as it looks? “Filming is part work, when you count the days until you can come home, and every day is a challenge to keep everything going. But then you counter that by having the time of your life and not wanting it to stop.”

Tonight Rick’s off to see his publisher to talk about the next project. So do they ever say no? “Sometimes,” he smiles, “and then I just have to bring them around to my way of thinking. But I like to negotiate.”

So what is next? “Well I’ve always been very keen to do Australia and New Zealand, and then people start writing in asking us to do Scandinavia and South America, The Danube. I’d like to do America myself,” the 64 year-old says.

And here was I thinking he’d run out of options soon. “Well I like to think of my programmes as travel writing with food thrown in and make them as personal as I can. The rest people can get from The Lonely Planet. But good food is always the star, and always the main act with a few hard-hitting comments thrown in.”

One thing’s for sure, the Rick Stein roller-coaster shows no sign of abating. Padstow, or Padstein as it’s known, is as popular as ever thanks to his numerous shops, restaurants and the 11 books he’s written. So does Rick ever feel that he’s taken on too much? “Often I’ve been away so long I have to get back in everyone’s good books. And that’s nice. And OK, people say I’m not here enough but sometimes I think it’s good to let them get on with it. On the grand scale of things generally things fall into place so I tend not to panic. And yes, people do have preconceptions about me and realistically you can never be the person you act, but I think I come over nicer than I am. I’m not that nice,” he grins again.

Rick Stein’s longevity is also down to his passion for food, which shines through in his books and TV shows, an interest which was spawned on a farm in Oxfordshire. Because while people think Rick Stein is Cornish to his bones, he was born and bred in Churchill, where his huge zest for food was first realised.

“I was brought up on a farm and I always loved the produce even in the 60s, and noticed how good it tasted. I remember my father boasting at Sunday lunch that everything on the table came from the farm and I remember watching the pigs being cut up and the chickens gutted, although we weren’t allowed to watch the actual slaughter. So we were quite close to the ground. So that’s where it all started.”

The travelling bug then took hold during his year off before university. “The ages of 18,19 and 20 are such formative years and travelling around the world gave me a real taste for the food of other countries coupled with the entertainment of travel, so it makes sense now that I’ve got a career travelling all over the place,” Rick agrees.

“And while I was away I read a lot because before that I was quite reluctant to learn and much more interested in rugby. So by the time I got back home I’d changed quite a lot and had grown up a bit.”

A degree in English at Oxford University followed and Rick remembers cooking student dinner parties for all and sundry. “In Oxford we borrowed my brother’s house in my third year (famous neurophysiologist Prof John Stein, who’s a don at Magdalen) and it had a really nice kitchen so we started reading Elizabeth David, and going to the Covered Market to buy game and olive oil and garlic and then having dinner parties. What fledgling aspirations,” Rick laughs.

So did his university course aid his career?

“In terms of my English degree there isn’t much you can practically gain from a degree in literature, but I’m sure it gave me the facility to express myself well and I’m always introducing bits and bobs on my programmes because I’m genuinely quite interested in the references around us.

“But I love coming back to Oxford because I know what Oxford feels like and it’s like nowhere else in the world.”

* Rick Stein will be signing copies of his new book Rick Stein’s Spain at Oxford’s Waterstones tomorrow at 1pm to accompany his current four-part TV series on BBC2. For more information go to waterstones.com or call 0843 290 8537