Gary Lineker

You are listening to Ruthie's Table four in partnership with Montclair.

My brother Michael Elias, is a writer and director of movies, tells me that when even a world famous actor comes onto a set, no one on the crew bats an eye. The only exception as if the visitor is an athlete. Maybe it's because everyone thinks, if pressed, they could act, or sing or dance, but never run a race, ski

I love yoki. I think it's quite versatile as well. You can kind of make it crispy and bake it and stuff as well. But it just works with tomatoes, thank you, doesn't it. I think I always always go to tomatoes with yaki.

It just was perfect because I was in actually last week and I was taken to this quite fancy restaurant and I never do this. I never changed something. But they had potato and yaki with asparagus and for shoot, punchetta, and it was quite quite complicated, and I just said, do you mind if I have it with tomato, and it was so much better. I saw the other ones and there was something we do it, but we do it with other we.

Do it with you can do, but it's never as good as it.

I mean, there's something about yeah, Italian tomatoes as well.

Yeah, do you cook a lot of Italian? Do you go for Italian food?

I cook a yeah, I do a lot of Italian food. Everyone just done.

They I suppose it's it's kind of one of the great cuisines. But I love cooking Indian as well, and as well as kind of British basics and stuff. So yeah, a variety of different things, but I would say to cook probably Italian and Indiana my favorite too.

Have you been to India?

No, It's on my bucket list actually.

And so let's go back to growing up, because you were born and.

I was born in Lesti, and what was the food culture like there.

Well, my dad was a market trader and he's a fruitter, so he'd sell fruit. So he worked hard, get a you know, three four in the morning, go to the wholesale market by the fruit, sell it all day.

But what do you sell?

It was an outdoor market, the biggest outdoor market in Europe at the time, and in Europe.

Yeah, it's really well really fron Yeah, well exactly.

There were also fish traders there was a fish you know, a fish mumbry kind of thing, and there was there was a meat place. So at the end of the week he'd always kind of give them a big basket fruit and then they give him like a nice piece of meat or a haliburt. Used to he loved halibur And so we'd get like that kind of thing and eat on a on a Friday and a Saturday, would eat kind of really amazing stuff because they used to do these swamp things. So yeah, so I kind of

It wasn't a wholesale market was it didn't get distributed to the rest of written.

You're talking about this mart Bester market. Leicester's now famous for its football team, having won the Premier League. Obviously, in fact, people suddenly started saying Leicester.

Properly, how do you say it properly? Well, Leicester?

It was all Leicester, particularly in America and stuff. It was always and suddenly people saying the name because you always now because Leicester won the league with the biggest sporting miracle ever, everyone knows how.

To say it.

Does your family still live there?

The only distant family.

Now my my mom and dad passed away eight seven, eight years ago now, so so I don't go back there as much, apart from the occasional time to watch watch Leicester play if I'm not working.

Which so have you had the ingredients of fruit and vegetables and fish meat, but I didn't cook.

A good cook.

Tell me about her. What was her background? Where did she come from?

She actually born in a place called Sherringham which is in Norfolk on the coaster, and moved to Leicester when she was I think it was about ten ten or eleven, and she was a hairdresser.

Be comes mom was a hairdresser.

Really, Yeah, there you go. She must be a football thing maybe before.

That's a lot of data. Yeah, you can then come to a conclusion that two footballers had bombs were addressing.

Yeah. But she was a good cook, love cooking.

Yeah, so she work all day and then as well.

When I was young, and then she kind of stopped hairdressing.

And my dad used to have a card school.

The card school a girl called Kaluki playing cards as he was a gambler, and they used to have like five or six guys in that used to come to our house, either on a Sunday sometimes on a Monday, but they'd start at like six o'clock in the evening, and my mom would cook for everyone every night, and she could get a little pound and out of the pot every time they had a it was a kids he going on all night.

But I'd go to bed, you know, because I'd have school.

On Monday morning, and then i'd wake up in the morning get ready for school. They're still playing, like, yeah, eight, nine, ten o'clock in the morning. Sometimes they'd go unbroken for thirty six hours. Yeah, honestly, and my mom would constantly be supplying food all through the night, and yeah, amazing.

You know my dad. I grew up in upstate New York in a small town, and my father played poker. Every Thursday night.

They played poker as well sometimes.

And every Friday morning I'd come to go before I went to school, there would be a note saying, dear Ruthie, I won last night. Here's five dollars, Ruthie, I won last night. He went every week and they'd always be like five dollars or ten dollars, and then it was his funeral. I went to his you know, when he died. I went to his funeral and it was like a kind of quaker'sh funeral. Everybody spoke and this man got up and he said, you know, fred Elias was one

That was really sweet.

You know. He did that every Friday. That's not my dad, but every day. So what would she cook? What did your mom cook for you? What were her dishes like? Do you remember?

Like most mothers, she'd cook a good spaghetti, bilonnaise, really good with fish because we get a lot of fish from the from the market.

She'd do a really good roast as well.

My kind either all of them, you know. Douse your father ever cook?

I can't remember him cooking.

And did you ever go in the kitchen? Did you ever know?

I wish I had. And I think that's the one thing we fail our kids on. I think that should be an absolute must learn at school. I mean they used to offer it all the time that you still can do a bit of cooking at school. But it's a it's a life scale, it's a life you can be really passionate about it, you know, rather than making kids that are not very good at maths. Yes, you've got to get your basic numbers and stuff, and reading is really important, I think.

But the next thing after those two for me has to be like cooking.

You know.

That's what's one thing we all do forever is eat.

The River Cafe is excited and June eighth we're opening the River Cafe Cafe. Come for a morning Briochian cappuccino, a plate of seasonal antipasity on the terrace, or an ice cream or a peratibo in the sun. We can't wait to open and we cannot wait to welcome you. You came from this home in Leicester with your mother cooking, your father playing cards, your badly dinners. Tell us about the football when you when sport came into your life.

Well, I came into my life way before I can remember from you know, from pretty much that's where I wore. It wasn't a specific days. Doesn't work like that in football.

Now, you know. I grew up playing in the garden my brother.

We just kicked up all around all the time, obviously reasonably good at even at nine ten eleven, I was playing and scoring like loads of goals.

So I just went from there and I was spotted by Leicester when I was about twelve. It's funny.

My dad's market store was a family of generational business, so the big grandfather my grandfather and his father before that. So yeah, my granddad used to come and watchers play football everywhere. We were quite a well known family in Leicester because of the market store. And my granddad was watching me play one Sunday morning and the guy called racial was there was Leicester City's chief scout and he my granddad knew everyone, knew everyone. He said, oh, who

And they took me on.

I trained two three nights a week at Leicester and then saturdays as well for four or five years, and then I got taken on.

When did you leave the comfort of home?

Not until I was twenty four. It was funny.

When I first joined Leicester, I joined as an apprentice and I was paid sixteen pounds a week, but they bought an extra five in an envelope for my mom because because loads of the kids there that came were in digs, so the food was provided for them. So they said, well, because you know, you don't get the luxury of getting free food or slipping a fiver for your mom. So I'd always give it to my mum, but she'd never take it a bit like you.

You sh'd always give it me back. She's I don't want you, I don't want your money. So I was on.

Twenty one quid a week, not sixteen quid a week, which is a bonus.

So you were at home, so you had protection around you in terms of your comfort of home. But what about protection for being suddenly when you found fame. I'll just say that I once this is I think I might have told this before, but one of my programs I always remember was Michael Parkinson interviewing David Beckham and George Best, and George Best was, you know. They were on the sofa together and when he asked Beckham a question, Beckham said, you know, I'm in the presence of one

Way George bestall came from Northern Ireland to Manchester United at a very young age, so it's a little bit different when you've got it suddenly you are on your own. Whereas I kind of played for my hometown club for the first eight years of my career, so.

I was with parents, my brother, you know, we had family all around.

All my friends were still there, and I think that helped me, even though I was a kind of slightly late developer in terms of global kind of fame and that sort of stuff. So I didn't really start making

And what was it like when you were twenty four? Where did you go? There?

Went to Everton. It was a big It was a big step because you're leaving your hometown club. And I loved Leicster. It was my team.

I'd supported them since I was a little kid. I'd done well, I'd scored lots of goals there. But but to trying to get build my career, I needed to go to a kind of bigger club.

At the time, they take care of you.

Oh they were great. It was a great place. I was only there for a year, but.

You had an apartment by yourself.

I was with my then first wife. We didn't get more until the next year. But yeah, so we went up together.

Did Okay, she's a good cup. Michelle's a good cup. Yeah. I didn't cook down, No, I didn't cook until eight years ago.

Did you Did you have a sense of of health and food and sport? Were you guided about the kind of foods that would be better for you to perform?

Not as much as we should have been.

I think nowadays that's it's one of the great changes in football is the nutrition.

Side of things. I think it's a gradual change.

I think an understanding of what feeds the body, and more professional outlets to more money coming into the game so they could afford you know, clubs. Now, the staff around football clubs, they are extraordinary. When I played, you'd get you'd have a coach, a manager, a coach, maybe another one other coach, goalkeeping coach. Possibly you'll have a physio and they some clubs have a doctor and that was about it.

Now there's there's.

There're probably are five people just do a nutrition alone. They'll have cooks every day cooking them food after training. In all those kinds of things. It's changed dramatically. When I was like, what you're doing for lunch, Well we're going down the pub for.

A pint and a pie before a game?

Yeah, well no, not before a game, after train enough, although all those some players, maybe some players maybe.

Do you know what what what would be I mean for you as an athlete if you knew we had a game, what would you have for breakfast? And what would you have a lunch?

Well, you wouldn't have lunch and breakfast.

Probably a few playing at three o'clock, so you probably basically have like a brunch at eleven o'clock or stuff. I don't actually know what they do pretty much now because it used to be what you said, right, you need some carbs and you for the energy and stuff like that. But I think most of their diets is very healthy. If you look at football as they're all

I rarely talk about alcohol, you know, because this is mostly about food. But I was wondering about how do you combine discipline with pleasure because we've seen people like George Best. How do you combine being a twenty four year old with being somebody wanted to party, wanted to socialize, very handsome, with being they are and how do you combine that figure with pleasure.

I wasn't there.

I was never a big drinker. I didn't drink, I didn't go down. I wasn't one of those that went down the pub after training, unlike some. So I kind of looked after myself. I was very driven, very motivated, very ambitious to do better. So I tried to give myself the best chance. Yes, I'd like to night out with it with the best of them, but it's like most players, the vast.

Majority of players understood that.

Even then, you know that it's not really a great combination drinking loads of bikes and then playing in a couple of days time I hadn't manager called John Wallace, so I was so terrified of that. He kind of stopped me doing any of that nonsense.

What about when you went to Barcelona?

Also? It was fabulous.

It was a great experience, a wonderful place to live.

Was it the first experience in a foreign city or had I'd.

Been on holidays?

I've been lots of holidays, but it was the first time i'd ever You know, I didn't really contemplate going to live abroad, but then the opportunity came.

You go by yourself or got married just before we went.

So I played the World Cup in eighty six in Mexico, came back, got married, went on honeymoon, went straight to Barcelona from.

There, and so the two of you had an apartment there.

We had a yeah, we actually the first four months we thought we thought, yeah, this is it, superstardom and stuff that, you know, We'll go up and they'll put us in a like a luxurious hotel, penthouse suite and all that stuff. And we actually got there and we checked in this hotel which was a four star hotel, and we were given our room key, and we had like we had an entire world with us, like loads

But so we got in this room. We didn't know enough.

I had to buy the room. I had to pay for the room next door to put our cases in. And Mark Hughes was a player at Manchester United that side well that time, he'd just been bought and he came and arrived at the same time and me and arrived in the same day and he came down and knocked on my door and he said, I'm just checking your rooms as shit as mine. And it was like this really brown, dank, dark place. And we ended up

And it was three years. How did that affect your food and eating?

And I mean, I love the food there?

Why did you love?

I loved the fresh fish that was always available.

I mean it's obviously you know, you're living in a port there, and some great restaurants. I loved tapas. I love pie here the beach. I mean we had an amazing lifestyle.

We get up.

I'd get up in the morning about nine something, go to the ground. We'd train for you know, a couple of hours. By lunchtime you had done, I'd come home. We're jumping the car, go to the beach club Castela Fells.

We'd have like a seafood and a play here on the beach.

We'd leave about five, get home about six o'clock, have a yester for two or three hours, and then go out for dinner, which you couldn't get in a restaurant ten eleven, twelve o'clock at night, because if you went to a restaurant in Barcelona back then, it's changed a bit. Now it's still late, but nothing like as nate as it used to be. If you went to a restaurant

It's totally different. It was.

It was totally different, but it was.

It didn't take a long getting used to it really does.

Did you have kids at the time?

No, even better, it's good.

We gave party in London. We invited the mayor of Barcelona. He was in town and he said, I can't come for the party. I'll come a little bit later. And so he didn't show up by you know, eleven o'clock, and so we thought, okay, it's not going and went to bed. At two point thirty in the morning, the doorbell rang and he was like, expecting the party, I'm here. I ran downstairs. So they just left. You know, it's a party just ended. It's a totally.

Different it's like living on with on a different time. Yeah, and it's only an hour different.

But did you do it? What a game night then? So when you were when you were well.

Sometimes the games sometimes you play kickoff will be like nine o'clock at night quite often, you know. And Sundays you used play at five o'clock. That was that was kind of their Saturday at three, So they often play on Sundays at five.

Why does football games start at three? Is there a reason?

Yeah?

Yeah, lunch?

Well, yeah, I suppose. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know who came up with three o'clock. I'm going to find out.

Can you find out? Because I come past Chelsea every time I work on a Saturday or whatever. You know, you could just always know that between Fulham playing or Chelsea playing, then it's always three o'clock.

Well genuine it is, unless they're on TV then they'll move the schedule. But yeah, I don't know why the three o'clock came start. Probably before darkness. Maybe they wanted to play early enough before they had really good floodlights and stuff. Although in the winter it's still dark before, so I don't know how that works. But I need to find out why do we kick off at three o'clock.

There'll be a reason.

Maybe, Okay, the audience. You talk about the exhilaration of an audience, what happens when you score a goal?

Scoring a goal is it is the one thing that I probably miss about that feeling. It's like it's really hard to describe. It's like just an explosion of different

So you have a moment. And it's the same for fans watching when their seam scores.

You know, it's like it's amazing because you know how significant a goal can be. So when you're the person that's actually scoring that goal, it's like it's like cheering for your team, except it's you that's doing it, and there's nothing like it, and other conversations with that, and Cheerer and Michael Owen proper goal scorers and and funny enough, I suppose to Andy Cole the other day we were talking about the same things that there's nothing, nothing in life,

Yeah, but we might you know, fix that we're going to get you there. I feel I'm definitely but you know what, I always when I watch football, and I do watch football, I do watch it that I remember thinking that it is the only time you see men showing so much affection to each other physical tagging and kissing. There are all these guys and they're publicly like in each other's arms and that kind.

Of very metrosexual. Well it just but it was beautiful.

But what about the other side of that, when you're missical, when you don't do you feel the hostel?

It's rubbish, It's it's a horrible is.

The downside of that?

There is?

Well, that's it, and that's why scory makes that's why when you do do it, because it's it's obviously the most important thing, and there are days where you will be rubbish, but it's how you deal with that. I was always looking. I didn't get too carried away when things were going well. It's kind of how I am. I've got very kind of stable demeanor and stuff, and I don't get over excited when things are going well.

But I didn't get down when they weren't.

And I think you're either like that you're on So I didn't pressure and that kind of thing didn't really worry me at all.

If you like listening to Ruthie's Table for would you please make sure to rape and review the podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. What we're seeing now is also a kind of true unity in terms of the politics of sport. You know, I experienced it in the Mexican Olympics, which because I'm quite old, the nineteen sixty eight when they did the plat power and you saw a sport

I think it has, and I think there are a variety of reasons for that. I think that you know, you go back to this happened once to twice in the Olympics, didn't it happen you know, in Germany way back? But I think it's I think it's more the fact that players now, in whatever sport have you know, big players have big platforms, social media.

I think that's made a huge difference.

Pretty much all sport now is televised, whereas that certainly wasn't the case. So I think yes, and I'm actually really proud of a lot of our plays young, you know people Marcus Rashford's you know, I mean, it's come to a footballer to insist that kids get fed at school,

You should also be proud of yourself because you've taken stance that, as I said in the introduction, that are bold and brave. We could talk about the experience your head most recently or other ones that you feel that you had to take a stand.

Yeah, it's just something that is, you know, a couple of issues. You know, people say you should stay out of politics and stuff. I don't really see them necessarily. Is just political issues. I think the humanitarian issues that I take a stand for and I always well, I have done, and I think I've changed as a person as.

I've got older.

I think when I was young, I was cold, I was driven nothing, I never thought about things like that.

What changed for me really was social media because I got involved. You know, I got onto Twitter and I quite enjoyed it and I grew a big.

Following, like nine million.

Just under that. I mean, it's a lot of people.

So I mean, if you've got a platform like that, you know, I just think what a waste it will be not to use it for what I think. That not everyone will agree, obviously, I understand that what I think is to use it as a power for good.

No country can have everybody, you can't.

You know, you have to have a various way you know, but have some safe ruts and stuff. But it's just the lack of empathy that I find hard to believe for people that have Imagine what how desperate things have got to be to you know, jump in a dingy that risk your life and your life of your children to seek kind of sanctuary somewhere and then not to be well received. And it's I just I find it

And what was that like for you? What did you? How did you find your you know, your fellow athletes and you had people who really supported you?

Oh yeah, joined there was one, you know, when I responded to somebody's tweet that was having a pop at me, and I, you know, just talked about something and then it kind of escalated a little bit and then it was really done by the Daily Mail because they're front page, that took what I said completely out of context. And then, you know, we do have a tendency to for some inexplicable and worry about the Daily Mail. So it kind of led from there and it inspired a little bit out of control.

But the support I had from my my I.

Call them teammates because once a football are always a footballer. But it was actually one of the most emotional things that I just found it.

It was incredible.

I shed a tear in the back of a black taxi when Ian Right and Alan Shearer supported me, and then everyone followed to you know, you know you've got mates, and you know you like mates, and you have the banter and stuff, and even a couple of days before it happened, we have a little group chat with Ian Right Alan Sheer and I said to them, I said, I've got a feeling that might take me off the show and Ian Wright said, oh, if they do that, there's no way I'm doing the show.

And I think it's one.

Thing saying that, but then actually to follow that through and you learn then that you know they are real mates, you know, and you learn a little bit about what they think about you. And I think that for me was one of the most amazing things that I've gone through in my life. The support side of it. The other side, I could definitely live without. Having twenty odd journeys outside my front door for about five six days was weird.

But you have taken refugees into your home, you have spoken out. You are a person that gives comfort to so many people. So I suppose my last question to you, and thank you so much for being here, is that if you do go to food for comfort, if you need comfort and you need something to eat, is there a food that you would go to where that kind of comfort.

It depends on which time of year it is, But let's say it's winter.

Cottage pie, Ah, cottage pie, debscribe a cottage pie. There might be people in California who don't say.

I'm terribly sorry.

Well, there's two types of pie, one called cottage pie, one called the shepherd's pie.

One is lamb mints and one is beef mints.

Shepherd's pie is obviously Lamb's mints because the shepherd. So if ever you get confused, that's the way to remember around it. Coottash pies with minced beef. I don't know why I've always liked it. My mum used to do it. It's one of the reasons probably, And it's one of the things I wanted to learn to cook, and then I cook it a lot. But it's basically mince and mash, typically a bit of Worcester sauce that you put in it. Yeah, and it's like with a layer of mashed potato and

All right?

Yeah, I'm going to do it. Yeah, so fine, but yeah.

Well we're going to get you to come and spend a day in the River Cafe or maybe more than a day.

Yeah, where do you think I'm expensive much? Sixteen for my.

Mom play that game of cards. Thank you very much. Absolutely, Thank you, Joan.

Thank you for listening to Ruthie's table for in partnership with Montclair