& DRINK When I touch mum’s spoon, I feel her holding my hand
the palm of her hand,” he says.
John wears his mum’s ring, too, a gold ring inscribed with a B. “The spoon’s so soft it doesn’t even feel like wood. I feel her holding my hand... it’s so silly, but it feels like it, and it’s a beautiful thing – so comforting.”
Would she be proud of the book? “She’d be embarrassed! She was a very quiet lady, quite shy, very reserved in a way,” he recalls. “I miss her terribly.”
Cooking hasn’t just been a way through grief for John, who first trod the boards in Cats, and became a household name thanks to his role as Christian Clarke in EastEnders. It’s helped with addiction recovery – but he wasn’t always a keen cook.
After going to the Royal Ballet School at a young age, he ate for fuel. Then, during years of alcohol and drug addiction, food wasn’t high on the menu.
“I still cooked, but when you’re drinking a lot, or doing drugs, food is low down on the list,” he says. “Making something lovely to eat, be it a bowl of soup, beans on toast... it’s an act of self-care, and that was really lacking in my life.
“Cleaning up has allowed me to look after myself a bit better. Plus, I’m getting on a bit more, I need to look after myself now!”
There’s a real Seventies vibe to the book, with recipes such as cheese and onion tart and Black Forest gateau. There are also influences from abroad, ‘hangover’ food, and a fabulous section called ‘For Fancy’, inspired by his sister.
“My cooking and food story has allowed me to reconnect with myself. That’s why I say in the book that cooking the food from my past has helped me live in the present. It helped me remember aspects of my life and myself that I had forgotten.
“Some I chose to forget, some I thought weren’t important enough to remember. And I’m so grateful that I’ve been able to have this opportunity to do that.
“I continue to use food as my wind down, a way to be social, to relax, pretty much in the way I used to use drink and drugs. Now I use food in that way.
“I didn’t cook fancy dishes on MasterChef. I remember Greg (Wallace) saying, ‘You can’t cook a hotpot for the final’. He loved it! It may not be fine dining, but it’s fine with me. I will be forever grateful to that programme.”