Chris McCausland enjoys our cottage pie and a ginger beer

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So you had to pick a saint's name. So I added in Andrew, which is my brother's name. Oh, nice. So it's Peter Andrew, which does sound like Peter Andre. Yes. Nicholas Peter Andre. I'm going to call you P.A. I'm going to change up my phone. P.A. P.A. P.A. What's your name? P.A. Oh, God, my name's Angela Maria. Yeah. Florinda Lucia. Oh, yes. Come on. That's a lot of, you know. Come on. It's a lot of Catholicism in that name. Oh, come on. A lot of family heritage. A lot of pressure. giving me and you a great best Italian accent, your full name. Angela Maria Claudine de Lucia Hartnett. Oh, yes. Oh, man. Anyway, welcome to Dish. Welcome to Dish. Here's a question. It's the Brit Awards this coming weekend. I've been in Manchester now. First time it's been in Manchester. First time out of London. It's going to be in Manchester. And Mish is coming. He's working on it. But it's on a Saturday night in Manchester. And they're coming back on the Sunday. and then obviously I have work on Monday. And I've not drank yet this year. So I thought probably we'll drink at the Brit Awards because of celebration. Little sips on. Yeah, little sips on. And then I just thought getting back on that train on Sunday night, should it be nice? Getting back, getting your pyjamas on, ordering a Chinese, inspired by Tom Davis last week. I think the Sunday after the Brits will be a day for, as Tom called it, the Big Five. So you're going to do Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonald's? KFC. A pizza. Chinese and an Indian. And an Indian? Yeah, the Big Five. Oh, wow. I don't know if I've had time for the Big Five. I suddenly had in my head that there was a fried breakfast involved in that. Or you could ditch the Indian and have the breakfast first. You could make it your own. You could do your own. Anyway, I was just thinking, maybe it's quite nice to indulge in that. If you do, I want to see photographic evidence at every stage. I mean, it would be exhausting eating all that. Yeah, you'd like to get up early. Maybe it's not the day forward. Anyway, so, I don't know. Not the day forward. Misha might be challenged by it. Depends how much you drink the night before. That would be the key. Mish does the big five. Not as a challenge. You can eat. Today on Dish, we have Chris McCausland coming to see us. Very excited. You will know as a comedian, of course. You will know him as the winner of Strictly Come Dancing, of course. And he said to talk about his memoir, Keep Laughing, but I presume said in the Strictly style of Keep Dancing. He's also on a massive tour. And I mean massive. It's called Yonks, and it actually started two years ago. It's huge. And he tours a lot. I mean, I think he's one of these comedians that might even do two gigs in some days. He does, which I think it must be exhausting. Wow. But he does it. So he's going to be here. We're going to talk all about his book, talk about the tour, talk about winning Strictly, talk about getting you on Strictly. Oh, that'll just snap. Would you actually do it, do you think? No. You've only got seven restaurants and a podcast to run. And a product line in Waitrose. I'll just tell Sam. And a live to live and two dogs. That's it. I can easily do that. Come on. So before we get Chris in, we should talk about seasonality and what is going on in the world of food in February time. Hello. Oh, hello. Welcome to the dish. Welcome to the dish. And this is a gorgeous flower I've just been handed. Yes. An artichoke flower. It's an artichoke. It's a mamoli artichoke from the Latia region. And they're really in season now. You can get them in waitrose. And most of the time, how they do the ministry, they deep fry them. So you'd sort of take off all this root here and you'd take off the outer layers and then dust in flour and then you deep fry them. And they do open like a beautiful flour. Or you can pickle them. So you put them in like what they call an aloe grec liquid. So that's vinegar, water, sugar, lots of different spices and herbs. And you cook them in that. Or another way of doing them is just to literally boil them. And then again, you peel off all these outer leaves. And then you're left in the middle with the artichoke heart. and then you eat the heart. So they are delicious. There are people sometimes hesitate because they're a bit hard to prep, but once you've done one or two, you can do it. So how would you do it? If you had that just in your fridge? You'd take some of the outer leaves off. Not all of them, so you want to eat them, just the first outer leaves, just like that till you see the heart. And if I was deep frying it, I wouldn't take any more. Then I would peel all the stalk and then cut it to there. If I was doing them allogrek, I'd peel all the stalk and then cut it into lozenges. and then cook them in that allegraic liquid. So we've got our little board here. So we've cut our root. Yeah. We'll cut straight through it. So you see there's the little heart there. They're all beautiful, aren't they? Very beautiful. But where you have a globe, the heart is much, much bigger. Whereas here, so you'd eat all these little leaves here, the stems of them. Great colour, aren't they? They are. Do you ever do an ashtook at home? Not at home, but I might do now. I might do them this weekend, who knows? Okay, should we get christened? Yes. Yay! Hello, Chris. Hello. Good to see you. Lovely to see you. Hi, Chris. How are you? Lovely to see you. You're great. Thanks for coming. Thanks for coming. No, thanks for having us. Yeah, we're very excited. I'm looking forward to this. I've only had my bowl of shreddies this morning. Would you like sparkling or still? Always still. Always still. Sparkling is like somebody's sucked all the fun out of lemonade. There you go. Right, that's there. Thank you very much. And then on that side, you've got Pringles there. Salt and vinegar for you. Do you know what? This is the laziest thing. I've come to a Michelin star chef and you give me a bowl of Pringles. Well, I don't want to disappoint you, but that's your first course. The rest are just crisps, crisps and crisps. We do go to Monster Munch later. We move into a pot noodle for dinner, are we? How did you guess, Chris? Little Pringles fact. Do you know what the shape of this is? Oh, I don't know. It is a hyperbolic paraboloid. Is it? Actually. No, no, no. Oh, my God. Once you get on the hyperbolic paraboloid. Do you like a hyperbolic paraboloid? You can't go back. It's also got the word bollock in it. That's why we all like it. Thank you, Angela. Thank you, Angela. Sorry, I didn't mean it like that. Oh, my God. Okay, well, should we do our intro? Oh, was none of that part of it? No, that was part of it. I can't believe I've wasted my hyperbolic parabola fact. No, that's going in. That is going in, don't you worry. Time to officially welcome our guest to Dish this week. We have a stand-up comedian who actually understands the value of sitting comfortably. So much so that he takes his own stool on tour with him. Love that. A round of applause for Chris McCausland every time. Welcome, Chris. Hi, Chris. Welcome. Hi, Chris. Well, cheers for having us. Oh, my God, thank you for coming. Pleasure. We heard about this stool, that you have a specific stool that will travel on this huge tour with you. Well, it's just that, you know, I mean, it's part of the set, isn't it? So control the things that you can control. I use, you know, I always have a stool on stage. I don't like being sat down for the full show. I like to be up and about. I like to kind of play the room. But I always, I use a stool really because it gives me an anchor point. It's a point of, you know, I can return to the stool. I know that that way is straightforward. and you know you can you can turn up at a venue and the stool's a bit wobbly the stool's too short it's a spinny stool that's no good to me you know if i'm using it to know yeah you know it's do half a spin and then suddenly you don't know which building way the front is so just you know just in the way that anybody would take components of a set yeah sure just take your own stool would you know what the dish table people love sitting around the dish table and banging the dish table maybe gets a bit of press what about the How are you finding as a stool connoisseur the dish chair? Yeah. Well, I mean. Yeah, go on. Give us a review of the dish chair. Well, it's kind of doesn't know what it is, does it? No. It doesn't. I think he's trying to be fancy, this dish chair. It's kind of, it's got the structure of an indoor chair, but with the seating kind of area of a garden chair. It's very true, Matt, Chris. It doesn't know what it wants to be. No, it doesn't know. Indoor, outdoor. It feels like it shouldn't be indoors or outdoors. Hey, we're starting today with, as we have mentioned the Pringles, we're having some Pringles, but we're also having a ginger beer because you're something of a ginger beer connoisseur, you heard. Yeah, I love a ginger beer. You love a ginger beer. We've gone for your choice, the Fentiman's ginger beer. Why is this one the best, do you think, Chris? Well, first of all, it took me so long to learn. every time I was asked, I'd go to get one for years, I could never remember whether I like ginger beer or ginger ale. Every time. And I had to come up with a little rhyme in my head, which was, ginger beer, cheer. Ginger ale, fail. And that's how I have to remember. So I have to do my little thing to go, yeah, it is the ginger beer. Yeah, it is the ginger beer. Yeah, a little ginger beer. I like it. It's got a bit of a kick. It's refreshing. it feels like you like a I mean I just don't like a Diet Coke as much as the next person but it does feel like you're choosing a slightly healthier option because it's sad when your life is you know fooling yourself that you're being healthy with a ginger beer like just a different type of fizzy drink yeah yeah Diet Coke no more than one a day you know I think that's a good place to be with ginger beer I could have three and feel good about myself nice get right on it we've got loads for you we do have loads we do have loads We're going to go through your food likes and your dislikes in a second. One item that isn't on the list is a sausage, but you are a sausage fan. Can you talk us through the concept of sausage dark days and the need for sausage? No, I mean, listen, I love a sausage. When you younger I would always go for bacon rather than sausage if you having a sandwich Bacon butty bacon butty with tomato sauce it amazing as you get older you kind of taste change And now I always brown sauce rather than tomato sauce Tomato sauce for me now is really quite, can often be quite, you know, sugary and you can taste it in it. But especially being on tour as well, I really have to police the sausage intake. Because I'm on tour, you know, six days a week sometimes, seven days a week if I'm far away from home doing Scotland or something. and you can't be eating sausages every day, can you? No. So I do have to have me sausage, you know, the dark days where I have to. I mean, it's a good job I can't see because I don't have to look at them there. Can I? Eat me, eat me. So ideally you'd like to eat a couple of sausages a day. Is that what you'd like? Well, I mean, I could eat sausages every day, but I do have to make these sensible decisions because they take about a fortnight off your life, don't they, every time you eat one. And so when I go to the hotels, there's pluses and negatives to not being able to see the buffet. Because, you know, your eyes are bigger than your belly, aren't they? Sure. So I can kind of make this decision to not have a sausage and not be swayed by looking how good they look. But the flip side of that is I can never judge the quality of the scrambled eggs for myself. Yes. And hotel eggs is a... It's a minefield. It is, isn't it? Sometimes it's a moggy swamp. Yes. Oof. Overcooked. And so if somebody's getting me dinner and I go, just check the quality of the eggs. Yeah. I'm basically making a decision based on what they think is edible eggs. And so you never really notice you got them, do you? Some of them, there's too much liquid in them. It's when they sit in that sort of chafing dish, that buffet dish. They can't. You've got to make your eggs and eat them. That's the way. So that's what they should be doing. So if you were doing the Angela Hartner breakfast at a hotel, you wouldn't do egg buffet? No, no egg buffet. No, make your eggs to order. Come on, that's the way to do it. Especially if Chris was there, I'd be like doubly making sure. Do you know what I mean? I can't remember the last time I had a sausage for my breakfast. What about you, Hans? I do like a sausage. If I'm staying at a hotel, I'm like you. It's like the one treat you sort of think, oh, yeah, at a hotel, let's have a fryer. But it is about the quality of the sausage and the quality of the bacon. I like crispy bacon. I don't want it soggy. And the eggs. You want lovely eggs made properly. A black pudding I could have at any time of the day, every day. Yeah. Sausage, not so much. Do you like black pudding? I've never got on with black pudding. Black pudding is one of them things that you're just eating a scab, aren't you? Yeah. What way to describe it? I don't know. The next time I eat it, that's what I'll think about. Yeah, thanks, Chris. Yeah, I love it. I crave a black pudding. I love a scab. Let's go through some of your likes and dislikes then, Chris. So let's start off with one thing that we got. In capitals, love Italian food. Bolognese, a favorite. You are getting on Angela's good side. Yeah, we love that. Capitalization of loving Italian food. Just a good variety of food that you can get in an Italian. And I love a bolognese. I love pizza. And one of the things that we read in the book, one of the things that you mentioned was having your first pizza at the age of 20. But in the book, you say it was one of the greatest culinary revelations of your life. So I avoided pizza because I'd never had it as a kid. We didn't have, in the 80s, in Liverpool, we weren't going to restaurants. If we ate out, it was the chippy. So it was just never something that was just around when I was a kid. Went to uni, avoided it because I didn't like cheese. Cold, hard blocks of cheese. I think I had cheese when I was a young kid and then avoided it for probably about 15 years of my life, because I didn't like it when I was a young kid. And then I was a starving student, and a mate of mine had this 99p cook-in-the-oven supermarket job. And he goes, do you want a slice? And I said, no. I said, don't like cheese. And he went, all right, you're missing out. I go, oh, go on then. And I had it. And honestly, it was the most incredible. I'm so glad I started with this crappy 99p pizza because I had a whole world of pizza to discover. Yeah, I'm glad I didn't start at the top. It was an entry level. It's what you needed. I honestly, I sliced this pizza. I went to the supermarket the next day. I bought 10 of them and put them in the freezer. I just thought that's my next 10 days. Whatever happens in life, I can eat for 10 days. 10 days we're sorted. Where do you think is the best pizza you've ever had, Ange? I'm of the romance of Italy. I do say that. I sort of think where our family come from in Italy, there's a place called the Baracca, and we always go there when we're on holiday, and we have the pizza. I like about five toppings, I am. So you've got your base tomato, mozzarella, olives, anchovies, ham. Italy's a... I mean, this is one of the most stupid things anyone's ever said in this podcast. Italy's a weird place to go for Italian food, isn't it? I was in Italy. I was in Italy. Couldn't get a bolognese for all of the money. No, where were you? Which part of Italy? In Rome. Oh, that's why. Why? Didn't you do a bolognese? Because it's not from... That's not the pasta of Rome. How are you supposed to know that? How stubborn's that? Yeah, I know. They're so regional, these Italians. How stubborn is that? How stubborn is that? rude rude when i was in greece they did a bolognese pizza no i mean oh you're away if the greeks are showing you up on your own cuisine then you need to pull your finger out and get on what the greeks have done they've gone pizza's good bolognese is good i've got an idea whack it on you'll be all right um you also love as well as you love of italian food you also love spicy food yes you love traditional british food like pie and mash as well and we're gonna do a pie today yeah uh but before we talk pies and have pie and how spicy can you go chris that you can you go for it are you someone that can really yeah i mean like you know it depends what what we're eating uh yeah i like i like to give it a go if i'm in like an indian restaurant i usually go for like i'll go for a madrasa or something but i always find that like the indian restaurants are one ahead of what you'd get in a supermarket. So if you're in a supermarket, if I'm in Waitrose, which genuinely is our local supermarket, get the Vindaloo. But a Vindaloo in a supermarket is a madrasa in an Indian restaurant. If I'm in Nando's, go for the extra hot because I like to show off. I'd be impressed. Now, your dislikes have a touch of Tim Key about them. We have Tim Key on. And we loved Tim on the show. he said that he didn't like milky as a genre and your genre that you don't like is creamy not a creamy fan well yeah i mean i i think more often than not i'm not a fan of kind of white creamy things on my food um mayonnaise for me i just think it gets everywhere it's it's used i mean it's used now more often just as a glue isn't it yeah it's you know how can we best keep this sandwich together oh i just put mayonnaise on it um trying to find a sandwich without mayonnaise is i mean why can't you you can't get a sandwich with mustard anymore it's just mustard mayo horseradish mayo just what's happened to the world um now i i i've got here that you uh wanted to speak to angela about herbs um we heard that you said you know nothing about herbs beyond mixed herbs. I've enjoyed herbs, but often I don't know which ones I've enjoyed and how I've enjoyed them. But if you did something like a roast potato, would you put rosemary or something? No. But is there a good thing, a rule of thumb, Ange, that anyone can remember? Well, I mean, interesting, you love curry, so you'll probably have eaten lots of coriander and mint. So coriander is the more floral one in your taste buds, and if you feel it, it's softer in your hand. and mint. Is that the flappy leaf you always get in the curry? Yeah exactly that is a flappy leaf. You have to fish out your mouth. Yeah because if you compare it to parsley which looks very similar and you feel them both in your hand the coriander's soft and the parsley's quite hard. I'm sitting there with that. That's good no that's a good one. Sometimes I get them in the fridge and I can't remember which one. Yeah and then mint is again you'd probably have that with lots of curries and that I sometimes feel it's like having chewing gum you know that's your flavour that you're looking for in mint and i don't i put that with fish and i put that in salads but then i think hard herbs so they're sort of soft herbs like basil as well that's another soft herb yeah and then hard herbs are like your rosemary and thyme um and things like that and bay leaves and then again you put them in when you're doing stews and making roast potatoes and parsnips basil i i enjoy basil you must like that obviously yeah yeah yeah and i can i can taste what it adds to the flavor yeah yes i think i miss a lot of what these things add to the flavor and what's it what's it so is it oregano or yeah how do we pronounce that we go oregano oregano is oregano a herb oregano is a herb and that's another italian one and that that is great dried that's a perfect herb that you can have in the summer and then you dry it or you've got it dry and that that i think you can put you can put that on salads like a greek salad you've dried oregano and it goes really well with lamb and stuff. Oh, yeah. So my wife begs that with feta. Oh, yeah, there you go. And that's good. Yeah. And they'll use a lot of that. If I made that, it would just be feta. Well, you're like me, Chris, because my husband, when he cooks, he'll go in and put herbs and all the rest of it, whereas I would be like, Chris, just feta. Bit of olive oil, that's all you need. All we need. Why are you trying to make it fancy, Neil? Leave it as it is. Yeah, says the woman with the Pringles. Yeah, exactly. That's the way you get a Pringle, you see. Nothing fancy. Right, Chris, I'm just going to put the food down here. So I'm moving the mic to your left, the glasses ahead. Oh, to the right, okay. So that's there. Feel that there. It's quite hot, the plate. A knife and fork there and your napkin. Thank you, Angela. All right, the food is here. It has arrived. We have the pie. I've started. I've started. You get involved, Chris, please. You get involved. You get involved. So this is called The Best Cottage Pie, a recipe by Martha Collison. Tell us about this. What constitutes it being the best one, Ange? Well, I think what she's done is put some little secret things in, Marmite and Worcestershire sauce, which I think has really added to the flavour and stuff. So you start off, roast off all your meat, all your mince in a pan, remove that from the pan then add your onion carrot celery and that been finely chopped and you saut all that down And then another thing she does which I never used to do but she puts in chestnut mushrooms like blitz mushrooms So I think that really helps with the flavour. When you say that, do you mean like blend them? Yeah, blend them together, yeah. Oh, wow, right, okay. So she blends all the mushrooms. They go in with the celery, carrot, and onion. Then add some tomato puree, cook that out. Then add your meat back in. Add some red wine, allow that to sort of reduce down, and cover with some beef stock. and then you add your marmite, a little bit of Worcestershire sauce, and your bay leaf, and you cook that for about 15, 20 minutes. And for you, I put a gluten-free soya sauce, because marmite and Worcestershire sauce have gluten in, which you can't have. And then you've got this lovely, delicious sort of cottage pie filling, and then you put mash on top, mashed potato with some cheese on top of the mash. Oh, yes. You made that sound so easy. There's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of. A lot of cutting, a lot of bits. Well, no, if you've got one of these, like I said, blitzies, like little fine choppers and you can use them you can put your aunt your celery your carrot onion all of that in there so that does it all for you turned into qvc here exactly i'm on commission chris how did you know you need to stop and chop yeah stop and chop get it now and get free pringles yeah exactly have you ordered the other thing is secret tip is that let it go cool before you add your mash on okay because then you yeah because then your mash doesn't sort of drip go into the filling oh yeah you see yeah okay yeah yeah so you don't want it all running through you want the separation so this is delicious i also i'm a big fan of food that i can shovel yeah yeah and i've also put cabbage there next to it chris and that you just done boiled cabbage with butter and a bit of uh black pepper yeah and that but i think having the marmite and the um worcester sauce in there i think gives it that little kick but you could add chili to this if you wanted to yeah i mean i like chili but there's a time when there's a time when it's not crazy i um no so i mean i look especially when you can't see what's on the plate yeah you know logistically some things could be more difficult than others i'm sure so something like cottage pie is a comfort food in more ways than one yeah because it's a comfort food in what it is yeah but it's comfortable it's not stressful to eat yeah yeah i haven't got bones getting in a way yeah um sometimes if you have even just separate components yeah you stab something and it's like russian roulette you don't know what you got to get in your mouth more than a few times in my life i have stabbed what i thought was a chunk of tomato and bit down to it and it was a segment of lemon oh there's nothing wakes you up quicker wow wow tell me how you make the mash because the mash is going to be... You know what I'm going to say. Yeah, I know what you're going to say. You're going to say four packs of butter. Not four packs, but a fair amount of butter. But I think mash, peel your potatoes, cut them into even size, and then boil them until they're cooked. Drain them well, add your butter, and mash it. Then add the milk. Because I think once you've added the milk, you can't get any final lumps out. So add your milk after you've mashed it all with your butter. Is that the problem with lumpy mash? I think so. And they haven't cut the potatoes evenly because then some are cooking earlier than others, you see. Oh, yes, you do want them all the same. You do, you do. You all mock me, you see. There's a reason, there's a reason. That does make sense. And then tell me about... I'll get... Next time I make them on, I'm going to make sure I've got my knife, my serving spoon and my ruler. Yeah, and my tape measure. Oh, I feel the piss taken. No! It makes sense. I can take it. And then what about cheese? What cheese did you put in this? Mature cheddar. And put that in right... No, not on top of the mash. Just on top of the mash. You know, and that's a little extra luxury. You don't need it. You can work it with that. So it works very well. So Martha's, brilliant recipe, I think. Yeah, thank you, Martha. Who's Martha? And then we have a wine pair of... It was Martha's recipe. Who's Martha, though? She's Jeff. Oh, okay. Because these are all Waitrose recipes, so they're all from there. So not only have you given me a bowl of Pringles for me starter, but you've made somebody else's recipe. I mean, Jesus Christ. And you know what? The best thing is, Chris, we've done so many other people's recipes, all from Waitrose and other sort of chefs. You're the first person that's called me out on it. We've also got, we've swapped you a ginger beer. We've gone for a Bundaberg ginger beer now. What are you thinking, Chris? there's a quizzical look on that face now he's like i'm not sure about this not as fizzy as the fenamens but maybe that's because it's been sat with the ice a bit for for five minutes um i would say not as it's it's it's not like it's not too it's not sweet but it's not as gingery it's a bit milder it seems sweeter doesn't it it does not overly sweet but um but more sweet than ginger and there's a red wine pairing as well yeah if you do want to have a red wine with this yeah it's the Vina Luria Reserva Riocca from Waitrose, of course. If you want to try this wine, all the recipe, all the ingredients, how to do it, are on waitrose.com forward slash dish recipe. Do you want some more, Chris? Some more pie? Yeah. It depends. Have we got anything else? No. No? Wow. Wow. God, the review I'm going to get after this. I love what we've got. It's loads to take home. You don't have to have any more. Yeah, you've got low steakhouse. I'll take some from my wife and my kid. Oh, yeah, do this. You do that, don't you? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chris McCausland, it is time for your fast food quiz. Okay. It's a quick fire round. Yes. Here we go. Tell us your favourite way to eat eggs. Eat it. Oh, do you know what? Love a boiled egg with a bit of salt and pepper on it. Like, cut it into quarters, bit of salt and pepper. Nice. Keep it in the fridge and it's always there in it. Well, I say it's not always there. It's not always there. You know what I mean? You can stock up a few days worth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Favourite sandwich filling? Favourite sandwich filling would be, I love a bit of ham and mustard at the minute, but mustard, mustard, not mustard mayo. Not the mayo. Not the mayo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is your favourite form of potato? I'm at the point in life where I have to start making any sensible choices about chips, but, you know, I grew up on chips. I love chips. Is that your favourite? That's your favourite, chips? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I do love mashed potato as well. Oh. You have to pick one, Chris. You can have potatoes, potatoes. Can't we just have potatoes? My favourite type of potatoes is potatoes. What's your favourite crisp? Salt and vinegar. 100%. Always. Salt and vinegar. Always. What is your favourite pasta, Chris? I love a penne or a... What's that fatter tube? The ridge tube? Rigatoni. Rigatoni, yeah. Whenever I have bolognese... I say I love spaghetti bolognese, but I always get it with a smaller pasta because otherwise I end up... little flexer tomato sauce all over myself. What's your favourite Sunday roast? Do you know, like, lamb. That's what I will get if I'm out. If they've got a lamb, always get a lamb, because I would never cook lamb. Right, okay. No, but that's why a lot of people, we always do that. People go, I eat fish out, because I never cook fish out. Yeah. What is your favourite item on a Sunday roast? Well, obviously the roast potatoes. Roast potatoes. Roast potatoes is the correct term. Yeah, yeah. Do you know what? like i do i do like a bit of broccoli though and uh i really like in my old age now i really like a sprout on my christmas dinner oh i love a sprout yeah but you grow up not liking sprouts don't you and you get older and you realize they're all right we should talk about your book chris yeah we should talk about keep laughing you got that i mean it's amazing how few people have picked up on that really yeah yeah as a as a title my thinking was keep laughing it obviously there's a little um there's a little uh marketing tie-in with strictly there but also in three years time when it's in a bargain bin somewhere it still makes sense as a comedian's title yeah i haven't called it strictly come comedy or nothing like that um i thought it was quite clever only like three people have picked up on it oh wow well i'm lucky to be in that top three yeah we got that Now, this came out last year, and it tells your story, your life story, of right up to winning Strictly, which we want to talk about in a second. How was it to sit down and reflect on your life? Because it's quite a rare thing to do, isn't it? To sit down and be like, right, life. What the hell happened? It is. I'd never written a book before. I think the thing that worked in my favor is they put it on sale before I started writing it. And so I didn't plan it. And I think I've got one of them brains that I can go round in circles. And I can over plan things and second guess myself and talk myself out of things. But just writing and having what comes out come out. And then I pieced it together once I felt like I'd written a lot of interesting or amusing stuff. Do you know what I mean? The weird thing is, is that like, I suppose if you split the book into three portions, you've got everything about me up until being a comedian. Yeah. Losing my sight over 25 years, becoming a comedian when I was about 26 and then doing Strictly, which was like a huge thing really at the end. And I thought writing about being a comedian would be the easiest bit because it's what I do and it's what I love. and it turned out that writing about you know growing up and losing my sight was actually what i found was you know more interesting because i was writing the thing in well i'm the only person that can write about yeah it's from my experience whereas every comedian has to write about then i did live at the apollo then i did yeah yeah i got used to you well i've been listening to it on audio and stuff and there's the point where you're talking about when you punch this kid and you've you cost your parents 35 pounds because they've, you've had to replace two things at school. Way to pick the one thing that makes me sound like a... No! A violent thing. Well, the thing that, one of the things that's made me laugh so much is the cassette, you know, when you go to the old, the old, the man's flat. I mean, anyway, but it's a brilliant book, sorry. But I just thought you refer to stuff that's happened in the future, but how it affected you as a kid. Yeah. You know what I mean? And, you know, your reference point to it. I think it reads beautifully. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things that I think when you look back and you realize, you know, just you really like look at things like the, you know, the role of your grandmother in your life and things like the Hillsborough disaster, which I wasn't at, I wasn't there, but it affected the city in such a big way when I was, you know, when I was 12 years old. So these things, you get to look back, having lived beyond that and see how did that affect me at the time. You can look at it as an adult, never really done that before. And I think Alan Davis said to me when you writing write as if nobody going to read it Don be worrying about writing things that you think I don't want people to know because people want to be let in. I think you definitely did that. Because I did Strictly as well. I think it really kind of ripped me open in front of everybody on the telly in such an emotional way that I think I was a lot more open with the emotional side of things, losing my sight and things like that, than I would have been if I'd have wrote it before Strictly. you know once you've cried on the telly in front of 10 million people you feel a lot less a lot less precious about it so it was probably like a hugely cathartic process doing something like Strictly as you say once you've been that engagement and been that open and you're on a real physical journey an emotional journey once you've cried on the telly it genuinely changed me more than anything else I've done and it affected me quite a lot and it was um I you know I even I just looked at I viewed myself and I viewed everything I did and differently when I came out the other end of it it sounds really really silly because it's just a tv show um but what do you think it was the what do you think it was that made that you have that reaction to it was it the the training the ritual the challenge the competition it was the it was probably the the continuous level of fear the the terror of doing this on live tv the um the the how intensive it was the the relationship with diane that you build up you know doing this thing together on the telly in front of millions of people it could be a disaster can we get through it um the connection it made with people uh realizing you know i've always been very closed off and protective over my own personal feelings and and but i'm on the telly trying to overcome obstacles that everyone else can see and it connected with people in a way that I never expected. It's connecting with people who are getting in touch, who are disabled in lots of ways or suffering from anxiety or lost someone in their family and suffering from grief and they get in touch and they tell you how it's connecting with them and you realize they can see what you're trying to overcome to do what you're doing. You realize the power or the benefit of sharing your vulnerability in a way that I never would have done. You know what I mean? I'd never, I'd dig it all, put it in, don't let anyone know. But you realise that people take value from sharing that and people seeing it. So I think I was able to write the book from that perspective way more than I would have been able to. And hopefully it's funny as well along the way, you know. It is definitely very funny. And I guess, I mean, it's terrifying if you were just doing it in that room in front of an audience, but then it's also on the television, and it's live, and it's the biggest show on the TV. Yeah, yeah. It's, yeah, the first episode, Diane said to me that I'd gone grey, like literally the colour of drawing from my face. She'd ask me a question, and I would, there'd be like 10 seconds passed, and I'd go, and she thought I was going to freeze on the telly. She said, I looked that bad. Because you train in this marquee near the studio, and then you walk through the corridor. It's like Dead Man's Walk. It's like the green mile to your execution. And then you stood in the studio and you can hear, before every dance, they play this VT of your training week. And you can hear it in the studio. And then that music, that little jingle, where they go dancing there. Honestly, I've never been so terrified in my life. Tell us about the meal you went for after you, what of the reaction you got. And we went out for an Indian meal where we live. And we sat there having the meal. and nobody said anything. I didn't even register with me. Nobody mentioned it. Nobody came over to the table and we finished our meal. We got up to leave and the whole restaurant gave me a round of applause. I felt like I was in a movie. I was so, I didn't know what to do with my face. It was so, and the funny thing was as well is that all of the staff in the restaurant, they all wanted, they quickly wanted a team photo with me and they had a photo with me and we walked out and I said to my wife and our friends, I said, they had no idea who I was. They saw everybody clapping there. Get the photo, we'll Google it. But that is probably the most surreal thing that's ever happened to us. It'll never happen again. I mean, I am a grumpy, 48-year-old northern comedian. I should have no appeal to seven-year-olds. But suddenly... But you do. Suddenly they all want a photo. Chris, we need to talk to you about your tour as well, which is called Yonks. And this is a tour that started in, and I'm not getting this wrong, everybody who's listening, January 2024. That was two years ago. Two years ago. This is hardcore. Comedian tours, I always forget, are so hardcore. I do it for like years. Years, yeah. How is Yonks going? And is it something you do every night? So, yeah, it's been going really good. I mean, you say over two years, I've done it. It's a four legs. So I kind of do January to May slash June and then September to November. Right. Yeah. But it started before Strictly. And I did about 80 dates before Strictly. And then I did Strictly. And I had all these dates booked in, but then they sold out. And more people wanted to come along. So you add extra dates. And then you add matinees to some of the shows. And then we ended up adding matinees to the matinees. No. So some of the Saturdays and Sundays, we're doing three shows in a day. And I'll be honest, it's not a wise thing to do. You must be exhausted. Yeah, but I got asked when I was doing eight hours dancing in a day. So they were like, oh, the matinee sold out, do you want to do one o'clock? And I was like, well, yeah, because that sounds easier than this. Well, if you want to go, if you want to see Chris's tour, there are a lot of sold out shows. Better be quick. you can go to chrismcorsland.com slash tour for all the details. You kind of need an Ange in the audience because I love a good laugh. Yeah. Because sometimes I find if I go and see a show, once someone laughs, I don't know, it sort of opens it up to the room, doesn't it? Everyone's like, well, if Angela Hartnett's laughing. Well, if she comes to my show, I'll repay the favor and I'll just do other people's jokes. Okay, I have an end of the show question for you here, Chris. Yeah. Here we go. For your chance to win this Waitrose goodie bag. This trolley. With this massive bag here. Can I just feel the weight here? You can feel the weight. Oh, yeah. It's worth a bit of effort. That's worth it. Just going to roll my sleeves up. Here we go. Okay. It's all gone quite mastermind seriously. Very, very, yeah. Okay, here we go then. Strictly final. Here we go. Okay, so win the Waitrose goodie bag. Please answer the following two-part question. Oh, that's why it's heavy. That's why it's heavy. Strictly Come Dancing is looking for a new host. Please tell us why. You're the man for the job. And should or when you get the job, is there anything that you would change about the show? So there's no real right answer to this? No, it's all subjective, so the back shows. But please... But do entertain us, please. But give us something. Come on. Is this the most elaborate way the BBC have ever hired someone? do you know what I mean obviously I think me and Diana at a double act would make a good host Diana would have to have the job downstairs like actually watching the dancing I'd be upstairs eating pretzels like Claudia always did and then I would get rid of the Paso Doble and the Samba and I would banish them as never being dancers again okay that's a good note definitely a good note the duty bag is yours yes Pass that on. I love that. Get rid of the Pasadogla. Nonsense. Speaking from experience. Nonsense. No one's ever done a Pasadogla for fun. Chris, thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much. That was really, really fun. Thank you for that excellent pie. Pleasure. And a round of applause for our excellent guest, Chris McCausland, everybody. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Chris. massive thank you to Chris for joining us on Dish great to meet Chris Chris from Waitrose hey we're going to do some listener questions before we go we've had this from Ingemar a DM which asked for a little bit of behind the scenes information they say hi guys so firstly Andrew and Nick thank you for giving me a heart attack with your final season rubbish I have so many messages about that if you didn't see that on Instagram we put up this video where we were saying it was our final season. Yeah. Technically it was because now it's just on Forever Dish. It's just every Wednesday forever. They say can't wait for their bit of no breaks. A quick query because you mentioned in your recent episode with Stephen and Aaron that this was your third menu of the day. Am I correct in thinking that you filmed three episodes and then have had three meals just filming the podcast? Do you get stuffed or are you still excited by guest number three? No judgment, just envy. no it's rare that was a rarity these days now I think we did three because I was ill it was because of that so right at the beginning of the year I had like I don't know cold flu something couldn't get out of bed for and I had like the week off so I was off the radio and off dish so we had to move to that day so we squeezed in three due to my ailments so normally no we'd never do three Do we ever get full? No, I don't. No. I think in the beginning, I would give us big portions, or normal portions I'd give the guests, and we would eat and drink. I think we did in the beginning. And you always say small portion, then eat the lot. Where's your moderation, Chris? I don't know if it's there. Then I'll eat it. Yes. That's why I can't have any food in my house. Just kidding. Okay, well, thank you for listening, and we will see you next week. Jennifer Garner with us on Dish Next Week. So we'll see you then. If that episode has left you wanting more, find us on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Just search Dish. If you want to make any of the meals I cook on Dish, head to Waitrose.com forward slash Dish recipes for all the ingredients and the recipes. Email your questions, thoughts and suggestions to dish at waitrose.co.uk. Dish from Waitrose is a cold glass production. Waitrose, the home of food lovers.