Wine, women and song
By Jayne Warren - 17/08/2007
Think Oz Clarke and you automatically summon up an image of someone extravagantly swilling wine around a glass and waxing lyrical about its piquant nose, burgeoning body and gooseberry aftertaste.
However his early career may – as an actor who also combined singing with some of his roles – have involved sampling a lot of wine, and enjoying it, but rarely telling people what to drink. So how did the change of career come about?
“I certainly enjoyed the acting and was very lucky with good breaks - especially playing all the men in the Mitford Girls. Being surrounded by all those gorgeous women was wonderful! I started off in the Oxford Footlights, doing revue stuff, and a lot of experimental theatre, like a one man show by Kafka playing an ape who slowly becomes a man - which was premiered at the Edinburgh Festival.
Towards the end of that stage in my life I was offered the part of Toby Belch in Twelfth Night, but I'd lost the joy of it - the thrill had gone.”
Fortunately, fate – in the form of an old friend – came knocking. “There I was, sat on the steps outside the stage door in London having a coffee, when an old friend from Oxford walked by. ‘What are you doing there?’ he asked. I’m in the bloody theatre mate - what are you doing here?’
“It turns out he was a publisher. I told him I was bored, and so he suggested I wrote a book about wine - my favourite subject. The next day we chatted, and I took six months off to write the book.”
Writing the book meant winding the clock back – to his University days. “When I was there I realised that wine was a ‘life skill’ - and I was keen to pull the girls. With no money, I joined the Wine Society because it was only £2 for four evenings - so I could take a girl out for only 50 pence a time. Great eh? I ended up captaining the Oxford wine tasting team, became competitive about wine, joined the English Wine tasting team and beat the French and later the Germans in blind wine tasting competitions. By that time I was an actor, so every time I won a competition, my picture was in the newspapers as a ‘West End actor who knew about wine’.”
During his time in the industry there have been huge changes in wine drinking habits in the UK. Just why, I ask Oz, is that? “You’re right. Incredible changes. At the end of the 50s only 5% of Brits drank wine, now 80% of us do. It started in the 60s and 70s, when people started taking holidays abroad and discovering good, affordable wine - which they couldn't get here. I think it was Marks and Sparks and Sainsburys who first saw the potential - and cashed in on it. But at first it was only German wine ...”
“Reisling, Black Tower, Blue Nun, Libfraumilch and ....”
“Stop, stop - my toes curl up at the memory! With the exception of Bull's Blood that is. But then Australia entered the fray and Chardonnay was the big thing – ‘sunshine in a bottle’ is how they marketed it. And with the supermarkets it was easy. On the BBC ‘Food and Drink’ programme, Jilly Goolden and I could say ‘don't be shy, we’ll tell you the names, what's good, what isn't good, you just have to go to the supermarket’ and buy it. It was great. In the supermarkets there was no-one there to put you down or say in a supercilious tone of voice: ‘Excuse me sir, that’s not the right thing for your Sunday roast’. I never hear that saying ‘wine isn't for the likes of us’ anymore."
With binge drinking now in the news, does he think that new proposals to label drink in units of alcohol will help the keep Britain sober in public? “Of course not, it will just mean more costs, so the poor producers will get their prices driven down by the supermarkets, which is so unfair.
“But the Brits only have themselves to blame. Foreigners have complained about our public drunkenness for centuries. In other countries being drunk in public is really frowned on - they just don’t do it, especially in Southern Europe. But when you move Northwards away from the grape to the grain, public drunkenness and ‘binge drinking’ increases. It must be the long dark winters I suppose and the need to get away from it all.
“But labelling won’t make a blind bit of difference. And it takes away the freedom of individuals in my view. They have to learn to make choices for themselves. Look at these alcopops - dreadful stuff. When I was a kid, alcohol tasted like alcohol - bitter. Now, they down it like fizzy pop and throw up and it’s just a huge joke. Terrible, really terrible.”
“Oz and James's Big Wine Adventures” is now being aired. Just how did that go? “Very well. The first series is currently being repeated - just as we take off for California for another five-week shoot. It's a lot of work and very long hours, up early and to bed late, trying to catch those special sunrises and the all-important dusk.
“And you can't get drunk because the camera and microphone pick it up immediately. In my case, I have such a casual delivery anyway, that I easily sound a bit tipsy. And James, who isn't interested in wine at all, becomes more and more interested with every glass he tastes - by the end of a tasting sessions he's really enthusiastic. Come the morning and he's bored with wine and wants to go off and find a car to drive. Great stuff.”
And if he hadn't been a wine guru? “I’d love to have done nature programmes like Attenborough. Just incredible stuff. I love nature and wildlife. I mean, I love our cathedrals and architecture, but I'd rather be sitting on a clifftop. But I have no regrets in my life. It has been - and still is - amazing.”
The 16th edition of Oz Clarke's new “Pocket Wine Book 2008” is published by Pavillion Books on 6 September, price £9.99. For more information go to the link below.