People often ask me: “Oh, what’s your favourite thing to make?” For me, it’s a bowl. You share things in a bowl. They are very much like cupped hands. So that’s why I love making them.
I’m not a major fan of a square plate. It doesn’t have a generous feel about it. Those hard, square edges. It feels mean. It’s not a very congenial shape.
My mother was a cookery teacher and she was a great cook. Growing up, one of the best things she ever did for us was thatwe weren’t allowed to leave anything on the plate. It was to the point where it was a bit draconian: it would still be there the next day and we had to eat it then. But now I’ll literally eat anything, which is great.
I have a studio in Guangdong province in China and, until recently, before Covid, I was going there anything between five to eight times a year. The food is very weird and wonderful, but I’ll always have a go. I’ve had boiled fish bladder, sea slugs, a plate of crows’ feet, sea anemone … Who wants to eat sea anemone, for God’s sake? They’re at the edge of logic!
I could cook to save my life but it’s not something I’ve really got into. Perhaps because of Mum’s job: it’s that thing, isn’t it, where the shoes of a cobbler’s child have always got holes in them. The only time I’ve really had to do it is when I escaped my ex-wife, I suppose. I was living on my own then and I had a few staples that I’d do: spaghetti carbonara, things like that. But probably from a jar; never from scratch.
I’ve reached an age now where my metabolism has dropped off the cliff. I only have to think about bread and I grow breasts. Seriously, it’s terrible.
I drink coffee till 11am and, after that, tea. How many cups depends on how busy I am. Back in the day, the largest order I made – handmade – was for Habitat and that was throwing 16,000 pieces on the wheel. On an average day I’d be making 700-900 mugs. I would sit on my wheel all day, drinking cups of tea and listening to Radio 4, and go into a zone, almost a meditative state, where your hands take over.
We all have our favourite mug. If you work in an office, you’ve got your mug in the tea room and no one else dares touch it. For me, making mugs for someone else to use, they’ve got to feel right, they’ve got to be nice to hold in the hand and the rim has to be a certain thickness for when your lips go to it. Our lips are one of the most sensitive parts of our body. That’s why we all go around snogging each other. To bring an object up to our mouth to drink from, it’s a very sensual, pleasurable experience.
It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of chefs also do pottery. Clay is very malleable and tactile, exactly like the way chefs work with certain food. There’s different textures and different consistencies within food, just as there are with pottery. I took to clay at a very early age, when I was 11. The moment I touched that first bit of clay, it was like a religious calling. I knew I was going to be working with this material for the rest of my life and fortunately I am.
You obviously know I cry over pots [famously, Brymer Jones often cries on Channel 4’s The Great Pottery Throw Down]… Well, this friend of mine, he’ll cry over food. He’ll put something in his mouth and go, “Oh, my God!” I can understand that: we live to eat, don’t we?
My favourite things
Food
I love a full English breakfast. Simpson’s in the Strand used to do one called Ten Deadly Sins that was mindblowing. And you’d be sitting next to someone like Norman Lamont. A wonderful start to the day.
Drink
My first decent mojito was on the 34th floor of a bar in Hong Kong. It was dusk, and the lights were coming on and I was drinking this mojito and I had this epiphany moment: “My God, how did pots get me here?”
Place to eat
For a special occasion, my partner Marj and I will often go to a restaurant in Whitstable called Wheelers. It’s very unassuming and really small, but the food is the best I’ve ever tasted anywhere. You put stuff in your mouth, and you don’t really chew, it kind of melts away.
Dish to make
I’d attempt a beef wellington. It’s one of the hardest things to make? Well, there you go, a red rag to a bull.
Boy in a China Shop: Life, Clay and Everything is out now in paperback (Hodder, £10.99); Keith Brymer Jones is on tour in the UK until 30 June
