My earliest memory is of pouring a tin of Lyle’s Golden Syrup over my baby brother Martin’s face, as he lay in his cot. Then I poured a bag of sugar on top of the syrup. I could have killed him and that was probably my intention. There were elements both of jealousy and experimentation. I remember the little bubbles as he tried to breathe through it. Then Mum walked in and went crazy.
As a young kid I’d go to the butcher with Mum and she’d buy sausages. I’d always ask for one to eat raw – and she’d let me, as a treat. Meanwhile, she believed she had to boil vegetables for hours or we’d get worms.
Our steamy kitchen in Islington was tiny with no room for a table, but Dad made a thin banquette type thing in there and we ate off it. Strangely enough, we never ate in the living room.
We had set rituals, like Dad’s dripping and bread on Mondays, chops on Tuesdays, mincemeat on Thursdays, pie and mash on Saturdays from Manze’s – there were two in Islington then. Manze’s remains as a little temple for a tribe that mostly moved out to Essex years ago.
Food for me is often about nostalgia. I’m trying to re-eat my childhood, when lunch was called dinner and dinner was called tea. Nowadays, when we go for Sunday roast “lunch” at pubs, I’m thinking of how I used to play outdoors on Sunday mornings and the whole of Rotherfield Street would smell of roasts and boiling cabbage, giving a lovely feeling of homeliness and locality. Gradually, after the arrival of fast food, that intoxicating perfume disappeared.
Sunday tea was provided by the man who’d come up the street shouting, “Cockles, whelks, winkles”. Mum would get a sewing pin and we’d have winkles. Nan would have the whelks. She had no teeth and would spend an hour chewing each whelk. She also liked stewed eel and I remember being fascinated by how they’d still wiggle after she’d chop them up.
When I was at the local junior school, Mum was a milk lady and then a dinner lady there, but she never once gave me extra. In fact, she ignored me.
At 14, I got a Saturday job at a greengrocers. I worked with three people – one had one eye, one had one leg and the other allegedly one testicle. I’d be there first thing in the morning, “putting out the show” – building pyramids of oranges and felt-penning in black and red those price cards with lots of unnecessary apostrophes. Out the back, I boiled beetroot. There were customers from the middle-class side of the Essex Road as well as from our working-class side, and the former would buy strange things like courgettes and avocados. One day I bought a small courgette home and, because it reminded him of a marrow, dad stuffed it with mincemeat.
I went weekly to Anna Scher’s Children’s Theatre where Anna often got us to improvise scenes in family kitchens. Working-class families mainly don’t talk much to each other about their problems – it’s not in the culture and it’s too dangerous – but what Anna gave us was the opportunity to discover what our problems were and to work them through around a kitchen table.
Going to [Dame Alice Owen] grammar school allowed me access to middle-class homes over in Canonbury. As teenagers, me, Phil Daniels and Miles Landesman rehearsed our band in the basement of Jay Landesman’s house. The only thing my mum and dad owned outright was the cat but mum kept our flat spotlessly clean, whereas the wealthy Landesmans’ house was a wreck inside. But iIt’s there I saw my first wok – hanging on the greasy wall above the Aga – and saw half-drunk bottles of wine. And garlic. No one ate garlic then except over in Canonbury. I remember eating paté with garlic in at a party there and the next morning Dad came into my bedroom and retched from the smell. So garlic became a symbol for me – of revolution. I’d bring garlic home just to upset him.
The first time I ever went in a restaurant was when record companies were wooing Spandau Ballet. We’d previously played a residency in Saint Tropez – but we drove there in a van and had no money, and the most exotic food I remember is croissants from a bakery after we’d been up all night.
I took my mum to the Ivy once and I asked, “This is real custard, Mum – would you like some?” She said, “What do you mean, real? Real custard is powder.”
Researching for the film The Krays (1990), I visited Ronnie Kray in Broadmoor. We had a watery non-alcoholic lager each. Later, the guy who arranged the drinks handed me a bill for £100 and said, “Hope you don’t mind – Ronnie put a few fags on.”
We never say “supper” in our house. That’s the language of the nursery and nanny.
When I met my wife, who’s Jewish, 15 years ago, we started arguing straightaway, so we knew we were right for each other. But after four weeks we split up dramatically. Then one evening I opened the door and she had an apple strudel in her hand. Her mum suggested it as the best way to solve the situation. It worked.
Spandau Ballet are touring in spring 2015. The Story… The Very Best Of is out now
