NEW SERIES. EPISODE 5. Poet Lemn Sissay cooks Butter Chicken

Lemn Sissay is a lifeforce. A poet, three times Sunday Times bestselling author, memoirist playwright curator and broadcaster. Lemn also has some of his poems embedded as landmarks in the physical architecture of Manchester, London and the British Council Offices in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Brought up in care homes Makerfield, at 17 he lived alone and worked as a gutter cleaner, personalising his gutter cleaning leaflets with his poetry. Sometime later, his ladder stolen, Lemn moved to Manchester and worked for a publishing house as an Asian & Afro-Caribbean writers development worker. The 1990s saw the city of Manchester, and Lemn Sissay, gain a global celebrity, with both the Manchester scene and Lemn’s poetry reaping widespread acclaim.

Claire has wanted to cook with Lemn since the very first series of 5 O’ Clock Apron Podcast after reading his book My Name is Why. The Guardian newspaper writes; “Lemn Sissay has success written on his forehead” and Claire could not agree more, Lemn radiates with a positivity that is infectious. Unusually for this recording, Claire and Lemn cook together in a friend of Claire’s flat in Hackney. Claire arrives at the recording with ingredients that Lemn has requested and together the pair cook butter chicken, a Pakistani version, taught to Lemn by a close friend.

This episode, the penultimate in the series, is a joy to listen to. Claire and Lemn discuss a childhood in care and its profound impact, there is also a moment when Lemn drops curry sauce all over his brand-new trainers, expletives are used. The butter chicken is delicious, one of the best Claire has ever cooked and eaten and, quite honestly, the fact that Lemn is also a phenomenal cook, as well as an astonishing poet and writer, makes Lemn such impressive human being to spend time with. Is there anything this man can’t do? And do extraordinarily well?