‘I FEEL WE REALLY HAVE TO MAKE THIS CHRISTMAS COUNT’

Nigella Lawson on how she’ll be making the festivities special

We’ve all learned how important it is coming together over a meal

If you regularly watch Nigella Lawson on screen, whether adding the finishing touches to her mouthwatering mince pies or icing her impeccable-looking yule log, you’ll be familiar with her unflappable nature. When we meet at the GH cover shoot, this is in full effect; she arrives well-prepared with her own packed lunch, a flask of hot tea and some lemon sherbets ‘in case of a sugar low’.

When she’s quizzed on Christmas dinner advice by the GH team, she has all the answers. Dry turkey? Soak it overnight, she advises. Perfect potatoes? Add semolina and use goose fat. Fussy eaters? She ignores them… unless they’re staying for two weeks, of course!

But when the ceremony of our shoot is over and we catch up on Zoom a few weeks later, I discover a more vulnerable side to Nigella. She has had many losses to overcome; she was a young woman when her mother and younger sister both died of cancer. Later, she had to deal with the loss of her husband, the journalist John Diamond, to throat cancer when their children were aged seven and four. Daughter Cosima, now 26, and son Bruno, 24, have both left home, and Nigella lives alone in west London.

She’s reflective about those she’s lost – ‘they’re always in your head and in your bloodstream,’ she says – but also looks to the future with passion and energy, and says that turning 60 this year has been a positive milestone in so many ways. Nigella has begun her new decade by writing another book, Cook, Eat, Repeat, an enticing collection of recipes combined with essays about food, and has been filming a tie-in TV series for BBC Two. She has also kick-started a new fitness regime and discovered the joys of a daily foot soak! Here, she shares why, despite life’s challenges, she believes there is still so much to celebrate…

Congratulations on turning 60. Are you where you thought you’d be at this age?

I’m not a planner – apart from when it comes to food! But to be completely honest, I’ve never been able to take for granted that I’d be alive by this age. My mother died at 48 and my sister at 32. And then John at 47. So, even if I were the sort of person who planned ahead, I don’t think I would have seen myself here.

What is your attitude to ageing?

I kind of think you can’t do anything about it, so why complain? I also know what the alternative is, so it feels wrong when you’ve been surrounded by people who have died young to say ‘My hair’s awful, I’ve got to get my roots done’ or ‘My hands look like lizards’. So I don’t dwell on it. As long as you’re healthy, that really is the most important thing.

So you feel positive about it?

Definitely. In many ways, getting older frees you quite a bit. It’s easier to do what you want. And I’d like to think you get less judgmental, too, which is important.

Have you done anything surprising since turning 60?

I exercise more, which is a big surprise to me! During lockdown, I didn’t go out at all and I’m never going to diet, so I needed to do something. I’ve done yoga for a long time, but I added in stretching exercises and weights, and I feel so much stronger and healthier now. It’s also helped my back pain, which I’ve had since I was in a car crash when I was 19. It’s funny because if you’d said to me when I was younger that I was going to be doing an hour’s exercise six times a week (when possible), I’d have thought you were mad! But I love it.

What else makes you feel good in your own skin?

It sounds really awful, but being alone. Is that a terrible thing to say? I do feel I need more and more time by myself, to recharge in quiet. When I was younger, I didn’t like being by myself, but now I really can’t cope unless I have quite a lot of alone time. I love the silence of pottering about or just lying down.

This has been such a challenging year for everyone. How have you stayed positive?

I don’t know that I always have! During lockdown, I was so terrified I wouldn’t get my book finished that in a way, I had a focus beyond everything else that was going on. But if I allowed myself to think about it, I didn’t stay calm at all. I’m not an enormously positive person; I’m quite a realist and when people say ‘Oh, it will all turn out for the best’, I feel like saying, ‘Actually, life doesn’t always turn out that way!’ But I do try to stay in the present. I’m prone to anxiety and I can easily spiral off into ‘I’ve got to do this by tomorrow’ and ‘I don’t know if I can cope’. I constantly have to rein myself in. I take refuge in the kitchen, where I create comfort and security. And I’d like to think I’ve found a better balance over the years. When I do a recipe, my job is to think about what could go wrong and how I can make it better, but that’s a bad habit to get into for the rest of life. So I’ve learned not to do that so much outside of the kitchen.

What was the process of writing Cook, Eat, Repeat?

I wrote most of it in lockdown and, at times, it was a struggle to stay focused. I’d get up early and write all day at my desk, with a lot of pacing around and recipe testing in between. I drank a lot of tea! I don’t usually drink much alcohol, but at the end of the day I’d make myself a Campari soda. I also have a huge pan that my children used to be able to fit into when they were little, which is now filled with snacks, and every night I’d think, ‘Shall I have Hula Hoops or Twiglets today?’ It became my little ritual!

Are you as unflappable as you appear in the kitchen?

I can get quite stressy if something goes wrong or I haven’t got enough time to do everything, but I can generally talk myself down. Things do go wrong and I burn things quite easily because I tend to cook everything on maximum, which is rather a sign of my character! When I’m making something that should be done gently on the stove, I get bored or impatient and suddenly turn up the heat and scorch it all.

Do you still enjoy working?

I do actually. There are days when I think ‘Oh my gosh, I could lie down all day’, but I enjoy it because I feel like myself when I’m cooking and writing. And I feel very lucky for the connection it gives me to other people. That came to the fore during lockdown, when I started helping people with their evening meals on Twitter. It was odd because I was living remotely, but feeling much more connected.

What do you owe your success to?

I think a lot of it is because I haven’t relied on great skills or expertise. I’m not a trained chef – you can see when you watch me on TV that I don’t have those skills. So from the very beginning I wrote recipes for someone like me. When I started out, I had a job in a different industry as a journalist and I had young children – and everything had to make sense within that. And that’s the way I’ve carried on. Everything I do is very doable.

How do you get the balance of work and life right?

I don’t know what this famed balance is! I love what I do, so

When I was a child, we did presents after lunch, but I don’t have sufficient authority for that, so we do them mid-morning

everything is interspersed with bits of solitude, but maybe that is my balance. The harder part is the filming. It’s physically very draining standing up all day for seven weeks or so, and there isn’t really room for anything else during that time. It’s a bit frightening and I always think ‘I don’t know if I can do this again’, but then I start and I get excited again.

You wrote your book How To Eat in 1998 to remember your mother and sister. Did you find it cathartic?

The truth is that there is no real catharsis, but it was incredibly important to me to memorialise these people I loved. It didn’t bring them back of course, but it felt important to remember them in a positive way, not just with the heartache of grief. And to smile when I thought of certain meals or something we shared.

Do you still channel your emotions into your writing?

I’m always aware of my mother when I write.

She was incredibly bad-tempered when she cooked; she’d do it in a resentful and impatient way! But as well as being about bringing the people who aren’t alive any more with me, cooking is also a way of projecting into the future. It gives me so much pleasure to cook for my own children and feel that what I’ve made will become something in their repertoire. It’s like being a bridge and I love that.

In what else do you find your greatest joy?

Reading or hanging out with my children. They’re older now and they don’t live at home any more, but they come back from time to time and I really enjoy it when they do. I love cooking for them and feeding them and just hanging about with them.

How do you relax?

I love turning my home into a cocooning, magical place

Relaxing, along with sleeping, is not one of my gifts! But I have a routine before bed which, despite sounding a bit mad, helps me wind down. I have a collapsible washing-up bowl, which

I fill with hot water and add magnesium salts. Then I put a timer on my phone for 10 minutes and just sit there with my feet soaking in it. I find that time very restorative.

What does Christmas mean to you?

Being with my children, a lot of cooking, a lot of eating and lots of lying about. I love watching films with them and I enjoy not having things in the timetable. I’m also a bit clichéd and like having the fire burning and lots of tealights and fairy lights. It’s about turning my home into this cocooning, magical place where it feels a bit different from the rest of the year.

Do you have any family traditions?

When my children were very little, I made edible Christmas tree decorations with them and that’s carried on – even through the years where I had to be the one showing a bit more enthusiasm! And we often have a family supper on Christmas Eve. It might have to just be the three of us this year, but I’d quite like that.

Have you ever had any festive disasters?

Yes, I certainly have! One year, my oven didn’t work and I had to walk to a friend’s house wearing a coat over my pyjamas carrying the turkey in a tin. She wasn’t home and I had to work out how to use her Aga, leave it there, go and finish the rest of the dinner, then carry the turkey back again. I saw someone I knew on the way back and I didn’t even have to say a word. It was just a look of, ‘I know I’m in my pyjamas walking the streets of Shepherd’s Bush, but it’s just how it has to be!’

What is a typical Christmas Day like now?

I wake up far too early and I’ll start prepping the food, putting the onion, clove and mace into the milk for the bread sauce first; that’s the Christmas morning smell! When I was a child, we did presents after lunch, but I don’t have sufficient authority for that, so we do them mid-morning, then

I go around huffing and puffing trying to clear up all the wrapping paper! I always arrange a bit of lounging time with some crisps and a drink before a long lunch – turkey with all the trimmings – then it’s time to watch The Sound Of Music. After that, the great sandwich-making ceremony begins using all the leftovers!

How will things be different this year?

We might not be able to get together in big groups, but I feel a sense that it really has to count. I’ve already got a special tablecloth with little stars on it and I’d like to make the decorations really special. But I think we’ve all learned how important it is coming together over a meal, and that we shouldn’t weigh it down with all these strenuous things and see it as performance. Would it really matter if you just made everyone a sandwich from ingredients you’ve got knocking about? Not really, no.

Cook, Eat, Repeat by Nigella Lawson is published by Chatto & Windus at £26. Nigella Lawson© 2020. Photographs copyright Jonathan Lovekin© 2020. Nigella, Cook, Eat, Repeat is coming this November on BBC Two and BBC iplayer. The Christmas special will air in December