You’d never know from Andi Oliver‘s vibrant, energetic, positivity or her hugely successful career, how the terrible racism she endured at school has impacted on her.
Now 61, and a household name, most visibly on the last eight series of BBC’s Great British Menu, she is reflecting on how her past shaped her as she prepares to take to the Sheldonian stage at Oxford Literary Festival with Oxford Brookes Chancellor and famous actor Paterson Joseph.
The pair are firm friends, meeting on a beach in Antigua where she was hosting a rum bar, as you do, and Paterson was performing his play Sancho and Me about the historical figure Charles Ignatius Sancho.
They hit it off immediately and became great pals, so when Paterson asked Andi to join him at Oxford Literary Festival to discuss her Caribbean heritage, her time on Great British Menu and her book The Pepperpot Diaries: Stories From My Caribbean Table, she didn’t think twice.
Appearing at The Sheldonian together on Thursday April 3, for the Oxford Brookes Chancellor’s Conversation, Andi says: “I’m really excited about having a good old natter with Paterson in Oxford. We just had an instant rapore and have so much in common. Paterson is delightful, he really makes me laugh and we just have an innate understanding.”
The pair also quickly established that Paterson had a similarly racist experience at school in the UK, READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH PATERSON JOSEPH HERE and that as a result both are autodidactic, preferring library books and self-learning to the education system.
“If that sort of racial environment doesn’t crush you, you decide early on never to do that to another person, but instead to be an open person. So if I experience any bigotry, I call it out straight away and put it on the table. It’s just not acceptable, so I’d always rather speak up, which does tend to disarm people,” Andi chuckles.
“Those formative experiences also meant that I developed some really empathetic interpersonal skills that have been very useful throughout my career. It means that you learn how to be hypervigilant, so I can read a room instantly. So no it didn’t close me down. The racism I experienced as child had the opposite effect because I never wanted to be like them,” she says.
Instead, Andi left Suffolk as soon as she could, aged 16, and hot-footed it to London, joined a punk band Rip Rig + Panic with famous singer Neneh Cherry, and found her people on Portabello Road.
Plunging herself into work; TV, music, radio, her restaurants, cooking, motherhood (her daughter is famous podcaster and media personality Miquita Oliver), you name it and Andi’s given it her all.
Aware of the responsibility that her media persona carries, Andi says: “There are not many people that look like me in the media, and as visible as I am, that carries its own responsibilities because I know how important that is – I remember how much it meant to me seeing Floella Benjamin on TV as a child, so I do take it seriously.”
So is she enlivened by the increasing number of female chefs coming onto Great British Menu, such as Ashleigh Ferrand from Kingham Plough who appeared in this year’s series? ‘READ OUT INTERVIEW WITH ASHLEIGH HERE Ashleigh Farrand!
“Of course! I love it! it’s exciting, inspiring and thrilling to see so many young, female chefs coming on the show.” And does she sympathise with the sexism many of them have experienced in the industry?
“It’s interesting because I am self taught so I never had to work my way up through male dominated kitchens, but I’ve dealt with oppression, negative energy and condescension, and I deal with it the same way as any racism. It’s not my circus. You deal with your rap but I’m not investing in that kind of bigotry. I suppose because of my experiences as a young girl I’m used to it, so can navigate through it in a way that others can’t,” she says.
“But I think young people get such a bad rap and it’s not easy for them with all the things they have to contend with. It’s really challenging out there at the moment and yet they are so resilient, extraordinary, and brave.
“So my message to young people is to go and do what they want to do, that they can do it. I think there is a real propensity to think that the things they love doing are not the things they can do for work, but that’s not true. Go and do it now!,” she urges.
So does Andi see herself as pioneering? She howls with laughter: “No, I don’t think of myself as pioneering but I am proud of my work and the opportunities afforded to me. I just feel like an independent person, but I’m 61 now so I guess I’m well armed. I still get accused of being over emotional, but I just don’t give a sh**, it doesn’t make it true.”
As for her book The Pepperpot Diaries: Stories From My Caribbean Table, Andi says she’s always wanted to write “but it was Covid that gave me the time and space to get on with it, and take my own advice,” she chuckles again.
“I was in Antigua for three months unable to go home. I know, what an absolute gift! So I just started writing diaries and cooking and shopping for traditional local ingredients and talking to the older Antiguans at the market and revisiting my heritage. I was literally in heaven. It was like a writing retreat and I absolutely loved it.
“I knew it was going to be my first book and that it was the story I needed to tell, like a journey of identity and a way of finding out who I am. And when you combine my innate Britishness and my Caribbean heritage, it comes out in food and that gave me a really good launchpad, through the narratives that drove me and the stories I had to tell,” she muses.
Still living life at a ridiculously fast pace, with many strings to her bow, means that Andi’s sanctuary is home, relishing her constantly busy household, encouraging friends and family to come and go as they please: “I don’t know how to live any other way. My parents house was the same. It’s just normal to always have people there, and part of that passage is to go into the kitchen and cook and eat together, because community is everything and it’s something we are losing – the ability to connect. Food is still the single and most simple way to connect.
“Community is about loving each other and breaking bread together and food is a really powerful tool that stretches across such a broad demographic,” she explains.
And then Andi begins telling me about a unity dinner she has just hosted with a friend – an Indo-Carib fusion. “It was full of an intangible energy and a wonderful vibe, and it’s just what we needed,” she says. Sounds exactly like Andi herself!
The Oxford Brookes Chancellor’s Conversation: The Pepperpot Diaries: Stories From My Caribbean Table sees Andi Oliver talk to Paterson Joseph on Thursday April 3 at 4pm in The Sheldonian. BOOK TICKETS HERE
The Oxford Literary Festival runs from March 29 – Sunday April 6. More details and info here https://oxfordliteraryfestival.org
