‘I SAID, “CAN I CALL YOU BLOWERS?” AND HE SAID, “ABSOLUTELY, AS LONG AS I CAN CALL YOU AINERS!”’
Ainsley Harriott was born in Paddington, London, on 28 February 1957, and is a celebrity chef and television presenter. He has worked at a wide range of restaurants in London, including Verrey’s, The Strand Palace, The Dorchester, Brown’s, The Hilton, The Westbury and Quaglino’s, and was head chef of the Long Room at Lord’s. On television, he was resident chef on Good Morning with Anne and Nick and subsequently the main presenter of Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook and later Ready, Steady, Cook. He has published a series of cookery books that have achieved worldwide sales of more than two million.
As we drove from Buckingham Palace and my audience with the Duke of Edinburgh to Wandsworth and a warm welcome from Ainsley and his wife Clare, one thought was uppermost in my mind. ‘This is what Cricket Wonderful Cricket is all about. A rich mix of people, all happy to talk about the game from their own unique perspective.’ Soon after our arrival Helen, my wife and chauffeur, and I are sitting in the garden under a blazing sun, enjoying cooling fruit drinks from a giant glass jug and a lively stream of cricket chat from Ainsley.
Although he is probably best known for his frequent television appearances, this is the man who once made beef baps for England! His catering career had started as an apprentice at Verrey’s restaurant in London’s Regent Street. ‘I remember an Irish chef there saying to me, “Do you want to earn yourself some more money?” And I did, because it was such bad pay then. I was on £12 a week, which was just no money at all, although you know that’s how it is when you first start out in catering. The chef said that now the cricket season was on, if I went to Lord’s on my day off I could get some part-time work and be paid something like £3. 25 an hour. How could I resist? So that’s what I started to do, although you were only ever at Lord’s for about three weeks of the year. You probably had two five-day Test matches, the NatWest Final and not much more. If Middlesex were playing particularly well, or they played Surrey, or if there was a one-dayer on a Sunday, it might get busy, but otherwise it just wasn’t very hectic at all.
‘But I had never made so many bloody sandwiches in my life! You walked in there, and you made five or six hundred rounds of sandwiches every day. Ham, lettuce, tomato – right, that lot’s out of the way. Seal them up, put them away. A few of the guys working there got bored with that, so one sarnie got half a pound of ham and the next one got a little slither! But I always tried to maintain standards. And then I got promoted and went to work in the kitchen. There I got to know the chef quite well and he would call me when the big games were coming up and there was plenty to do. God, I loved it! I was put in charge of the Warner Stand, where the members and their guests sit, and they sang my praises because I really looked after all the punters up there. It was very busy at lunchtime but I just organised everything and still had chance to watch the cricket. It was a fantastic viewpoint and I could see all my heroes.’
Ainsley was promoted again after the executive chef told him that they were having problems with the Long Room restaurant in the members’ pavilion, and that they wanted him to take over. ‘By the time I got there, the Long Room beef bap had already become a tradition. Although the players would have lunch laid on and would have had their early morning nibbles, a lot of them used to send down, because they just wanted a real, proper beef bap. Graham Gooch loved them with a bit of extra horseradish, and Mike Gatting did as well. They said he had two jacket potatoes with everything! Apart from the players’ requests, the members would queue up for ages, so I used to entertain them by writing poetry and putting it on the Long Room counter. It was crap, basically, but every day, depending on who we were playing, and the plight of the team and stuff like that, I would change my little bit of handwritten poetry and people would tip me according to how good or bad it was. We had such a laugh. I could never be quiet. I used to entertain them, because we were at the back of the Long Room, where you can’t see the f*****g pitch! So I had to amuse them myself. I was head chef there for years and until recently I was still getting Christmas cards from the old Long Room faithful. Sadly a lot of them have passed away now. In the winter, Clare and I used to be invited to have lunch with them, at Rules or one of their clubs. It was great to just meet up with those members and talk cricket.’
Ainsley was influenced heavily by his mother, who was an enormous cricket fan, and every time the West Indies came to England on tour, everything stopped. ‘We watched all the Test matches on television, and saw every ball bowled. We saw some of the great players who came to play here. When I was at school, quite a few of them arrived on the county scene. I remember Garfield Sobers playing at Notts. Lance Gibbs came over for a while, as did Rohan Kanhai. We all thought we were Garfield Sobers, so you put your collar up when you went to play, and when you bowled you charged in because you were either Charlie Griffith or Wesley Hall. And, dare I say, you also batted like a West Indian, so everything had to be dispatched to the boundary as quickly as possible – it didn’t matter whether you lost your wicket or not.
‘So this was the start of what, I think, was my greatest achievement in life: to have a love of the game. That’s why I would always get excited when I met my heroes and was able to talk to them about their greatest games or their greatest innings. As I said, my mother was a great lover of cricket, while my dad [Chester Harriott, the pianist and entertainer] was in show business. We had quite a nice home and players would come and visit. And they were guaranteed a nice meal – [Ainsley takes on a rich West Indian accent] “some yam and peppy food”. I remember when I was a young child in my back garden, people like Lance Gibbs and Clive Lloyd coming to my house, and Jeffrey Dujon, who is a cousin of mine. So when you have that kind of connection, where everybody loves cricket, and you meet some of your cricketing heroes at a young age, you just can’t believe how lucky you are. If you have one of these famous guys tossing a ball at you in front of your apple tree in your back garden, you think, “Wow, they’ve got time to spend with me.”’
Given his childhood experiences, I expected that Ainsley’s list of favourite players would be made up entirely of West Indians, but this turned out not to be the case. He went for a distinctly international line-up, opening with a South African. ‘Funnily enough, Barry Richards is one of the greatest batsmen I have ever seen. Absolutely beautiful. I remember my mum taking us to a Surrey game and watching him make, I think, 80 something for Hampshire. South Africa weren’t allowed to play Test matches from 1970, so he only played four games, against Australia, in which he averaged over 70. Just imagine what it would have been like if he had been part of the Test scene until he retired in the early 1980s.
‘As you begin to appreciate cricket even more, you also become aware of the individual brilliance of Allan Border. He went in as captain when Australia were rubbish and he galvanised them; he completely turned them around. He made Australian cricket great again and they just started firing on all cylinders, and he never let them down with the blade. I kind of like that in a captain. I must also mention that I liked the Chappell brothers, Greg and Ian. But, moving on from the Aussies to England, I remember Colin Cowdrey very clearly indeed as one of the truly great batsmen. I loved Atherton, too, and I’ve always loved Gower. They always said that Gower was a black man, didn’t they, because of the way he used to hit that ball. He always got out like a black man, cutting it and caught off the edge every time! I used to love watching Derek Randall and his brilliant fielding; nothing could get past him. He reminds me of a guy called Brendan Nash playing for the West Indies; he’s like a little terrier, diving this way and that – it’s just fantastic. Then you have the superb New Zealand fast bowler, Richard Hadlee, who also played over here for Notts, and took more than 400 Test wickets.’
At this point, Ainsley leaps to his feet and disappears indoors, returning with what he describes as one of his favourite old cricket books, as a source of additional information. It is no great surprise to find that it is Beyond a Boundary by the Trinidadian intellectual CLR James, which is widely regarded as perhaps the greatest sports book ever written. He places it reverently on the table in front of him, where it remains untouched for the rest of our time together – because it is time for the West Indies.
‘Without doubt we were all able to walk very tall when the Windies, who we supported for years and years, had that great team in the 1980s and 1990s. I think I am right in saying that Viv Richards is the only Test captain of the West Indies never to lose a series. Unbelievable, when you think of all the places that he went to play – certainly going down to Australia. One of the greatest things I ever saw was Viv scoring the fastest Test century, off 56 balls. It was against England in Antigua, in 1986. My mother used to sit on the end of my bed and tell me about the three Ws – Walcott, Weekes and Worrell – and all the stories were just fantastic. And having someone like Garfield Sobers come along was just remarkable, because he was something else. It wasn’t just because they were black that I supported them, although you definitely go through that as a young kid – you want to have your own identity, you want to support something you really feel proud of. Like my son, who’s a mixed race boy: he loved Tiger Woods, which is exactly the same thing – he wants someone who he can identify with.
‘But I am very sad about the way the Windies’ fortunes have declined now. They just don’t seem to be able to do it any more. They are playing like a bunch of individuals at times and I find that very frustrating. It is beginning to change a little bit now, because I think they are realising that something has to be done.’
From the great players to the great, and not so great, writers and broadcasters is an easy step and Ainsley has a splendid anecdote to start the ball rolling. ‘I must tell you about “Blowers’” [Henry Blofeld] when he came on Ready, Steady, Cook. I’ve had quite a few of them, like Jonathan Agnew, on the programme and they in turn often interview me on Test Match Special, when I end up chatting to them for ages about all sorts of nonsense. But at the start of this particular programme, when Henry was on, I said, “Can I call you Blowers?” and he said, “Absolutely, as long as I can call you Ainers!” Of course, everyone was in stitches and when the programme had almost ground to a chaotic halt, I heard my producer say, “That’s enough of that now, Ainers.” And that was what I was called for the rest of that series.
‘But on a more serious note, I do like Mike Atherton’s writing in The Times since he took over from Christopher Martin-Jenkins. Besides being a bright boy, he also knows how to get the message across. He doesn’t use a long, convoluted word for the sake of it, like some of them do. Then, on Sky, every time Michael Holding says, “one buys two”, it’s true – there is always another little wicket coming, isn’t there? I like his voice, his knowledge and where he’s coming from. And I like the little sort of banter with the Lancastrian, “Bumble” [David Lloyd]. He really adds a bit of fun to it, because it can all be a little bit serious, and I like the little cut-away shots that they have of them, chatting away there, especially when they start giggling and stuff like that. You can tell something is going on, and often Botham is involved.
‘But although I realise that they are doing a job and that they like to fire off their opinions and comments, I get a little peed off with Nasser Hussain, because he seems to want to hog the limelight a lot of the time. And I do get the odd days when I get put off by Bob Willis, because he was one who was not good enough. He’s got that kind of voice, and I just used to think, “Who are you to say that?” He was a good bowler but he was never that great and if it wasn’t for Botham, he wouldn’t have been in the position to take all those wickets! So some of them do kind of wind me up.’
As a schoolboy, Ainsley thoroughly enjoyed playing cricket, particularly at Wandsworth Boys School, where they had a system for awarding cricket caps that was completely new to me. ‘Every time you took three wickets or scored I think it was 50 runs, you were called up in assembly and awarded a cap. I managed to collect a few but apart from that, cricket at school for me was a great experience and I have some wonderful memories as a result. But unfortunately after I left it was very difficult to find time to play, because I decided to take up catering and that doesn’t give you much free time, particularly in your early days as an apprentice.
‘As I became more established and better known, I started to play again and over the years, I’ve played in charity matches. Apart from the Lord’s Taverners, I just get calls from people and get invited to lovely little cricket grounds, or lovely villages, and I just turn up and play. I played for Sheen Park Cricket Club, near Richmond Park, because an old school friend of mine played for them and every time they were a bit short, he would phone me up. But I wasn’t one of their main guys, unfortunately, because as anybody who plays cricket knows, unless you get into the nets soon after Christmas and start to get your fitness back and practise, it’s a struggle. You have to have the time, the motivation and the discipline, and I was usually short on one or two of those! Even so, I still play in charity matches and if unfortunately I can’t make it, I like to send them one of my juicers and a book that they can give away as a prize. When I have played, I have taken a few wickets, including, I think, those of Graham Gooch, Alan Knott and John Emburey. I’ve gone for loads of runs but I have had my moments, if not my great achievements!’
As a spectator rather than a player, the most fantastic match in Ainsley’s memory was the second Test match in the 2005 Ashes series, at Edgbaston. ‘I wasn’t there, but I was glued in front of my television, loving every moment, and thinking, “What are you doing? What is going to happen next?” It was so tense. Clare came in and said, “What are you doing screaming and shouting? It’s not a game of football.” When Shane Warne was ninth out, the Aussies still needed about 60 to win and it looked to be all over. But Brett Lee was incredible. I thought he played with such confidence. I really thought they had had it. Just two runs in it in the end – how close can you get?
‘It’s those sorts of matches that make me so keen on the five-day game. I like Twenty20, but I am a Test match man. I think it demands special skills. I know there is a lot of feeling in the game that Twenty20 is destroying cricket. It’s bringing kids into the game that probably never would have played, because the game just went on too long, but people go to a Test match for a day and they don’t care what happens; they don’t care about the result. They have been to see their heroes and that’s what really matters to them. Twenty20 does definitely offer something different, so sometimes I wonder if the 50-over game will disappear.
Ainsley’s love of cricket is as strong as it has ever been, in part because of the high standards of behaviour that the game demands. ‘The discipline of the sport is very important – dare I say, a little bit like golf. There are certain laws or rules that should be observed and, in most cases, are. Then, once you are out there on the field, it is gladiatorial: a battle between the batsman and the bowler. I think it is important as well that the character of the team comes out; that you get a group of players that play as a team and don’t play, as we have seen so often over the years, as an uncoordinated bunch of players. It’s essential to have moments of individual brilliance, with the bat or the ball, but still to know it is about the team working together and everyone pulling in the same direction. When that starts to happen you can sense it. You get this really great feeling that everybody is there, that everybody is working for one another, that everyone is moving together. It can be small things, like at the end of an over when they change ends, everyone is running around and there is a real urgency about it. When you get that in Test match cricket, as it seems to be with England but less so with the Windies, it is a fantastic thing.
‘What else do I love about the sport? I suppose it is the history, the tradition that is an important part of it all. You either love it or you don’t. I know people that come to cricket but can’t stand it – it’s like people that talk about golf and say it ruins a walk. It’s only when you actually play that you understand the laws of the game. People who don’t know or think about cricket can find it almost bewildering, because it is quite complex. Unless you have learned it at school, it is quite difficult to explain to someone. Apart from the laws, the terms can also be a complete mystery. What is lbw, running between the wickets, a maiden over, a no ball, cover point and all the other bits and pieces that go with it? People don’t know what they mean.
‘But for me, most importantly of all, it is a game that should be protected at all costs. Because it hasn’t been around for hundreds of years for no reason at all. It is a great game and you see the way that it continues to develop, for example, with the speed of the game and the fitness of the players. What is going to come now? What’s next? I don’t know. I just know that I love it, love it, love it.’
Ainsley’s expressions of passion for the game are ringing in my ears as I reach the end of the day’s absorbing, contrasting and fascinating cricket conversations. Before we leave, he searches his filing cabinet for a picture of himself in cricket gear that I need. He fails in his mission, perhaps because the drawer that seems to be intended for his sports files appears to contain an almost unhealthy amount of Arsenal memorabilia!