River Cottage 2009 Hugh in the hot seat

Date Published:

23/06/2009

As another great series of River Cottage draws to a close, 4Food caught up with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall to discuss slugs, Landshare and how he really feels about the other Channel 4 chefs

Landshare's catching on in a massive way now - has that surprised you?

Of course we always hoped that Landshare was going to be big, because it's a big ambitious thing. The bottom line is we want Landshare to be the means by which anyone in Britain who wants to grow food can do it. And of course there are lots of things happening all over Britain that are about helping people to grow food. Landshare is a tool they can all use.

What's next for Landshare?

Well I've just been talking to Rosie Boycott, who's running the Capital Growth project for the mayor, Boris Johnson, and they're aiming to get over 2,000 new growing sites in London by 2012. They're trying to liaise with various different organisations who may have land available and Landshare will be the tool that Londoners can use to access those sites. It's a very straightforward proposition - a dating agency between people who've got some land they're happy to offer up and people who are looking for land to grow on.

What's been the highlight for you with Landshare so far?

I think what's great is that people are just taking the plunge with Landshare because it is a bit of an unknown - how is it going to work? How do you sort out the details? How do you make the arrangements with someone who lives down the road? What's the deal? Well, we have suggestions for all those things on the website. But it's actually those pioneers, those people who have taken the plunge, who are then coming back to the website to tell the story about how it worked for them. And that's actually starting to liberate other people who are thinking they could do it. Give it a whirl, try it. What's the worst that can happen? Some of the Landshare stories that we're feeding back into the show are showing what a wonderful thing it is for those people who are getting involved.

We've now seen you at the heart of the Chicken Out campaign, battling with Tesco's and now Landshare… If you could pull off any one campaign which would it be and why?

Gosh that's impossible to answer. I don't think I feel comfortable with the notion of ranking them, to say that Landshare is more important than animal welfare, I couldn't make that call. But I do think Landshare has the potential to touch millions of people's lives. It has an amazing transformative power, growing your own food. For regular families and, on the show with the Portland Young Offenders Institute, with some of the guys in there you get the feeling that actually they're learning something there that's really going to change their lives, so, right now, I think Landshare and the Grow Your Own thing.

How's the Chicken Out campaign going?

The Chicken Out campaign has been amazing. It's been an extraordinary thing to be involved with. Quite emotional at times, quite intense but the public response has been fantastic. We reckon that the uptake of higher welfare poultry has probably tripled since we started the campaign 18 months ago and it has held up in the face of the recession as well. More importantly we also managed to get a forum going in the industry, with the supermarkets, the poultry growers themselves, campaigners like myself - there's a welfare forum now and we sit round a table in a big room and everyone's talking and that's very good. That's a bit of a first. I'd like to thank everyone who's been involved or supported us in anyway.

The Big Food Fight promo with all four of the Channel 4 chefs was very popular - how well do you know the other three chefs? Who do you get on best with?

I know them all reasonably well. I've spent a bit of time with Gordon and Jamie and I've met Heston a few times. Again I'm not going to start giving them marks out of ten either for their cooking or their personal charms, but Jamie's someone who I've worked with closely on the chicken campaign and who I'm sure I'll continue to work with. I think he's got a remarkable gift for changing people's lives through food. It's an interest we both have and we do it in very different ways but I think what we do is complimentary so I'm always looking forward to catching up with him and seeing what he's up to next and bouncing ideas off each other.

So you weren't slagging Gordon off on Have I Got News For You?

I don't think I was slagging Gordon off! I think that Gordon is a magnet for - not quite for trouble - but for, well he likes taking things to the edge. I think he probably knew roughly what he was doing and it all spiralled slightly out of control. But on a one to one level I've got a lot of time for Gordon.

If one of them could come round to cook you dinner which would it be?

It would probably be Jamie because I've eaten Heston's food and I've eaten Gordon's food so I would love to have a meal cooked by Jamie.

Do you have their cookery books at home?

I've got some of them but, I tell you what, and I know this is the case with a lot of chefs, we tend not to use them, because we're so arrogant. I can't speak for the others but I suspect that it's true for them as well - I tend not to cook verbatim from other chefs' recipe books. When I get hold of a new Jamie book I'll flip through it and quite a lot of it will soak in. For example, there's a Jamie recipe that I do that's a roasted beetroot dish. He does it in scrunched up foil but I do it in a closed ovenproof dish with a bit of garlic and oil so that it sort of steam bakes and that works very well. So I think what we do is we like to rip each others' ideas off a little bit.

When you're not cooking or growing your own what do you do to relax?

I lie in a hammock and look at the view. I've just strung up a hammock and it's got a lovely view of the landscape at home, the sheep in the distance. I love being lazy, I love doing a bit of nothing and the hammock is just perfect.

Start growing your own with Hugh's Landshare scheme.

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