FOOD - Matt Tebbutt Saturday Kitchen’s Matt Tebbutt: It’s easy to swear on live TV
By Lauren Taylor
BBC Saturday Kitchen star Matt Tebbutt says one of his biggest challenges is not swearing because “you forget you’re on TV” – and over eight years he’s made a few blunders.
“You have to remember you’re on telly, and you can get very comfortable and act and say things you would in your own kitchen with your friends – you could easily swear, because I’m quite sweary” says the 50 year old, who replaced James Martin as presenter in 2016.
“I called Peter Gordon [a New Zealand chef] an f****** genius, under my breath. I had to apologise, I was mortified.”
Funnily enough,Tebbutt says he later received an email from Gordon’s PA thanking him for the mention on Saturday Kitchen in 2017.“[They said],‘Our website has crashed, would you like to come for lunch?’
“I was told off quite rightly, but since then, I always try to have a little word myself before [going live].”
Tebbutt says that while the guests do wine tastings alongside tucking into the dishes cooked up on the show, he’s careful with alcohol while on air.
“What I’ve realised very quickly is that if I drink half a glass of wine, suddenly the autocue moves around, you’re not very good at linking words together. So if I drink like a centimetre of wine in the whole show, I’d be surprised.
“We taste a lot in rehearsals,” he adds.
Tebbutt has just released his latest cookbook, Pub Food, a collection of elevated pub dishes – think mussels cooked in beer with crispy monkfish cheeks, and rump of Welsh lamb with spiced aubergine, mint and yoghurt – as well as a celebration of British pubs in general. They are “one of the last melting pots there are in life”, says the chef, who also presents Food Unwrapped on Channel 4.“I will disappear on a Friday and go and do Saturday Kitchen.And then I’ll meet some quite famous faces sometimes, get back to the pub [near his home in Monmouthshire], and nobody gives a monkey’s! They really don’t care, and it’s great. “You can be in the same place with very wealthy people and farmers, and the guy who empties the bins, all on the same level, and you’re all having a chat- there’s very few places you can do that anymore.
“Then if you throw good beer and conversation in the mix, and good food, I think they’re really special places.”
But local pubs are “having a really s*** time at the moment”,Tebbutt says.“They are struggling, the prices are going through the roof, energy costs, food costs, staffing. It’s all
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