Singer Jessie Ware is very good indeed at pop music. Check out her most recent album, That! Feels Good! It’s a banger.
When not laying down window-rattling grooves, she hosts the podcast Table Manners with her mum, chef Lennie Ware.
It’s dreadful – if the latest episode is anything to go by. The guest is multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier. He’s there to plug his forthcoming long player and tell underwhelming anecdotes.
The whole episode is an exercise in smug middle-classness. “Knowing a butcher well is the most life-affirming attribute you could possibly have,” Lennie opines early on. How very relatable.
Collier’s marginally better, talking positively but blandly about growing up in north London, his mum’s apple pie and singsongs with his sisters.
Even the way the well-spoken jazz prodigy expresses his life in music is insipid. He appreciates both pop and classical. Woo. And he’s listened to all The Beatles’ albums. Wow. Frustratingly, the hosts never push him to explore his passion.
Halfway through, talk finally turns meaningfully to food – which, believe it or not, “has always played an essential part” in Collier’s life.
He finally sparks interest as he explains his love of fruit. Touchingly, it stems from childhood, when his mum would quarter an apple for him each morning before school. “I can’t describe the joy of that feeling,” says Collier.
Even now, his backstage rider centres on fruit. Which he pairs with houmous, flatbread, Grand Marnier and limoncello. Told you he was very middle-class.
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