There are three rules in Dame Anita Roddick's Frida Kahlo-inspired kitchen. First: no bottled water. Second: no wasted food. Third: never go to bed without clearing up first. Accordingly there are four sinks, two dishwashers - and a Fifties jukebox.
'My Italian mum always says [her mother, Gilda, is 91 and still going strong] "The sun should never rise on a messy kitchen". Even if there have been 20 people I never go to bed without tidying up. Putting order into chaos - that's what food does for you.'
Anita Roddick is full of surprises. She is tinier than expected. The bubbly hair has been blow-dried straight and scooped up into a graceful bun. Her skirt may be the colour of mung beans but it's made from folds of billowing silk and rustles like a crinoline.
For someone who has done her time kipping in Bedouin tents with barely a strawberry lip balm for comfort, her reproduction Georgian-style house in the Sussex countryside near to where she grew up is astonishingly homey. Every inch of wall space is covered: poster-size photographs of daughters Justine and Samantha next to a Gwen John original; sombre Victoriana kitsch alongside jolly Outsider art, picked up in America's Deep South and Mexico.
In the kitchen there's one of Banksy's graffiti pictures showing Queen Victoria in suspenders. 'Come and see my fake Picasso,' she tells me gleefully. She keeps it in the downstairs loo. 'I love the idea of mixing everything up so that no one knows what's what.'
Upstairs she's designed every bedroom - she may have stepped down from full-time work at the Body Shop but remains incapable of sitting still. There's the bordello room with ruby walls and a full-length mirror at the end of the double bed; and a Chinese bedroom, all lacquered wood and kimono fabric. Two Shaker-inspired rooms and an African bedroom complete with raffia wallpaper follow. There's even a Caribbean room, although she cheerfully admits she has no idea how authentic it is because she's never been there.
Years of travelling mean that being at home is all about 'sitting around the kitchen table, conversation, my mum, getting back to my roots', although it's her husband Gordon who does most of the cooking. He is, his wife mutters, 'a bit of a fascist' in the kitchen.
'I used to cook when the children were growing up. But in the last 10 years Gordon has got into it and it would seem churlish to interfere.' Despite the jars of Loyd Grossman's ready-made puttanesca tomato sauce in the pantry, he mostly rustles up pasta, fish and home-grown vegetables. He even produces his own fine Pinot Noir from a vineyard in the back garden.
However, this afternoon Gordon has been banished. Chefs from Passion Organic are here to prepare for a special dinner party. The only catering company to be granted Soil Association accreditation, everything is elegantly organic, from the coconut-saffron prawns for the starter to the bitter-chocolate tart, served with coffee (Fair-Trade label Café Direct, of course). Anita hovers around the Aga quizzing 36-year-old Maria Clancy, the enthusiastic and driven CEO of the company, about the menu.
The duck for the main course - with honey and ginger sweet potato mash - is from one of their main suppliers, Sheepdrove Farm in Berkshire. 'A lot of people have jumped on the organic bandwagon and failed. It has to be delicious,' says Maria. 'You have to feel you are being taken to the farmer's gate. Strawberries flown from Argentina in January do not make sense.'
Maria was working at The Big Issue when she approached the Roddicks for investment. The business has since built up a reputation for doing anything from corporate lunches for brands like Aveda and Bloomberg to chichi weddings.
Two years ago Anita asked Maria to mastermind her 60th birthday party in a marquee: 'I knew it would be a great opportunity for the company and there was no way I was going to have hamburgers.' She is also a free business consultant. 'Knowledge is no bloody use unless you pass it on,' says Anita. 'Maria must debunk the myth that organic food is expensive. Expensive compared to what? Ingredients that kill you? Three lattes and five packets of fags a week?'
Anita knows how difficult it is to make a living in the catering industry. Before The Body Shop, the Roddicks ran a small restaurant called Paddingtons in nearby Littlehampton. 'It was half drop-in centre, half disco,' she remembers. 'We wanted to do it like a little lunchtime café but the clientele were working-class locals and patients from the local mental asylum.' People would come in to order 'a quick lorraine and a glass of rosy wine'. 'I remember one woman taking her tights off and putting them in her soup bowl.'
By the time Gordon threw a frozen chicken at the cook it was apparent they weren't suited to the restaurant business but, in a sense, the Roddicks' fortune - Anita is said to be worth £64million - is still all about food. Or, more accurately, ingredients. One of her earliest successes in the first Body Shop in Brighton in 1976 was a moisturiser inspired by cocoa butter. Through the Eighties bathtubs up and down the country were lined with peppermint foot lotion, brazil-nut shampoo and almond-oil nail balm.
She grew up in postwar England, at a time of hand-me-downs and food shortages - 'We didn't know about additives. There were no fast snacks. Coffee was hard to get' - but her parents were immigrant Italians and they knew how to make the most of the garden and the seasons. 'Being Italian and eating lots of tomatoes makes you pathologically optimistic,' she says. Mealtimes meant homemade pasta which had been dried on the back of kitchen chairs, huge bowls of stew, soups flavoured with homegrown parsley and thyme.
It was Gilda who taught her enterprising daughter how to use beetroot juice as blusher and a mayonnaise concoction as hair conditioner. She still scrubs every morning with a mixture made from sugar, salt, honey and oil which her mother told her about. And it was Gilda who seems to have planted the idea that food has political overtones. 'When she began a feud with the local Catholic priest she sent us to church with garlic rubbed into the hems of our clothes.'
It's fitting then that Anita's mum has pencilled in Passion Organic to do her funeral when the time comes. There'll be music from The Godfather, a firework display over the Sussex countryside and some seriously delicious party food. Guests will naturally be expected to wash up before they go home.
Asian salmon tartare
Serves 6
1.1kg fresh salmon, skinned and boned
2 tbs sesame oil
1 tbs finely chopped ginger
2 tbs olive oil
120ml lemon juice
Salad: 1 bunch of julienned spring onions; 1 cup of picked coriander; 1 deseeded and julienned cucumber; 1/4 cup of picked mint leaves; 1 unripe mango cut into small strips; 3 red chillies thinly sliced.
Dressing: 3 tbs olive oil; 2 tbs lime juice, 1 tsp sugar; salt and pepper
Coriander oil: 1 cup of packet coriander leaves; 150ml corn oil
Finely chop the salmon into 0.5cm cubes. Add the sesame oil, olive oil, chopped ginger, and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Leave to stand for 30 minutes.
To make the oil, blanch the coriander leaves for 1 minute and then plunge into ice. Leave until cold; drain. Liquidise the coriander and the oil in a food processor. Filter through clean tea towel into a bowl. Make the dressing, add to salad. Place salmon in ring mould. Remove mould, add salad and drizzle with coriander oil.
