Hello, I’m Marcus Railton and welcome back to the second series of the ScotsCare podcast. ScotsCare is the only charity dedicated to helping disadvantaged Scots in London through a range of support including Financial grants, advocacy, counselling and sheltered housing for older Scots, job coaching, social events, befriending and support for Children and Families. The charity’s been running for 400 years to help break the cycle of poverty experienced by some.
Scots in the new series I’ll be chatting with guests from all walks of life from celebrities and authors athletes and actors business entrepreneurs to academics all with one thing in common Scots Heritage and they enjoy a good blether on the podcast this week is Coinneach MacLeod also known as the Hebridean Baker.
Coinneach has been Scotland’s bestselling cookbook author for the past 3 years with his three books, most recently with his 2023 book Hebridean Baker At Home. It all began with him sharing traditional stories and recipes online and since then 28 million people around the world have watched them Elle magazine called Coinneach very Scottish very sexy very Outlander. In our our wide- ranging chat we spoke about a lot of things we spoke about growing up on the island of Lewis and the boarding school that he hated we chatted about Global Travel and life before he returned to Scotland and became the Hebridean Baker Coinneach was very open about being an ambassador for the LGBT community and how proud he is to take on this role.
We also spoke about how he invented cocka leekie pie completely by accident and how heartbroken he was when he finished second in the world porridge making championships he truly was a wonderful interviewee so here we go on the Scots care podcast with Coinneach MacLeod, the Hebridean Baker.
Scots care the charity helping to break the cycle of poverty some Scots find in [Music] London.
Thank you for joining the ScotsCare podcast today.
Great to be with you Marcus.
For anybody who doesn’t know you
can you explain especially for anyone who’s not Scottish any where you live yeah so I’m from the farest north of the
outer herdes the island of Lewis um and we always say we’re not remote we’re
just very very far away that’s a good do you know what it was just this morning I was sitting
there and I was thinking I wonder how many people live on l how many people live on Harris and it was more than I
thought actually because I asked I asked Alexa and she says 18 and half thousand people live on LS yeah the qu the quote
of them live in the town of stornway which is the only town in the outer herdes and then the rest of the islands
like the village I’m from of kar which um what I love about the names of The
Villages they very much take the are two cultures the kind of Viking or Nordic
culture that came first and then the the GIC or GIC culture that came from there
so Crow is the old nor word for a cow and more is Big so I’m from big cow the
next Village is cobc which is we cow so I think that kind of sums up what the thought of our Villages but
they’re they’re small villages still very much community-driven but the islands are big you know it’s the
biggest um as in landmass in the British Isles so what what big fish in a in a
Wei Pond whatever you do you know I asked this to someone else on the podcast recently uh
Russell dougl who’s head of the Scottish business network but have you ever done your DNA because I have H because my
wife got it for me as a present and I I did it and and I you know I I wasn’t maybe this is a terrible thing I don’t
think I was terribly interesting I was very Scottish I was very kind of Scandinavian and Scottish and a bit of
Viking just it was when you mentioned Vikings that kind of brought it and my wife had much more interesting uh uh
Jewish European background what what did yours throw up when you did it well to be honest with you I think Marcus I was
probably the same as you and I found that very exciting and interesting and not I should say not too surprising
actually in the one I chose the hdes were actually part of Norway so I think
um I was like 87% Norwegian um but that
absolutely makes sense for us you know the the Vikings came uh in about 800 and
stayed quite happily for 400 years until Scotland bought the Hees of Norway for
was about 4,000 marks which I think is about 350 um I think they got a good deal
Markus what do you think I do you know what I I did there you go every day is a school day I didn’t know that I didn’t
know that we didn’t we Scotland United Kingdom didn’t originally own the hdes
that’s right yeah the Treaty of pars 126 um and still Scotland must pay Norway
£100 every year to keep the Hees as part of Scotland there you go that’s
fascinating isn’t that the things you learn it sounds like you had a relatively traditional upbringing your
dad was a fisherman your mom was a weaver of Harris Tweed and what was what were your school days like did you go to
a small school or was you were were you born do you live in Harris but you were born in Lewis or is it the other way
around no um leis born and bread but when you go to the top of the hill behind my house you can look in the
Harris Hills or the Lewis Hills so I feel connected to both uh but yeah a
very very traditional background and in that classic way when you don’t know
what you don’t know you assume life is the same for everybody uh and so I
didn’t know that people went to the cinema and uh did all these fun things
that kids do together um my life was very much centered about the village and
Village Life um and it was fantastic as a result of that school was I mean
Primary School had about 21 uh kids in it but then of course you head to the Big Town of starway for uh your high
school and um we were too far away from stornway so I had to board in stor away
which um for anybody who has to do that is the most awful experience experience
I don’t know if anybody comes out of that in a in a positive way and uh probably still scarred me uh you know to
this day but that was life that’s that’s how it had to happen you know that’s a tremendous culture shock that isn’t it
from a a village and a tightnit family to to being kind of ripped away from it and yeah I think when I was growing up I
grew up in Clyde Bank just outside Glasgow and I I Googled that as well that’s got 26,000 people in it and I
think what frustrated me when I was a kid and we would watch blue Peter and it would say oh and this exhibition is on
for the next five weeks at the N National History Museum and everything was kind of London based so you might
you might as well say it’s on for the next six weeks on the moon because when we grown up in Cay Bank in the 70s you
were never going to go to London so I mean it must have been kind of the same for you did when you were grown up or as
you kind of got older was there a uh did you want to leave the island do you want to find the big city yeah for sure I
think there is um through through the generations there has been a need well
be it forced or a desire for Islanders to leave the island you know I’m I’m
talking in from the clearances to education to work um but and so I
absolutely felt that I knew uh I didn’t want to take after my father and be a
fisherman um I knew I had other adventures in me I didn’t know what they
were going to be at the time but um I certainly felt the drive to to take me
away and the main way to do that was to do well at school and to get to University and that still wasn’t that
common you know and so to be given that opportunity and uh I came to the amazing
city of Glasgow uh to do that and um even though you’re away you’re always an
Islander there’s a beautiful GIC word uh well there’s two one is Kus and one is
dulus and they both talk about um uh a sense of
place uh a longing for somewhere and for us it’s to be back home in the herdes
and you know I meet so many Islanders or people even people just from my own
Island when I’m traveling uh for book tours and all those amazing things that I do and the the connection Islanders
have it it’s actually quite emotional I see a lot of emotion in people when I’m telling stories of home but I’m in
Vancouver or Chicago or something like that and you can just sense them going I
want to go home it’s time to go home and that’s that’s nice it’s it’s weird that isn’t it it’s almost like something that
just it’s like a ticking Time Bomb inside you I think I spent the first half of my life trying to get out of where I lived and I’ve probably spent
the last 10 or 15 years trying to get back because of lack of support and lack of community and and maybe it’s as I
sense my own mortality and I don’t mean this in a bad way but you you’re looking for something to belong to something to cling on to so what age did you go back
to the island so I was very lucky I had some amazing adventures in my early life
I actually moved um after University to uh Russia I um applied for a job and
surprisingly got it uh working uh at the Moscow times which is a English language
newspaper uh for Eastern Europe and spent a couple of years out there uh
which really did shape and and change my life considerably I I I’m trying to
think what kind of person I would be if I didn’t I didn’t have that experience um then moved on to Australia and lived
there for for some time as well so it was until my kind of kind of 30s that I
was really had that kis that desire and that draw to come to come back um and
but as I said it it even if you’re not at home you’re still there’s still a
connection there’s still there’s still something that makes you an Islander that never never goes away you know what
I think that does extend to to just generally a Scottish thing as well I think you know no matter where you are
if you meet another Scottish person it’s you know what part of Scotland are you from and where we parents from and but
when we were kids we used we had friends that lived in benbecula and we we used to go to benbecula a lot and there was
something about it that I I’ve never been back since I was probably about 10 but there wasn’t like going to a rural
place or a Countryside place there was something almost other worldly about it which was just there was a beauty that
kind of transcended just going to the countryside I’ve never been able to put my finger on since then it’s it’s an
amazing Place yeah I mean um I think I was going to say one of my
jobs that sounds uh wrong but one of the things I hope to happen from being the heum Baker and and all the adventures I
have is just put in a spotlight on an amazing part of the world one that
sometimes even as you say if you’re from Clyde Bank you don’t know much about be it our you know we’re we are so proudly
Scottish but we are different you know culturally we’re different our language
is different our Landscapes are different and so sometimes we have to check ourselves to
remember we’re part of a bigger country of Scotland because we do feel um we
have influences for from from the north as much as from the size um but it it is
a very special place Scots care the charity helping to
break the cycle of poverty some Scots find in London [Music]
it’s interesting now that I’m speaking to you not that your books didn’t make sense to me they always I I love that
the cookbooks you know Scotland’s best selling cookbook author for the last three years but now now that you can
explain in your backstory to me I kind of understand because it’s much more than just a recipe a recipe a recipe so
when when you pitched this was the were the Publishers open to it because it’s a lot more width than just a cookbook it
is it is about you know it’s about history and feelings and places and did
you go to a a a publisher and say this is kind of what I want to do well um luckily for me it actually
happened the other way around um the Publishers came to me and um it I I
can’t explain how unexpected this whole thing has been Marcus I started this
genuinely I was over visiting my auntie my auntie bellac who’s 95 still bakes
nearly every day and she was making definitely the hebd most classic recipe
which is a dove for us you call it a cuty dumpling on Mainland and it happened to be her 65th wedding
anniversary that day and she was just telling stories of the wedding and you know all the traditions and I went home
that night thinking you know I didn’t know these stories I didn’t know her recipe for cl
dumpling and um I thought what if I start to share these recipes with the Islanders I
genuinely just thought other Islanders would find this interesting sometimes I told the stories in garc sometimes in
English but very quickly I realized they were resonating across the world and so
it was only a few months later then out of the blue I get this email from a publisher saying have you ever thought
about writing a cookbook and at the time genuinely and I still feel maybe this is
the case I use food as a conduit to talk about our culture our language and the
amazing islands of the herdes um so it wasn’t in my mind but the moment you
know I think I played at colon didn’t reply for I don’t know six seconds um
and it literally the rest is history it has been the most unbelievable Adventure
that I I pinch myself every day because the opportunities I have or even the fact
that people would even know you know shout at me in the street hi he and Baker or all these things it’s
remarkable I think it’s interesting that even aside from this fantastic you know
success that you have that you’re so modest about is that it’s so important that you preserve this recipe for clut
dumpling because I think we kind of forget it as as you get older and you know my dad passed away during covid and
I don’t mean this is a a a sadness but there’s so many questions I have these days that I didn’t get a chance to ask
him just everyday things you just think oh my ancestors and my uncle Bobby or whoever it was and then you think
there’s nobody there to answer these questions anymore and and and to a certain extent it’s not your obligation
but it’s great that you have taken this recipe that your Auntie’s been baking
for the last 60 70 years and you’re kind of preserving it for the future I hope so and I do that with the
recipes I definitely do that with the stories you know I I don’t think there
is a Lo or a hill or a valley in the Hees that doesn’t have some kind of
monster or giant or you know we fairy or something that lives in them and I just
think those kind of stories can get easily lost the names um of you know the gallic names
like there’s a a a Lo quite near my house called Lo the the the Lo of the one night
Shilling and it’s a quite a scary story um you know uh about these two sisters
and you know that and on the way back there’s the hill of the drop of blood and you say these in GC and you don’t
you forget why they were called these things in the first place and so trying to preserve these stories the recipes
and I was quite lucky like you I’m sitting here you can see my
bootcut case when it was Co to present your CDs I’m CDs yeah I’m so glad this is a
podcast because I don’t want people to know how terrible my music taste was in 2002 not that it’s got much better but
up there is a book called The Scots kitchen which was written in 1929 by F
Maran mcneel and I wouldn’t say it’s the it was the first time but certainly it was one of the the moments when even in
1929 this lady who was based in she uh orany at the time was concerned about
the what’s the what’s the right word I don’t know homogenization or just the kind of um that just the culture of
Scotland was just being lost kind of to um to to to other cultures and she went
around the country finding recipes finding sto iies and I take a lot of
inspiration from that and if I if I’ve done 1% of what F Maran mcneel has done
I’ll be delighted I think that’s wonderful yes I do worry about homogenization just in general you know
you go to any major European city and you get off and there’s a Starbucks and a pramon and stuff and it it it scares
me especially where you feel loyal to Scotland and you want you want everything to be preserved as best as it
can like can I can I ask you about your cooking and because you’ve taken care of many traditional dishes and you can give them
a 21st century twist and like lemon curd terisu that kind of stuff you know
drunken crumble um but it made me think of my dad again because I was thinking my dad used to make soups was we grew up
his thing he was soups and he was always experimenting with soup and one that stuck in my mind was he wanted to make
this potato soup and we didn’t have any potatoes so he put chips in it you know and it doesn’t kind of it doesn’t end
with me going and this was the best soup ever it was horrible and I just wonder even at your
level of expertise now is there stuff that you go and you might present it to Peter your partner and he just goes oh
no this this is not going anywhere near a book well you know um rarely and maybe
I’m lucky that Peter you know I you say he’s he’s got the title of the official hean baker cake taster so he he gets a
lot of of test kicks but I nearly will tell nearly the opposite story I
remember one time and it’s a soup story um so I I think this must have been book
two and I’ve got an amazing photographer Susie L she’s an absolute super star and really brings to life not only the
recipes but um the visuals of of the herdes and um I was walking into the
studio with my cockal lakei soup and for those of you who don’t know
calik is a very traditional um Scottish dish and it’s got three main ingredients
chicken leaks and prunes and I’m walking in and H she says
what’s that and I said oh it’s my ciki soup and she went oh and I and I went
what do you mean oh and she goes you know what Kan it’s really hard to photograph and I said why she goes well
think about it you’ve got a white bowl and a clear broth and a wee Brown prune
floating on to and not that I need to describe what
that could be like but I thought to myself okay I think this cookbooks got
74 recipes not 75 and then that night I was telling that story to Peter and a
few friends who are over and um I was making them dinner and I had all these chicken all the leaks all these prunes
and so I said I’ll need to use this up so I thought why don’t why don’t I slow slow cook this into a pie filling and
make a pastry and they’re all sitting around the table and I said what’s that
like and Peter’s like this is the best thing you’ve ever made and the the the
prunin just melted into the sweet sauce and I said should I put it in the book
and he goes you’ve got to put of this in the book and that’s where cocka Lakey pie came about that’s great isn’t it I I
love what like one of my favorite things obviously you know on Instagram and all those things that when people tag you
and say just made the has just made that and somehow you never know what’s going to land you never know what’s going to
land but the cocka liy pie just makes people smile I don’t know what it is and it’s made across the world well it’s
it’s a wonderful reinvention I really like that I speaking to a guy called Greg Boyd recently and he runs old hag
and they’ve opened a a Scottish shop in North London can’t where to go ah he’s doing really well and he’s kind of
reinvented macaroni pies and he’s he makes his own pie base and then I think he uses cheese from the herdes and uh
mustard as well and they are they are it’s a brilliant like you this kind of reinvention of traditional food it’s
it’s it’s great now I want to talk to you something else that’s traditional I want to talk to you about porridge I
want to talk to you about why you finished second in the world poris championships that was that was stolen
from you heartbroken heartbroken I I’ve never okay so the the World porish
Championships are an annual event EV and a pretty big deal to be fair in in The
Culinary world and this was in the very early days of he and Baker and um I
entered with um you basically had to create a recipe that really showcased
oats but as a baker I was trying to do that through a kind of save a sweet uh
way so I made my version of a baked Alaska so a big oat Alaska I made if you
know that the three layers of this is a sponge and ice cream and a merang so I
made a honey raspberry and oat sponge I
made a vanilla ice cream with a pin head oat brittle and then a classic uh merang
on top and I think there was something crazy like a thousand entries that year
and they announced them in reverse order from 20 the top the top 20 and so I was
watching online and I think I got to 10th and I was like ah I’m going to switch off now if I didn’t get 20 to 10
you know I’m I’m going to go away and so I went away and did stuff and then my nose got too too long so IED to come
back and I think I was on Fifth and I checked hadn’t been ninth eth seventh sixth fifth no fourth no third no but
then suddenly it wasn’t despondence it was actually hold on what if win this
yeah so there was a sudden Euphoria of there’s only two people left out of this thousand and what even one of them and I
have to say I think I would have preferred to have come 920th because coming second was
heartbreaking um even though um it inst got a lot of media because that year I
was the only Scottish person in the top 10 wow and there was a lot of headlines
you know has Scotland lost The Knack of porridge what’s happened to
porridge in Scotland so um I was beaten or pipped even at the post by a lady
from the Netherlands and um you know I think sometimes coming second it’s
there’s lots of people who have come second in things and it hasn’t hurt their their careers so I think I’m doing okay it’s interesting you talking about
a sweet thing my mom used to put salt on her porridge is that a Scottish thing yeah I I mean I I I just literally had
my porridge before um uh we started chatting I have porridge every morning
actually I would eat porridge three times a day I was on I think I did a Danish radio show once and they said
what’s your favorite you know kind of ingredient and I said 100% oats like I
love oats so much all different types of oats and they said do you think you could live just on oats and I was like
absolutely I could and I made a Savory oat recipe which was sort of like a a
brunch Roto where I cooked the oats in vegetable stock and you know I had
manetta and spring onion and gohost cheese and oh that sounds fantastic delicious
delicious well from a serious point of view oats are very good for you they lower your cholesterol high in fiber I
think we should all eat more oats if we can I I really do encourage it I think a it’s a a wonderful thing and something
that we should be very proud of in Scotland because we make the best did you know Scots care provides homes for
older Scots across London if you or yours are finding it hard to find a home
we’ve closed on a 100 highquality sheltered housing Flats to help make a fresh
start can I ask you about restraint because you know you make stuff like double drum cake and marmalade short
breads but do you have are you like the cook who feeds others are you good I
think if I if I had your talent I’d be the size of a house and I think that’d been my problem because I and my wife
always says this to me she says you have no restraint if there’s biscuits in the house I will eat them till they’re gone
kind of that’s the problem well I’m kind of the same as your Marcus I have the sweetest tooth in the world and I have
dessert every single night that I make and but yes I am it’s it’s maybe sounds
a negative thing being a feeder but I don’t mean it like that like I
love um people coming around to the house people kind of say to me I do you not want to night off you know can we
not cook for you I’m like no no no come around I love it I spend the whole day
preparing um and as I said it’s just my favorite thing to do and luckily for
Peter his favorite thing to do is eat and and so you know the fact that I make
you know these wonderful meals from scratch I’ve never I’ve never had a
takeaway in my life oh wow okay I’ve never and not it’s not some kind of um
puritanical don’t know Presbyterian kind of thing it’s just it doesn’t appeal I
always feel it’s um uh I don’t know I if somebody says but it only takes 15
minutes and I’ll arrive at the door I can say I can make you something amazing
in 15 minutes I promise you um or 12 minutes even so I just love the process
of cooking and it can be simple um but it’s just definitely part of my DNA are
you still living part of your year off grid because I read you and Peter do that I just wonder does that make you
more active as well does that help you keep in shape because I I read that you you you and Peter go to is an island and
you the only way you actually get there is by canoe I mean that sounds and tell me how just offgrid are you or do you
now have a mansion with a swimming pool now that you’re hugely famous uh no swimming pools no Mansions
no um but our HUD is well it couldn’t be anything different from that uh to to so
huden is is a lifestyle as much as a place hutting means that you are off
grid which means no running water or no main electricity or or Main’s water it
needs to be smaller than 30 square m so it’s probably about the size of the room you’re in right now
Marcus and um the the the goal behind it is to be as self- sustainable as
possible and it’s very much a lifestyle we love yes we can only get there by canoe and so that does keep you you know
if you want to go to the shop to get something or a we treat you know there’s quite an endurance to just to go and get
a Marge bar you know you’ve got a 40 minute round trip in the canoe to to get to the near shop um but it’s very
special indeed and um in a positive or I say this in a good way my life has
changed so so much and um you know I
will be on a North American tour in a different city every day flying to a
different place on a TV show in the morning doing meet and greets in the afternoon and they’re an event for 300
people in the evening and signing for 2 3 4 hours so when I get home to be able
to get in that canoe and paddle up and just everything
changes like we um there’s three herens that live on the way between where we
have the canoe and and where the Hut is and when you start to see the herens just go or your back and they kind of
fly away and then you get there and you we’ve got a big stove put the put
the fire on and you just go ah and it’s
not about it’s not one of those wistful me sitting at the window um reading a
book kind of things you still work you know you’re chopping Woods you’re going out to the creels to see if there’s a
lobster you’re you’re sorting out the veg plot you’re you all those things but it’s just different it’s different work
um and very rewarding and um yeah it’s
fantastic love it yeah I think I think we have lost and even like I I watch I’ve got three kids and my oldest boy is
15 and he has no ability whatsoever to do it worries me he has no ability to
sit still without without a phone or a tablet and I was reading this kind of
strange segue but I was reading rert Everett’s autobiography and he was talking about as a younger man being
taught to sit still and you know have a glass of wine in a cafe and watch the world go by and because I think we’re
all very guilty of as soon as as soon as you get up to go to the bar or go to the toilet I’ll get my phone out and I’ll be
check in my emails and so I feel of I feel Envy for what you you have there and that’s good that you have this
ability to detach but then at the same time as you say you’re still working physically working choing wood chop wood
carry water that kind of thing but now that you are who you are and you’re you’re also a bit of a Tik Tok
phenomenon because I’ve got where are your Tik toks here I’ve got them here you got a qu of a million people
following you and you’ve got millions of views on it do you do you know still do
you feel a pressure that even when you go to the island that you’ve got to be punting out the Tik toks do you have do
you have agents or people after you saying you’ve not done enough social media this week um yeah there is no you’re right
there is um a pressure I I’m I’m writing another book at the moment and you’re
there’s this kind of multifaceted kind of marketing you’ve got to do you know and even though you know I’m spending
probably 20 hours a day uh on this book you still then go oh I need to share
some of my story I need to um do some interviews I need to do these things so it’s there is that that it’s definitely
um it’s definitely more than I anticipated it’s not just you you can’t just be an
author um you you need to be a marketer you need to be a brand person you need
to you know travel you’re nearly like a traveling salesman you know for two
months or you know after the book comes out you are driving up to Wick then
you’re driving down to Dum then you’re up to aberin the next day then you getting the boat to um M uh to tell the
stories and and then you go down to London to beond this morning he you being very modest again he’s you be
going talking about you know M or wherever but you have you have sellout tours of North America which which so
when you go away to North America how does that work for your for your family life does Peter come with you he
sometimes does and it’s brilliant when he comes with me because uh you talk about the social media side of things and he’s very much been part of the
storyline and people love to see Peter too they just they’re so excited to see
to see us both um and we’ve always since we we met we’ve sang together we
um uh actually were very fortunate to um enter the Royal National mod as a duet
as a male duet and we were the first male duet to win the mod for I think 1968 was the last time a male J won the
and so we always perform a GC song and those kind of things are very culturally important to us both it might be the
first time you know I say we’re in Minneapolis or or um I don’t know I was
recently in Portland and it might be the first time somebody’s even heard that there is a
language called GIC or that people speak it and it’s a it’s our day-to-day you
know language at her home um and that you can sing in it and I always put a
playlist a baking playlist in the back of all of my books because I think to myself you know what they might listen
to Julie FIS or Kim Carney or Kara maton and then go this is beautiful it doesn’t
it doesn’t need um to be in my language and they start a deep dive into GIC music GIC music is a great way to to get
into the language and now with du lingo and speak
GIC and all these ways to learn the language I’ve I feel amazing that people
have started to learn the language because of because of the heban bega see
you are a great Ambassador for Scotland and for the hdes and can I just there’s a quote here you might have been
slightly misquoted so it might have paraphrased and it says unintentionally this is you we really have impacted a
lot on the LGBT community in rural Scotland because for probably one of the first times they’ve had someone from the
islands who has you know stood out and told their story and it’s not something
you you never set out to to do this did you but um it’s something that you’re obviously quite proud of oh my goodness
amazing actually Marcus and again that that real kind of 360 you know growing
up well growing up anywhere different is tough growing up different on a we
Island I do think geography does enhance does enhance that um and it was not easy
like it really was really difficult growing up knowing that you were different and that classic thing that
everybody else before you did um and so um it’s it was it became
natural to try and hide part of my personality um but with the hean baker
it it it seemed it in the beginning it wasn’t wasn’t me trying to to share this
intentionally but obviously Peter my life so he was there in every video he was you know part of everything
and I would I would say I probably get as many letters because I still get
letters which I love you know I get emails I get messages but I still get letters as well and cards and things and
I get as many people writing to me about their struggles um even as a kind of
maturer um member of the LGBT community um and how I’ve help them feel more
positive and more able to to be themselves as I do people asking about recipes or tell me about my clui
dumpling and that’s kind of amazing like it is and I was very fortunate um last
year to to win uh the culture award uh at the LGBT Awards in Scotland it was me
and the new Doctor Who and I thought to myself again I mean I used to pretend I was Doctor Who when I was like 10 years
old so to be winning an award with the new Doctor Who at the same time I mean
absolute Pinch Me moments well he’s very is it it’s I I tried to get my head round his name is it Shy it’s pronounced
shy gwa very cool man and um so again um
with with everything I do I I think to myself if one person visits the herdes
because of my stories if one person learns GIC because of me telling them
about it if one person feels more comfortable uh in their
lifestyle whatever that lifestyle is that because I’ve shared mine isn’t that
just amazing that um I somehow can have this influence and
this influence I I I don’t take it lightly at all one of my first we talked
about the North American tours and this was a tough thing to hear I remember I was in
Boston and we were myself and Peter were having fun we were telling stories and
there’s maybe a couple hundred people at the event and this lady just in the middle of one of my stories just stood
up and she said I’m really sorry everybody um and everybody we were
surprised now we kind of looked around and she goes um I I if I don’t tell the story now I’m I’m never going to be able
to tell it um because if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be here tonight and she
said that uh during uh Co um her husband had died
and uh she was having a really tough time and one night she had decided that life
wasn’t worth living anymore and um she I
picked up her phone to write to her daughter a final message before she was
deciding how to to end her own life and just as she picked up the phone her daughter had sent her a
message and the message was was have you seen this guy on Tik Tok I think you’ll
like him and she didn’t mean to click the message it’s just the way the message came up she she pressed the
message and the link by mistake and it was the hean
beer and she watched the first video and she watched the
second and then an hour later she realized she had sat there smiling and
laughing and crying and suddenly felt part of of the world again
and she said to everybody there that um she realized that there there were still
good people in the world and maybe she should stay in the world as well
and to think that just through recipes or stories or just hopefully being a a a
a positive role model that I’ve been able to have such an influence is
yeah unbelievable in one way you could say that’s quite a heavy Crown to wear as far as you’re concerned but you sound
like the kind of man who has the pragmatism to understand you know you can’t change people’s lives but you can
go out there and do what you’re doing and hopefully they can feel a bit better about it and can I just ask you finally
you have had a lot of success and has it afforded you anything or because you as
we’ve as we’ve chatted you know I can still see those terrible CDs behind you you
have have you have you afforded yourself any luxury have you has that changed you have you you don’t drive a Maserati
around Harris or anything no I drive a a a blue Ford
van um that usually has either books or
pets or something in the back um have I
have I got any luxury since this happened do you know what I this is I
don’t know if I have I like it but only because um it’s just it’s really not the
way I’m wired at all it’s just maybe I should maybe I should just
treat myself to something but um it I I’ve never ever been money thriven
at all and maybe I should be more I don’t know but what this has uh afforded me to do is have Adventures that I never
imagined like I can’t describe what it’s like to to arrive into a a theater in
Washington DC and have 300 people kind of scream as if I’m Tom Jones you know
walking into the room um or to I don’t know I like recently I was on tensy uh
the island of tensy making mints and tatties for two of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings or um making cocktails in
Cy alsop’s house in in Devon the like and and the good thing is I’m not 21 so
I can chuckle and realize these are just hilarious things that you know shouldn’t be happening to me um you know Martin
compston talking about you and saying how cool you were yeah and l l magazine described you as
very sexy very Outlander that that’s you know I like that I mean I said luckily
there’s a podcast because the camera does lie no it’s amazing and I will never
take it for granted and as Peter says you’re going to be the heum baker for the rest of your life you’ll be in a
retirement home and some we gr will walk over to you and say you’re the hean Baker and that that’s amazing Kenneth
thank you very much for joining us today I’ve really appre you’ve been a joy to speak to thank you for your time you’re
welcome thanks Marcus Scots care supporting Scots in needs in London you can make a real
difference to our clients through a monthly donation of any amount simply
visit Scots care.com and click donate to get started
