Rick Stein: ‘no one could accuse him of glossing over uncomfortable moments’. Photograph: Pal Hansen for the Observer
In his TV persona, Rick Stein comes over as one food celeb you could actually invite round for dinner. He's not scary like Michel Roux Jr, or shouty like Gregg Wallace, just an affable, approachable bloke with a good line in chat, and the odd interesting reflection; a kitchen-sink philosopher.
In his memoir, a more complex Stein emerges. The 18-year-old Rick who visited a prostitute in Palma: "I was so nervous that I picked up the first girl on the street. She was a bit plump and had quite bad underarm BO." The Rick so tanked up on booze behind the wheel of a car that he almost killed his wife-to-be. A near-nervous breakdown at university, a panic attack in the middle of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, fisticuffs with fractious Cornish fishermen… nobody could accuse Stein of glossing over uncomfortable moments.
He presents himself as the insecure son of a bipolar father, a man so self-preoccupied that he deprived his son of any confidence of his own; his father eventually committed suicide. Stein knows privilege – champagne on the terrace of his Cotswolds home, public schools where you beat or get beaten – and was saddled with its prejudices. Falling for a local girl, he explains: "I was petrified of getting her pregnant and having to marry a serving maid from Liverpool. I was a horrid little snob, really."
Yet the status that often comes with money proved elusive to Stein into middle age. He catalogues how he has worked his passage through life, from labouring on Australian rail tracks to running mobile discos, the only constant element being his attachment to Cornwall.
While Stein hands in a fairly raw, open account of himself, the other characters in the book are under-developed. This memoir is awash with detail: what clothes were worn, the make of car driven, and so on. The constant stream of cultural nostalgia (Laura Ashley wallpaper, the Beatles, Batchelors ready meals) feels forced.
Readers who persist despite this will probably connect enough with Stein to feel pleased when he begins to get somewhere in life, even if he is dogged by that characteristic diffidence. Nowadays he doesn't relish those "Aren't you Rick Stein?" moments, but has resolved to be good-humoured with anyone who accosts him. "I still like to be liked," he says, and this, one suspects, is what Stein wanted all his life.
In his memoir, a more complex Stein emerges. The 18-year-old Rick who visited a prostitute in Palma: "I was so nervous that I picked up the first girl on the street. She was a bit plump and had quite bad underarm BO." The Rick so tanked up on booze behind the wheel of a car that he almost killed his wife-to-be. A near-nervous breakdown at university, a panic attack in the middle of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, fisticuffs with fractious Cornish fishermen… nobody could accuse Stein of glossing over uncomfortable moments.He presents himself as the insecure son of a bipolar father, a man so self-preoccupied that he deprived his son of any confidence of his own; his father eventually committed suicide. Stein knows privilege – champagne on the terrace of his Cotswolds home, public schools where you beat or get beaten – and was saddled with its prejudices. Falling for a local girl, he explains: "I was petrified of getting her pregnant and having to marry a serving maid from Liverpool. I was a horrid little snob, really."
Yet the status that often comes with money proved elusive to Stein into middle age. He catalogues how he has worked his passage through life, from labouring on Australian rail tracks to running mobile discos, the only constant element being his attachment to Cornwall.
While Stein hands in a fairly raw, open account of himself, the other characters in the book are under-developed. This memoir is awash with detail: what clothes were worn, the make of car driven, and so on. The constant stream of cultural nostalgia (Laura Ashley wallpaper, the Beatles, Batchelors ready meals) feels forced.
Readers who persist despite this will probably connect enough with Stein to feel pleased when he begins to get somewhere in life, even if he is dogged by that characteristic diffidence. Nowadays he doesn't relish those "Aren't you Rick Stein?" moments, but has resolved to be good-humoured with anyone who accosts him. "I still like to be liked," he says, and this, one suspects, is what Stein wanted all his life.
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