Comedy legend Ronnie Corbett reveals his food memories as he prepares to host his first Supper Club... Tell us Ronnie, when did you learn to cook? "My father was a baker, and my mother was a very good cook as well. She was a housekeeper for some posh folk in Belgravia, so there has always been that element of cooking skill in the family. Mothers were cooks in those days; they stayed at home in those days to cook the dinners and lunches, to make jam and lemon curd and all that sort of thing. It's not so much like that these days because mums now have to go out to work and earn a wage to support the dad's earnings." How did comic Rob Brydon get involved in your first Supper Club? "Rob came to me for this Good Food show, with one of his wife's recipes. It was a dessert where we had to use a blowtorch to burn the sugar content on the top of it. I don't think Rob is into cooking very much, but he is interested in food." What memories does Rob have of food? "Rob's eaten oysters in Australia and he loves rib-eye steak, which is very fashionable these days. It used to be fillet steak and entrecote, but now rib-eye is the tasty one that everyone's eating." Which foods hold significant memories for you? "That's a difficult question, but I suppose for me it has to be our Sunday lunches. We went out to church in the mornings, as we did up in Scotland, and my mum used to make these pot roasts. She would roast the meat in a very heavy iron pot on a very low heat. It was very soft, well cooked and tender, it just fell off the bone. When my mother came in from church she used to make the Yorkshire puddings." Did you enjoy your Supper Club with Rob? "We cooked while we chatted and we had a nice supper; it was very relaxed. I couldn't do anything like Celebrity MasterChef, it looks so stressful. Dear me! What we do in Ronnie Corbett's Supper Club is blether away while you cook with nice guests." Finally, did you enjoy beating Gordon Ramsay on The F Word? And do you want to steal his crown as TV's top chef? "Yes I did! He was talking so much and, when I looked at the pasta he was cooking, I knew the minute he put it on the dish that it was a bit too al dente, so I concentrated on mine. I was quite thrilled to get away with that. Do I want to steal his TV chef crown? No thank you very much! [laughs]" *Ronnie Corbett's Supper Club can be seen on Tuesday, August 31 at 9pm, exclusive to Good Food
