There’s a stockpot simmering on Andi Oliver’s stove – for days, the broth has been bubbling. A mugful of the rib-sticking, rich elixir lands in front of me as I’m ushered into her east London kitchen from the cold. She ladles out a flask-full for Garfield, her boyfriend of 30 years, then peers into the saucepan. “I’ve not been well,” says Oliver, “and this has healed me.” She spent the past two months filming in Stratford-upon-Avon, where she always had a similar soup on the go. “It’s giving yourself the care you need. And sharing it with other people doesn’t just fix you, but briefly, the world around you.” Supplies depleted, she begins to rebuild the brew from its bones: pinches of cloves, juniper and star anise are dropped in. A glug of white wine. Taste, then season. No measurements, just instinct. “I started cooking young,” Oliver explains. “To me, it’s everyday magic. Giving you that broth is sharing a little bit of myself – a soul exchange.” Briefly, there’s a moment of serenity.
Scout, the ageing family dog, comes in barking. The phone rings, twice. Unidentified clattering upstairs. Hers is a house that’s lived in. “Just to flag,” Oliver warns, “anyone might just appear. This place is like Piccadilly Circus.” A steady stream of people do wander through. First, Kelly, close colleague and confidante. Garfield next. Then Oliver’s mum pootles through, nonplussed by a stranger’s presence. Soon to turn 88, she moved in a couple of years back. “Oh, and that’s Amanda Mealing,” Oliver says, as the former Holby City star pops her head around the door. “We met doing a play with Paul O’Grady – Lily Savage was one of her son’s godmothers, and I’m the other one.” There might be other houseguests, Oliver can’t be certain.
“We have a sprawling found family,” says Oliver, “that’s precious to me.” She unfurls into an upholstered chair at her long dining table. “Whether or not we’ve had cash, I’ve always had an open-door policy.” When money was tight, and often it was, she’d still feed the hungry. “We’d cook feasts: chicken wings, sacks of rice and potatoes. Whatever was cheap. We might have been using the emergency credit on the electricity meter and ingredients from the shop bought on tick, but if I could get a meal together, then the world felt manageable. When I couldn’t, I knew we were in the shit.” She uses her deep belly laughs as punctuation.
Oliver has long been a familiar face across cultural and culinary scenes: bands, restaurants, plays; a smattering of telly and radio. More recently, however, her stars have aligned. First as judge, now presenter, on the BBC’s Great British Menu cooking contest. It returns early next year. There’s a cookbook. A podcast. A flurry of documentaries. She appears on Celebrity Gogglebox with presenter and broadcaster daughter, Miquita. National treasure status beckons. Tomorrow, she’ll collect her best presenter gong at the Women in TV and Film Awards. “It’s lovely to have people love what you do, and to be recognised for working your arse off, only, I don’t know how I’ve ended up in this position, really. The idea of job security… to be thought of as part of the fabric of anything? I never dreamed of it. Everything always felt precarious and temporary.”
“So many women,” Oliver feels, “find themselves becoming invisible at this time of life. God,” she interrupts herself, “I sound ancient. But it’s true. Youth is the value system put on women’s worth. But I’m finding and feel this is the most potent period for me.” It’s unexpected. “I didn’t think I’d feel this way at 61. I thought I’d be tired and broken down, emotionally and spiritually. I thought I’d feel my world was winding down. Actually, I’m just getting started.”
Oliver’s parents, both Antiguan, met in Leicester. Mum was a teacher, Dad in the RAF. “They married, then moved to London where they had my brother.” Sean, two years her senior. Andi was born in Paddington and spent a few years in Kent. “Then when I was five we moved to Cyprus for three and a half years. I loved it there. It was home to me.” She’s full of fond memories. “Cyprus was where I first fell in love with the idea of food and gathering people.” Family life felt secure. “My parents recognised Cypriot culture far more than English. It felt familiar, reminiscent of the Caribbean. Then we came back to England when I was nine, and I was completely traumatised.”
Bury St Edmunds in the 1970s felt a long way from Limassol. “It was awful,” she remembers. “Constant racism and bullying. It’s then I became Black. I understood there was difference and people were weird about it.” School offered no safety. “Every day I’d be called all sorts of disgusting names,” she says. “A teacher referred to me as ‘you people’. I was the only Black girl for 20 miles. So I learned to fight, physically and verbally. I’m quick with my mind, my mouth and used to be with my fists. I had to protect myself.”
The violence was incessant, and she remembers it vividly. “One day at school I was reading a book, when a girl came up to me and announced: ‘Jennifer is going to fight you.’ I didn’t know who the fuck that was. Then this idiot girl comes over, neanderthal-like, and starts shoving me. Pushing and provoking.” When the girl ripped her book, Oliver snapped. “I lost my shit and punched her in the face. Then it was me who got into trouble.” The abuse was unrelenting. “I started to have nightmares. I was distraught, filled with anxiety.” Oliver faced it alone. “I tried to protect my parents. I didn’t want them to know I was so terrified. Dad, meanwhile, had mental health problems to be dealing with. I thought, then, he was an asshole, but my therapist now thinks he was bipolar.”
It’s not that she’s grateful for those experiences. “But as an adult, it’s given me an insight into the human heart. I’m an empathic person, knowing what it feels like to experience inhumanity. After trauma, you have to find the light, or else what’s the point of continuing?”
The day she turned 16, Oliver dropped out of school. O-levels uncompleted. Clearly, she was smart. “We found some school reports the other day. Most said: ‘She’s really clever, if only she could focus.’” She shakes her head. “How was I supposed to focus when I was using all my energy to stay alive? My education started the day I moved to London.” It made receiving an honorary MA this year for her contribution to arts and media – friends and family in tow – all the more emotional.
Home in the capital was an east London co-op/squat, with her brother and cousins. Life in Suffolk had been defined by isolation; in Hackney, she found community. “It felt like breathing air for the first time. To be with people who didn’t think I was a weirdo. Other. We put on plays, joined bands. Fell into all sorts of scenes. And I was no longer the only Black girl.” She first met lifelong best-friend Neneh Cherry at her brother’s hospital bedside. He’d been in a car crash. “We stood in the hallway of the hospital, had a fag, and decided we’d sing together. She’s one of the greatest love affairs of my life – one of several people I don’t know what I’d do without.” Together, they joined post-punk six-piece Rip Rig + Panic. Through the early 1980s, the band toured. Cherry and Oliver constantly cooked. “We’d throw a party, then buy a bathtub full of mackerel to gut, clean and fillet. We were creating safety and family through food.”
It wasn’t entirely the homecoming she’d longed for. “Lots of Black kids in London also thought I was weird. I spoke differently; I’d had a different life.” Having found her tribe, this shaped her outlook. “It confirmed to me that race and colour don’t define you. Nor does gender, sexuality or anything else tell people who you are. It’s why I sometimes find it tricky when people ask how I identify… I don’t want to be identified as anything: I’m Andi.”
“Listen,” she clarifies, “rejecting how people defined me is how I survived. For me, labels feel like going backwards. But I can see for the next generation it’s progressive and embracing empowerment. I’m thrilled for them, but it’s young-people business.” She’s keen her disinterest isn’t confused for derision. “I don’t care about your pronouns, who you sleep with or anything else. I’ll call you whatever; be who you like.” It’s not denial or discrimination, but a punk spirit of embracing all and any. “It’s basic bottom line behaviour – give people respect and don’t be an asshole. Life’s too short to be appalling.”
Oliver became pregnant at 20. “I only had a brief affair with him,” she says, uncharacteristically discreet. “It was a situation-ship, in modern parlance. It was difficult for him – we weren’t together. I knew if I was going to have it, I’d be doing so alone. And I knew I would. That’s Miquita’s spirit: unstoppable even before she was born.”
Those early years of motherhood weren’t easy. She and her newborn moved into a council flat in White City. “It was rough. I was walking with her in a buggy when a guy said something flirty.” Oliver reciprocated. Three girls sat watching: one made a comment. “I told her to mind her business. She jumped off the wall, jumped on my back and tried to claw my eyes out. All I could do was try to protect my baby daughter in the buggy.” Oliver was beaten. “I managed to get home. My eyes were red and swollen, scratch marks everywhere.” Again, Oliver fought; this time, for two. “I got the direct line for the head of housing at the local authority. I called him every day.” He rebuffed her for weeks. “Then eventually, he called, to say he’d found me a flat in Ladbroke Grove, where I had my people.”
There a community of young mums buoyed each other, including Cherry and Alison Owen, mum to Lily Allen. “We’d baby swap. Every weekend one of us would have all the kids and the others would get time off to go out.” They parented and partied hard. Work came and went. “Suddenly I’d get a mad job, like presenting a TV show with Ice-T, then I’d be back to struggling. We lived in the moment, constantly shifting.”
Oliver’s brother Sean died of sickle cell anaemia when she was 25. For a few years afterwards, she soldiered on, then had “a massive breakdown” at 30. “I finally cracked under the strain of it all. I’d developed an awful eating disorder and was very ill.” She went into residential treatment, at first, resentfully, and was tasked with writing out her life story so far. “Then I had a massive argument and was called in by the supervision team. I was defiant, ready to fight my corner. Instead, the woman sitting opposite me said: ‘I’m not surprised you’re angry, I’ve read what’s happened to you.’” The tears that flowed felt primal. “Nobody had ever understood why I was fighting. As soon as this woman did, I was given permission for it to stop. I started to get better.” She set about rebuilding. “I divested myself from the need to be hyper-vigilant, always expecting to be attacked.” She breathes out, slow and steady.
Oliver met Garfield when Miquita was 10; this year, she turned 40. Normally, Oliver’s presenter and broadcaster daughter would be among today’s throngs. “But she’s just had an operation to have fibroids removed,” says Oliver. “I had them, and needed a hysterectomy. Luckily, she hasn’t had to.” Both mother and daughter’s capacity for candidness has served them well these last few years. Miss Me?, Miquita’s soul-bearing podcast with lifelong friend Lily Allen, has proved a major hit for the Beeb. All sorts are shared, including intimate familial details. “It’s weird,” says Oliver, “strangers are coming up to me to talk about my business.” Miss Me? listeners were recently informed by Miquita that she was conceived on Hampstead Heath. “But I’m so proud. They’re brilliant, brave and bold. Audacious, and always have been.”
These days, the Olivers are a professional duo: their own podcast; a BBC series about the Caribbean; more to come. For years, it was Miquita’s career that took centre stage. A friend phoned Oliver when Miquita was 15. “Channel 4 were looking for a girl to present Popworld,” she recalls, “and Miquita was used to being around adults, chipping in, always a lippy little shit.” She’d already taken her daughter out of school, the victim of bullying. Miquita auditioned and landed the job: an overnight teenage TV sensation.
How did Oliver cope with her kid’s newfound fame? “Badly. I knew people in that world, so it wasn’t alien to me. I wish it had been. I could’ve done with less knowledge of the shenanigans.” At 16, Miquita moved into her own flat. “I found myself going over every day to cook and clean.” Not at her daughter’s request. “It was my way of feeling I had some purchase and purpose in her life. It made me feel better.” She watched Miquita’s career explode; a schoolgirl exposed to fame’s excesses. “She was making way too much money. It rocked my sense of self, feeling I couldn’t provide for my own child.”
Oliver remembers going to an event her daughter hosted. “At the end, Miquita came out to meet me. All these photographers ran in front of her. I felt I couldn’t get to my own kid if something bad happened. I had a panic attack. It was out of control and there was nothing I could do, because she was brilliant at it.” Oliver held her nerve. “I had to have faith she’d come good. She was young and wild and it got out of control. She went through hell, including bankruptcy. But watching her navigate it all, fall, then build herself back up? I’m so proud of her.”
Oliver is fiercely protective of her brood. “People talk about Lily and Miquita as if they’ve had it easy. All this nepo-baby stuff.” She shakes her head; an eye-roll. “I’ve never heard anything so stupid. If people knew what me and Alison come from and went through… The idea they had an unfair leg-up is crazy.”
Oliver knows what grafting is. She cooked from a food truck in Portobello Market, then started a pop-up supper club, before taking on a string of pubs. “My whole thing was: don’t try to be impressive, just be delicious.” After a few Saturday Kitchen appearances, the call from Great British Menu. She’s been a fixture for eight series, first as a judge. In 2020, producers suggested she transition to presenter.
Oliver was reluctant at first. “I didn’t want to lose authority. In the culinary world there are so few people of colour who have it, certainly women of colour. I didn’t want to be put into a jokey role.” It was agreed she’d remain an expert food voice and would help shape the show from her new position. Fronting a flagship BBC food programme “has allowed me to expand and subvert what that institution means. It’s important in the world today, showing things can be part of the fabric of our country while not looking or sounding how they looked 30 years ago. It’s important that I exist. That Floella Benjamin exists. Moira Stuart. Other shoulders I stand on. Still, we are few and far between in both entertainment and the culinary industries.”
Was she surprised by allegations against Gregg Wallace? She thinks. ”Oh God,” comes her reply, “I’m not surprised by it.” It’s not that she knows Wallace personally. “There’s a certain culture that allows it to happen. Somebody should have nipped that shit in the bud a long time ago. It’s not like nobody knew it was happening. I heard stuff. Everyone did. And there are tons of others who go around behaving badly.” The media outcry against Wallace frustrates her. Not to defend him. Good riddance, she says. “But culture will only change if we stop all the fake outrage and actually implement change. Thousands of people shouting about Gregg Wallace on Twitter doesn’t interest me. What does is whether we remember this in six months, or will there be more fake shock and outrage when it happens all over again with the next person whose antics were an open secret?”
There might be an opening on MasterChef… “No!” she exclaims “I can’t talk about that. Everyone keeps asking.” That’s not to say her eye isn’t on what’s next. Restaurant collaborations, cooking in Sri Lanka, more projects with her daughter. “And I want to act. To write more, too.” Fiction, she thinks, could be on the horizon. In hour three of our interview, her optimistic energy prevails. Less forthcoming is a sense that Oliver allows herself to sit back, and soak up her successes.
“It’s hard for me to say that I’m proud of myself,” she concedes. “I find it difficult. Even with all of this…” She surveys her surroundings. “I feel uncomfortable with it. I’m a fighter. I’ve always had to fight, no time to take anything in. It’s still hard to take my foot off the gas, even for a minute. It still doesn’t feel safe or secure.” She’s working on letting that mentality go. “Miquita is always on at me. Mum, she’ll say, enjoy it. I force myself to try. But it’s scary… I’m not sure I know how to be any other way. I just do things that I love, and always have, whether or not it has led to success or money. I don’t know how else to live, honestly. I’ve tried doing things I don’t love; I’m always shit at it.”
Andi and Miquita’s podcast, Stirring It Up, is available now. Great British Menu returns to BBC2 early 2025
Styling by Charlotte Roberts; makeup By Kellie Licorish using Weleda Skincare and YSL Beauty
