Swallows In The Heatwave

By Jon Rowley for The Sun

Alex James and Marco Pierre White at the Rudloe Arms, near Bath Hell-raisers who learnt to live the good life They met in a Soho bar in the 1990s. Now Alex James and Marco Pierre White have joined forces for The Big Feastival By Michael Odell Marco Pierre White and Alex James are ensconced in the lounge of White’s rustic bolt hole, the Rudloe Arms near Bath in Somerset. Fresh meat is a speciality here and from outside the doomed honk of geese and the baleful grunt of his Oxford sandy and black pigs is audible. But inside, over coffee, the mood is more upbeat. “So, this morning, about 2am, I got my cheese out,” relates the rock-star cheese-maker James, with gap-toothed relish. “Late-night cheese feast. Gotta be done.” White, peering over spectacles perched on the end of his nose, deals solemnly with matters of the palate. “As of early this morning my default position that French cheeses are the best no longer holds true. Alex’s cheeses are just sensational.” “Thank you for saying so, Marco,” says James. “That is high praise, high praise indeed.” The pair are prone to luvvie it up, but the previous night’s meeting was to discuss plans for this summer’s Big Feastival, the food/music mash-up that brings together Michelin-starred chefs with rock and rap stars at James’s farm in the Cotswolds. This August Raymond Blanc and Basement Jaxx will vie for the attention of a 25,000-strong crowd. But the star culinary attraction will undoubtedly be White. Where can you find palm trees, pink sand and turquoise seas? Is your child asking for an iPhone X? It's time to explain about money sponsored The 56-year-old still considers himself “retired”, having become the youngest chef to win three Michelin stars, the highest French honour for professional cooking (he was the first British chef to do so too). In 1999 he handed them back, announcing that he had given the Michelin judges too much respect and “belittled” himself. He has since headed a global empire of branded MPW restaurants and has an established media career (he has been a regular on MasterChef Australia, New Zealandand South Africa). After three failed marriages (to a fishmonger, a model and finally Matilde Conejero, with whom he has fought an inconclusive £1 million divorce battle) he has abandoned London to live alone in the Rudloe Arms, his restaurant and hotel. He doesn’t cook here, but insists diners are being welcomed into his home. Convincing him to don his chef’s whites again to hold a cooking masterclass has not been easy. “A day away from here is a day wasted,” he says. “I will make a risotto with radicchio and walnuts enlivened by Alex’s Blue Monday cheese. I guarantee, if you pay attention, you will go away with something sensational to share with your loved ones.” In culinary terms, James says, booking White to make risotto is like getting Led Zeppelin to play Stairway to Heaven. The comparison barely moves his friend. White has never been to a music festival. He doesn’t own any Blur albums either. “As far as I am concerned, no one tops Whitesnake,” he says. “But I wouldn’t come out of retirement for anyone else. Very few things excite me at this stage in my life. I’ve done everything. I’ve eaten everything. Do I need to spend a day at a music festival? No. But I help my friends. It’s important to share one’s knowledge.” The pair first met in London in the mid-1990s at Quo Vadis, the Michelin-starred restaurant and bar in Soho founded by White and the Brit Art enfant terrible Damien Hirst. Both were in their pomp. And, according to his memoir, James was in the midst of blowing £1 million on cocaine and booze as his band Blur swept all before them. “No one knew it at the time, but it was the very start of a food revolution,” says James. “Quo Vadis was the beginning of restaurants as theatre. You never knew who would walk into places like that.” “Sometimes in entirely unexpected ways,” adds White, and they both cackle at the memory of White being thrown out of the Criterion in Piccadilly because door staff thought he was a vagrant. “That’s scandalous!” says James. “I was blazing a trail,” says White with a shrug. “You can get into Le Gavroche in jeans now.” I wonder if White will be happy to mingle with the Big Feastival’s other culinary greats, some of whom have Michelin stars. Will you hang out with the other chefs, I ask. “Big fish don’t shoal,” he growls and the room falls eerily silent. By his own admission White is hard to be friends with. He demands loyalty. When he left London he deleted 500 contacts from his phone. However, the friendship between these two has endured. White has even got an Alex James burger on the menu at his restaurants. He has just added his cheeses to his menu too. James has no Blur plans at present. His day job is as an ebullient cheese-maker, TV personality and family man. White, by contrast, has found happiness alone, restoring his ivy-clad country pile. James hits on something when the pair discuss a Caribbean food tour they did together. “There is something just so sexy about eating in the sun with few clothes on,” James says. “Don’t you think so, Marco?” “Hmm. For me eating is more romantic than sexual,” says White. “Yes, you are quite puritanical these days,” observes James. “You don’t let loose easily. You are always busy grafting.” “Graft is perfect therapy for the misfit,” he replies. “And I am very much the misfit. Living in the country is very healing for me. My mother died when I was very young [Maria-Rosa Gallina died of a brain haemorrhage in front of White when he was six] and I turned to nature then. I grew up running around Harewood near Leeds and that saved me. I do the same here. I am at my happiest alone in nature, walking and writing.” He smiles when I mention his ex-girlfriend Emilia Fox, the actress, but he won’t elaborate. A tabloid recently linked him with the ballerina Vanessa Fenton, which he says was hurtful. “Emilia is a special, special person and we are very close,” he says. “Vanessa is a friend. She was giving me advice on my daughter, who is with the Royal Ballet. Am I not allowed to have a female friend?” Apart from his 16-year-old daughter, Mirabelle, his 24-year-old son, Luciano, is working at another new Marco Pierre White hotel, the English Room in Singapore. Meanwhile, Marco Jr, 22, occasionally works in the Rudloe Arms kitchen. “He’s ambidextrous, which is really unusual,” his father says. “He’s a great artist when it comes to putting food on a plate.” On the walls behind White’s tousled head are framed photographs of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In the hall there is White: tousled and sexual in an apron wielding a cleaver. In another, bare chested, fag in mouth, holding a shark. And yet, call White and James rock’n’roll survivors and only one of them nods in agreement. “No,” says White. “I’m neither a hell-raiser nor a rock’n’roll chef. That’s a media confection.” But, but, I insist, you are famous for teaching Madonna to shoot pheasant and hosting her 40th birthday party; for marrying a model and splitting up on the honeymoon; and for charging a City trader £25 for cooking him a portion of chips. He tugs hard on another cigarette. “Russell Crowe was a guest here recently. He understands the full depth of my story.” Crowe, he says, is writing a screenplay based on White’s memoir The Devil in the Kitchen. Crowe will star as the older White and Ridley Scott will direct. “I am in the winter of my life,” White says solemnly. “The film will tell the whole story. It is the story of a boy losing his mother at a young age. Russell will play me as I am now, finding peace in creating a home, a farm, a meadow . . .” White spends his weekends fixing up the hotel and he spends half the day alone in the meadow writing a new book. “I don’t go out, I’ve never sent email. I talk to the children. That’s it. I go back to London for business and I don’t like it.” By contrast, James’s weekend is a scrum of domestic multitasking and currently festival arranging. “I’m competing with every hard-up aristocrat with a stately home he doesn’t know what to do with. But I reckon the Big Feastival is a thing now. There’s a whole generation of people who are geeks about music and food at the same time.” “The more I hear, the more I’m excited to try it,” White says. “Good,” James says. “Thousands will flock to see you, Marco. You invented modern food, mate. Your place is up there with the greats.” The Big Feastival takes place on August 24-26. Adult weekend tickets from £149.50, thebigfeastival.com March 10 2018, 12:01am, The Times

Alex James attended the GQ Car Awards 2018 in association with Michelin at Corinthia London on February 5, 2018 in London. Photos by David M. Benett

Alex James and the Big Feastival: It’s all rock  and roll in the countryside Britain’s coolest food festival is this weekend on Blur bassist Alex James’s farm in Oxfordshire. He talks about the highs and lows of rural life. Plus: Britain’s rural rockers Michael Odell August 26 2017, 12:01am, The Times Alex James: “You cannot start a garage band and make money any more, but if you set up in a garage and produce a fine blue cheese, it’s like writing a hit.”GARETH IWAN JONES FOR THE TIMES ‘A rock star can find peace stewarding the land,” muses the Blur bass player, prizewinning cheesemaker and farmer Alex James, 48. “Buying a farm marked an end to the nomadic life. It’s given me roots.” James and I are surveying the superb views over his 200-acre spread, near Kingham in the Cotswolds. Two of his sons, Geronimo and Artemis, scamper alongside urging home-grown produce on me: loganberries, blueberries and apricots. “We could’ve made you an omelette with our own eggs, but the foxes killed all our chickens,” Artemis reports mournfully. Geronimo, with clear relish for the justice of the countryside, says that a hunter came with a rifle and night-vision goggles, and “took them out”. “Nature can be pitiless and so of course we’ve had moments of real pain,” continues James as we approach the guinea pig shed. The mood grows more solemn. Until 2014 the shed was home to more than 70 prizewinning guinea pigs that belonged to James’s parents-in-law. They breed them and have won several competitions. The Big Feastival, 2016ANDREW WHITTON However, James has not quite let go of his past. Ever year he holds a festival here, called the Big Feastival. When Fatboy Slim played in 2014 he wiped out two dozen of the animals in the process. “The guinea pigs couldn’t handle the bottom end. Two dozen dropped dead,” says James, shuddering at the memory. “They literally died of bass. I can tell you, that caused quite a bit of tension in the family. I have to ask myself sometimes, ‘Is this a farm or is this just the Groucho Club with a massive garden?’ ” On the evidence before me, it’s definitely a farm and James has transformed himself into a ruddy-faced, highly knowledgeable, multitasking son of the sod. He has the telltale confidence around livestock. When, for example, he leans against a fence to discuss pig husbandry, a young steer lollops over and bites him on the arse. James barely flinches. “I wasn’t always so confident with them,” he says. “One time I was off to a function in London and I walked across the field wearing a Versace suit. The steers saw me and chased me. I was properly running for my life. You soon learn to respect animals.” It is 14 years since James sold his London home in Covent Garden, married the love of his life Claire, a film producer, and bought this farm. The couple met when they shared a taxi in Soho in 2002 on a night out with mutual friends. She didn’t like Blur, didn’t know his name, but he was immediately smitten. “I am not the first to go from metropolitan hell-raiser to quiet country gentleman, but it was a lifestyle handbrake turn,” he says. As he recorded in his memoir All Cheeses Great & Small, there were doubters. “People said how can you be a farmer, you don’t know anything about farms?” “It’s fair to say I was a different bloke then,” he says. “I had never got out of bed before midday. I lived in Covent Garden. I had a plane and a nice car and I got rid of them for a bike. I knew nothing about farming and Claire was pregnant. The whole undertaking was a massive challenge. But I needed it. Playing bass in a rock band is an easy gig, but it is not what you’d call a decision-making role.” You have to admire the total reinvention. In the memoir of his previous life Bit of a Blur, James describes spending £1 million on booze and cocaine, sleeping with Vogue models (and Courtney Love). At the drop of a hat, he and Claire married, bought the farm on honeymoon, had five children (Geronimo, 13, twins Artemis and Galileo, 11, Sable, 8, and Beatrix, 7), rebuilt the place (James sourced some of the windows and timbers from eBay) and established a cheese business. When James found a local cheesemaker called Roger Crudge to help out, he says it was a bigger moment than Blur winning their first Brit award. “It was the same feeling but . . . with more depth. Cheesemaking is not that different to making music. With Blur I was lucky enough to be around when indie music was last big. Then I arrived here as food became the new rock’n’roll. You cannot start a garage band and make money any more, but if you set up in a garage and produce a fine blue cheese, it’s like writing a hit.” Getting his foodie interests and popstar past to mix has been harder. His first attempt at a festival, Alex James Presents Harvest, in 2012, ended with angry debtors and a now notorious photo of James with the Cotswolds locals Jeremy Clarkson and David Cameron, then prime minister. After teaming up with Jamie Oliver, James established the Big Feastival, a boutique affair where demonstrations by Michelin-starred chefs are as much of a pull as the music headliners. Officially the pair’s five-year partnership has come to an end, so James and the family are carrying the event alone for the first time. His boys are not happy. “Why doesn’t Jamie just sign a new contract?” demands Geronimo. “Because he’s a global star and the UK’s biggest author, so he hasn’t got the time to spend on it, darling,” his dad explains. “But he’s so nice and he cooks us breakfast!” Arte trills. I’m not the first to go from metropolitan hell-raiser to country gent Oliver will still attend in his capacity as a music-loving mate and play the drums in a makeshift band with “various enthusiasts from the Groucho”. Last year some fellow members of Blur camped and did stints as DJs (although Damon Albarn hasn’t made it), and Caroline Flack and Professor Green read stories to the kids. This year the super-producer William Orbit will be on the decks in the “cheese hub”. It sounds mad — like the casts of The Archers and MasterChef being booked into the same country hotel for a wild weekend and stumbling into members of the Groucho Club in the lobby. “It’s not a coincidence that the kids wake up one weekend in August and De La Soul are marching through the vegetable patch. My life has been about creating five children, six cheeses and seven albums, and it’s all here, at once, on one weekend.” It did not always run so smoothly. James is a grammar school boy from Bournemouth turned millionaire musician who, on his first day at the farm, fell through the crust of a 20-year-old pile of cow dung up to his knees. Didn’t other farmers resent him and his festival? “I think your idea of rural England is outmoded,” asserts James. “We arrived here at the start of a British food revolution. Daylesford Farm [the high-end organic farm beloved of royals and celebs is close by] had just opened and was taking food very seriously. Now this area is full of artisanal cheesemakers, micro-brewers, bee geeks . . . And with the incredible produce come the chefs and the restaurants.” His success with cheese has been hard won. Some of his more playful flavours (cheddar with tikka masala) were discreetly cleared from the shelves of Asda after being described by a spokesperson as “ahead of their time”. However, his Blue Monday (named after the New Order hit) has just won another prize at the British Cheese Awards. Pop stars seem to have a thing about produce. Sting sells wine and olives from his vineyard in Tuscany. Roger Daltrey farmed trout. Marcus Mumford and Carey Mulligan have a Devon farm and have talked about raising pigs. Paul McCartney is the granddaddy of the rock farmers with his estates in Sussex and Scotland. There is one big difference: farming turned McCartney vegetarian. James was one too, but gave up after 20 years when he saw how good meat could be. “I’ve got a massive freezer full of pork and salami from our pigs,” he says. “At first we couldn’t eat them because they are so friendly. In the end we had to keep them far away from the house so we didn’t get so attached.” Sometimes, though, the country gentleman transition doesn’t work. James tells me John Entwistle, the bass player with the Who, ran a farm in nearby Stow-on-the-Wold, but died in bed with a stripper after a cocaine overdose in a Las Vegas hotel room in 2002. “That was just before I arrived and it made an impact. In your twenties your whole life revolves around alcohol, in your thirties it’s drugs. By 40 it’s food, surely? I love being in a band, but this is my life now.” James has clearly created a loving family life. At one point he takes his boys aside, squats down to eye-level and explains how proud and grateful he is for their help on the farm — and at the festival. At last year’s Feastival Geronimo took over the DJ decks from him, and this year will be playing his own set. On weekends the boys say that if Dad is in charge they get up late and play Xbox, but if mum is in charge it’s a more strict regime. They get up early and collect the chicken eggs. Before the pigs ended up in the freezer, they used to ride them. “It used to worry me,” says James, “that Claire thought she was marrying a rock star, but actually got a crap farmer. It’s been bloody hard work, but now I think that we have actually arrived.” Big Feastival day tickets for today and tomorrow are available from £84.50 for adults (thebigfeastival.com) Alex James’s perfect weekend Champagne or cheese? They are gorgeous together Liam or Noel? Liam Screen addict or digital-free home? Screen addict Parklife or farmlife? I need to cut down on my porklife, funnily enough Cook or be cooked for? Cooked and washed-up for I couldn’t get through the weekend without . . .  A nap

What I wish I’d known: Je ne regrette rien

You were both absolutely huge by this stage and piling through huge quantities of food.It was costing me a fortune to keep you but I’d grown so fond of you I would rather have eaten my own big toe than one of your sausages.I had to give you away in the end. But there’s a photo of you two on the wall right next to where I’m sitting now and just the thought of my Empresses still makes me smile.

Photos by Oliver Dixon for The Sun.

In case you live outside the UK, just let me know it and I will link you.

Alex would paint a chopper with Union Jack colours

Photo by Harry McCulloch

Photos: Contact Music

Photos by Ian West/PA 

honor.grace’s video

Damon Albarn in the SiriusXM Studios on April 26, 2017 in NYC. Photos by Cindy Ord

Photos by Linda Brownlee

And the star jumps and press-ups continued all the way from Aruba to Grenada, along with exercises called froggies and burpees, both of which are unpleasant but efficacious. I rewarded myself with a hot towel shave, a pedicure and a Thai poultice massage (the best one yet) and went to see Mari Wilson, ‘The Neasden Queen of Soul’, in The Limelight Club.I also kept getting up early and I kept on thrashing away for an hour or two each morning. As the end of the week drew near, my body had actually changed shape.So I went ashore in Kingstown, St Vincent, and treated myself to a boat trip to Princess Margaret beach on the island of Bequia, which has a fascinating history and an intriguing mix of native Bequians of African, Scottish, Irish, French, Indian and Carib descent.I thought it was a bit more off the beaten track but the bay was gridlocked with billionaire yachts, resulting in several slinky bodies on the beach, which isn’t as bad as it sounds.I had the local speciality – breadfruit and jackfish – for lunch and spent an hour floating in the sea in the sunshine while the house band at the beach bar played an old Steve Winwood tune.Azure sea and golden sand: I could have stayed there for ever.But the moment of truth was approaching. My second appointment with the scales came as we docked in St Lucia. I’d worked hard and as always, it had paid off.I’d shed over half a stone and had a fantastic time doing it. And I even got a tan.