Jay has been a food critic for over two decades. Now 52, he talks about his passion for food, his love for his family and why his mum didn't get him to where he is today.
In his own words, Jays says:
I have been accused of getting where I am through nepotism.
Why having a mother (Claire Rayner) who was an expert in cystitis should get me a job on MasterChef I don’t know.
My mum was a novelist, a broadcaster, and a health advice columnist. My father (Desmond) was an actor and a painter.
All of these jobs looked exciting, yet unattainable. My parents gave me a sense of opportunity. For me, they looked like jobs I could do if I put my mind to it.
My father was not interested in food.
He admitted later in life that if he ate a pill for dinner, that would be fine.
I think that was a rather useful thing for a man like me – who is driven by his appetite – to have in his life.
He was someone who’d cock an eyebrow if you go off on one about a French restaurant in Soho.
Food isn’t just about how things taste.
It’s about emotions and family, relationships and sex, politics and the environment. You can reach into almost anything through food.
As a restless writer with a lot of interests, it suited me perfectly.
Amazing food in a dull, sterile environment with clipped waiters and bad company is no fun.
It doesn’t matter how good the food is, it’s going to be a miserable night out.
Parenting is mostly about patience.
It's also about realising that your kids are people with their own views and their own opinions, who take credit for their own successes and are allowed to make their own mistakes.
Your job is to shepherd them along the way with as light a touch as possible.
My earliest childhood memory is a family holiday in Cromer on the Norfolk coast.
It was 1968 and I was two years old. I remember my father standing on a table to talk into an intercom with reception. It’s a very odd memory, but a good one.
People talk about being free and easy in your youth.
It doesn’t feel like that at the time. You’re trying to find your way as an adult and everything is imbued with importance.
From the perspective of a man in his 50s I look back and think, ‘You ridiculous, self-important fool’.
The advice I’d give my 18-year-old self is that you’re not as unattractive as you think you are.
I thought that no woman would be interested in me. I look back and think, ‘Oh you poor sweet soul’.
I know why I thought that, but I would encourage myself to realise that I was all right.
The greatest love in my life has to be my family.
My wife Pat and I have been together since 1987, which is going it some. We met when I was 20.
Long-term relationships are an achievement. I love my Yamaha C3 piano, too.
Music is a very important part of my life.
I would wither up and die without access to a piano. My talented friend Joe Thompson is the house pianist at the Ivy Club, of which I am a member.
Whatever I’ve achieved as a jazz pianist is inspired by that man.
The proudest moment of my life, I’m afraid, is a cliché.
Becoming a parent was amazing. Both of our kids are still alive and don’t seem to have been lost to the traffic en route.
I never had a life motto until now.
Ideas are cheap, what matters is how you execute them. I really believe that.
Anybody can come up with a good idea for a book or a live show but unless you execute it with real skill, it’s worthless. The same applies to almost anything in life.
The Story Behind My Snapshot
I rarely got to work with my late mother.
She was an agony aunt, writer and broadcaster. Most mornings began with a telephone call; what she referred to as sharpening pencils.
Once the pencils were sharpened, once the world’s dramas had been put to rights, we could get on with a day’s writing.
My mother came from a working class background and found her way to the good things, like restaurants, through freelance journalism.
She took us children to restaurants regularly. It was the theatre of them that she adored and she certainly passed that on to me, there’s no doubt about it.
This photo was taken at the end of a long lunch which, I suspect, may have involved champagne, as all the best lunches do.
As well as having a mother-son relationship, we enjoyed each other’s company and she made me laugh.
This is the only picture of Claire and me on display in my house. It’s in the kitchen by the recipe books, looking down on the table where we have breakfast. I see it every day and it always makes me smile.
– Jay Rayner's new book, My Last Supper, is out now
