Fitz in the community - Ep.7 - Plymouth & Brixham

Fitz travels down to Plymouth to attend an international dinner, gets inducted into the world of sausage making and talks Eurovision with another Fitzgerald!

Listen here or on Spotify, Amazon music or Google Play, or read the full transcript of this podcast below:

0:00:05 - Fitz
And welcome to Fitz in the Community and another location, but it's still raining. I'm actually on the University campus at the moment, the Plymouth University campus, right by a place called Sherwell United Church. In fact, that's the church hall that's right in front of me at the moment. I'm here for a dinner and I can smell it already. It smells absolutely wonderful. It's been organised by an old friend of mine, a lady called . She has a great background in the world of cooking and food. I'll explain about that a little bit later on.

Strangely, I'm just overlooking the remnants of Drake's Reservoir, which is still there. It's still an open space here in Plymouth. It's the most remarkable piece of history. I think it was put in place late 1500s, early 1600s and was the main water supply to Plymouth from Dartmoor. In fact, I think it ran something like 16, 17 miles. The original water source is now well and truly under Baratour Reservoir, but of course the end, drake's Reservoir, is still here. Anyway, that's a bit of history, bit of trivia. Let's go in and try and find Arezoo. Well, there's an incredible noise behind us at the moment. Oh, the lady of the moment is here, .

0:01:28 - Arezoo Farahzad
Welcome to international dinner. Finally, I managed to get you here.

0:01:32 - Fitz
The smell alone is fantastic. How many nations behind that door?

0:01:36 - Arezoo Farahzad
I've got 21 countries that I can count, but it's just going up because people are just arriving all the time and the number of countries go up. But honestly, every month is just such a thrill to see familiar faces coming back and also new faces coming in as well. It's just the party of the month.

0:01:59 - Fitz
Myanmar, Germany, El Salvador, El Salvador. That's quite a trip, yeah.

0:02:05 - Arezoo Farahzad
I mean, isn't that wonderful? But what's really lovely is that every single one of these people live and study or work in Plymouth. They are all local people. This is the magic of international dinner. These are not people passing by. This is the reality of Plymouth that nobody gets to see.

0:02:28 - Fitz
Why did you set this up?

0:02:30 - Arezoo Farahzad
It just came out of a chance conversation with two or three people. They happened to be students and they said that nobody ever really did anything for them. They felt very sidelined, that when they arrived in Plymouth they just registered and then they found the accommodation and that was it. There was no induction or introduction to the city, and that made me really sad, because, you know, I've grown up in Plymouth and I love it. I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the country.

I happen to be born in Iran, and the only thing that I could think of to say at the time was oh well, I could cook you some Persian food if you like. Would that make you feel better? So everybody laughed and they said yes, it would actually. So we agreed to meet a week later and I cooked some Persian food. I suggested that they might like to maybe cook some dishes from their home countries as well, because I love food, it's my passion. So about four of them four of them did, and at the end of that meal I said would you like to make this a regular event? And so international dinner was born.

0:03:37 - Fitz
That's incredible. Listen, food has played a huge part in your life. Do you want to explain what you do for a living?

0:03:43 - Arezoo Farahzad
Well, for about a quarter of a century I traveled around the world and made food and travel programs with lovely Rick Stein, so we had lots and lots of adventures. I myself was born in Iran. I've had a foot in two cultures throughout my whole upbringing. So food, culture, music these are all things that have been a major part of my life, and I just love celebrating people. This occasion, just by meeting a group of people who I tried to cheer up, has now created an occasion where we can basically open the doors up to the whole city and welcome people and everyone's telling everyone else. So it's just word of mouth and, as you can see, tonight we've got a whole full of people. Our record is about 125 people from 48 countries. That was the record night, yeah.

0:04:43 - Fitz
I can smell garlic and cardamom and there's chilli.

0:04:48 - Arezoo Farahzad
There's Persian rice here. There's water pastry, chicken and pork pie. There are Yorkshire puddings with roast beef and gravy. There there's desserts galore. You can tell people have more than a sweet tooth. Here there's just everything. There's oriental food there. There's just something there for everybody Japanese. I saw a Japanese dish there too. Oh right.

0:05:12 - Fitz
This is being held on a regular basis.

0:05:14 - Arezoo Farahzad
This happens every month at Sherwell Hall. It's an open invite to anyone who would like to come and join in. Just turn up with a dish of food. You're more than welcome. Come and say hello, meet new people, meet the amazing diversity that exists in Plymouth. You're not going to have a bad time, I promise you.

0:05:36 - Fitz
Well, I'm just queuing to get fed now and the smell, once again, is overpowering. I'm just looking down the line here and we were very polite, we stayed behind, we didn't jump in, and I think we're going to be left with sprouts. I think there's only sprouts left. Come on, let's have a look. The sprouts have gone. Oh, that's good news. Has the beef with the Yorkshire puddings gone? There's only four left. Ok, and then you've got a big gravy. No, no, no, the wife brought those. Ah, we want to know Rice, please. No, thank you. Not gravy. As most people know, I hate gravy. Gravy's horrible. Oh, hello, well, most of my food's gone. sat beside Valentina. Valentina, you're from where?

0:06:32 - Valentina
Romania, Constanza.

0:06:34 - Fitz
I've never been to Romania. Sell Romania to me. Why would I go there?

0:06:38 - Valentina
Amazing food, lovely places to visit, lovely weather.

0:06:45 - Fitz
Actually very good wine, red wine.

0:06:47 - Valentina
Yes, very good wine, Many traditions that you can enjoy.

0:06:52 - Fitz
So why Plymouth? Why come to Plymouth?

0:06:54 - Valentina
I came to Plymouth because of work. I first came to UK for a master degree, which was in Sunderland, and later on I moved to Plymouth because of work, and now I'm still here. I have my daughter with me as well.

0:07:09 - Fitz
This is your daughter who eats a lot of cake.

0:07:11 - Valentina
Yes, she loves, cake.

0:07:13 - Fitz
Thank you so much for being with us tonight.

0:07:15 - Valentina
Thank you very much as well.

0:07:17 - Fitz
So we've moved from Romania to Malaysia. My name is Karen. What brings you here? How are you involved?

0:07:24 - Karen
I was invited to the dinner for the first time and it's lovely to meet new people, so I came back again. Basically, I just want to thank everyone for so kind, generous, bringing food and their time involved and, most of all, it's company, so that no one's alone, especially over the Christmas period. You've made new friends here, plenty. It's all thanks to Global Plymouth Organisers, because their theme is that no one should be alone.

0:07:52 - Fitz
Nobody should.

0:07:53 - Karen
Yes, they have.

0:07:53 - Fitz
Thank you for helping to organise this. What did you have? By the way, Did you have the rice dishes?

0:07:59 - Karen
Brought the vegetable spring roll and that's cooked out very, very well. There's lots of different varieties of rice. There's rice with mince rice with carrots, rice with raisins.

0:08:12 - Fitz
I love that. Yes, aha, nice and spicy, karen, thank you very much indeed. Thank you, you need to talk to Jan. I can talk to Dr Jan. Yeah, why not? Ok, I've just been told to go and talk to Dr Jan and Dr Jan is around here. Dr Jan Knight, what brings you here to the international dinner?

0:08:31 - Dr Jan Knight
Well, I'm just involved with trying to bring Plymouth together for love and peace and bringing all the different communities together, of all nationalities, so that we share the cultures. We share everything, and food is a great way to do that. People love to share their food and that's how it all started. Arazoo, you know, is the one who started this. I started the social isolation forum, which is bringing all the groups together, initially who were doing things on their own but they didn't know what anyone else was doing. So we have built the social isolation forum. We now have over 400 people and everyone gets together now and they can actually collaborate.

But one thing we weren't doing we weren't attracting enough of the people who were isolated in plots of plummets where they couldn't get transport. Now we've learned how to do that. I met a lady. She's lovely, she's partially sighted and she hasn't been outside, she said, for four years. She was so thrilled she came to one of the events and I'm going to go and see her and bring her. We can't leave these people on their own. We need them.

0:09:43 - Fitz
Thank you for what you do. It's highly important within our community. I really do appreciate it, and I think, by the sounds of it, something else is happening next door now, and we haven't missed the puddings, have we?

0:09:56 - Dr Jan Knight
Let's go back in there, come on.

0:09:57 - Fitz
Jan, and you'll be very glad to hear that I made it back in time for cake, and plenty of cake. There was my thanks to the team at international dinners. Hopefully, sometime in the near future I will be invited back and we'll hear more from an incredible community project, fits in the community, brought to you courtesy of Clear Sky Publishing. Now, a couple of days ago, an email dropped into my office and said come over and see me. His name Charles Bourne, the company Westerways yes, the sausage people, based in Newton Abbott. Now, I've known Charles for some time and I've known about his plans, not only for the expansion of this company he also has a production company in Hong Kong but also he's thinking about the planet, especially when it comes to packaging, transportation and greener issues. Come with me to Newton Abbott, to Westerways.

0:10:56 - Charles Bourne
Well, we're in the world of sausage fits and we're going to make some sausages. So there is a conical funnel down the end there and it's got a big bucket of meat that's come up on an automatic hoist and in there is two no, actually you've lost a bit of weight. Maybe three of you, very kind. So around about 200 kilo of fresh British pork which we've made into. What rest of it are we doing now? Lincolnshire? Oh, spicy, we're going to use English sage in Lincolnshire because it hasn't got the metallic taste that you'll get with Egyptian sage, and so it gives you a nice bit of flavour, gives you some show through. And in actual fact, what are we doing first? Are we doing Mul Valley farmers or Portrigo? Okay, portrigo, take your sausages. They certainly. They're a very good customer, let's try. 41% of people in Devon visit Trago Mills. I can see him coming off.

Chubber there has loaded the filling horn with a length of pig gut and it slides onto a filling nozzle. So he will now turn the machine on and that's going through there at about five miles an hour. I love this filling horn chubber and pig gut.

0:12:25 - Fitz
These are sort of people I drink with.

0:12:29 - Charles Bourne
Yeah, we're using cardboard trays here, and that's the kind of. The big news from Westerways is that we don't use plastic anymore, and so this film that is being wrapped around the trays there's not this branding on it, and that branding is showing customers that the film is also home and industrially compostable. So wherever this ends up in the environment, there's no legacy for the future. It can all be home composted. It's about 50 to 60 days is what we actually look for, complete breakdown, and that's an ordinary compost heap at home.

I haven't got one, I've got kind of a brick built thing that I've made, and so that's going into Heathrow Airport. So the people in the departure lounges will be feasting on Westerways before they travel away Heathrow. So Heathrow have a real policy about sustainability, and so they were very attracted by the fact that all our packaging was compostable. It resonated with their values, and so they compost everything on site, and the fact that we could supply packaging to them that was entirely compostable meant that here we go, it's coming through now, so I'll just grab that one.

0:13:53 - Fitz
That is incredible. It looks very Heath Robinson, but there's a pack of sausages.

0:13:58 - Charles Bourne
Yeah, and what we've got there is we've got 20 sausages in a very small footprint of packaging and that is another part of the secret. So this particular customer came on to us saying we need something like 700 pallets of sausages. Can you do it? And I looked at it and I said I can do better than that. I can do it in 500 pallets. So that means less miles on the road. It means far better density value in storage facilities. You know we have to look at all the resources that we have and then make the best use of those resources. You know it's up to manufacturers to step forward and try and make those types of changes.

You're maintaining quality, but you're also thinking of the planet, yeah, and so if we move over here, paddy's just done eight pack of sausages there which you can't hold, but I can, and I can tell you this there's about seven kilo of sausages there in a very small footprint, but what's happening is that this is fitting onto a pallet just moving through to the cool storage area right?

Can you see how we're getting as much as we can on that pallet, right? So if I was packing this in plastic, I would be getting around about 700 kilo on a pallet, but packing my way, I'm getting 900 kilo on a pallet, and that is giving us sustainability, not just in the fact that we're using compostable materials, but we're making best use of the Landon's driver you just met. There's a real story within a story here.

0:15:39 - Fitz
Let's just take a look at the slightly wider geographical area. You've got a rugby club behind you which I know you are heavily involved with the Westerway sausage rugby team.

0:15:51 - Charles Bourne
We are so proud to be involved with a community rugby club right next door to us here at Newton Abbot Rugby Club, which is probably one of the largest rugby clubs in terms of playing members in Devon, if not the country. So we've got some 21 teams now I'm even playing at my rather advanced age of 67 but don't tell the public and thoroughly enjoying it, and so we have teams of all ages, abilities and genders. They're all Westerway warriors and I love that. It's about giving people hope. We live in pretty uncertain times and this could be said. There's too much angst and not enough hope, and so hopefully we're a good news story that's showing that companies can get involved with local communities and make a difference within their communities and give a social return on the investments that they make.

0:16:43 - Fitz
Last, time we spoke, you were in the middle of a riot in Hong Kong. Yeah, things have calmed down now they have calmed down.

0:16:53 - Charles Bourne
It's back to virtually normal, although it's interestingly that people are eating more at home than they used to. In Hong Kong Street, dining is still a shadow of its former self, which is a great shame because our plant in Hong Kong, the plant is not ours but we, we have a license to manufacture there and and so it gives us a great opportunity for the future, for you know, westerways, to go Easterways, really to use our brand in East Asia. And what is the future for you? We see production here in Newton Abbott probably going to double in the next 12 months. That will take us up to around about two and a half thousand tons of sausages a year, which is a lovely idea, which is an awful lot of sizzling going on. I think that my rugby is going to improve.

0:17:48 - Fitz
I'll join you in that case, if it is. We're getting into the realms of fantasy there, jones.

0:17:55 - Charles Bourne
Look, we're here to have fun, we're here to contribute to the local community and we're also here to innovate and to develop ideas and to take them forward. And we get those ideas from all over the world. And that is, we need to make more out of the resources we've got and to use them diligently and to use them responsibly. I'm a rotter. I thoroughly believe in composting.

0:18:18 - Fitz
Yes, you do, don't you? And I can endorse the fact that your stuff is very compostable.

0:18:26 - Charles Bourne
No, and that's the secret. You know, we've got to make changes. It's not about eight billion people all being perfect. It's about everybody making some changes.

0:18:36 - Fitz
They're a remarkable Charles Bourne and his sausages. I wish him every success for the future. Well, I've moved to Brixham. I'm looking at the Golden Hind, which is gently swinging on its anchor at the moment, and looking out towards a rainbow over the sea and the inevitable seagulls, hoping that I've got a bag of chips. You're going to be sadly disappointed. The reason I'm here Well, I'm meeting a gentleman called Scott Fitzgerald. Now, that name may be familiar to you. He is a brilliant singer. He came second in Eurovision against well, maybe a slightly better voice, I'm not sure Her name Celine Dion. Look, I'm not going to go into too many details now. I'll allow him to explain about his musical career and what brings him to live in Brixham.

0:19:32 - Scott Fitzgerald
Well, what it was really is that my daughter, marie the fisherman as we keep stalking our grandchildren everywhere that we moved to Bricsom. And it was a surprise because I never knew Bricsom existed, to tell you the gods' honest truth. But my goodness, what? This is a jewel in the crown.

0:19:49 - Fitz
Yeah, I love it. Sorry, we're being heckled by a passerby. Who is this?

0:19:53 - Scott Fitzgerald
I wonder who this is. I believe it's my wife Charine.

0:19:57 - Fitz
Charine, come and join us, for heaven's sake. Let's huddle for warmth like penguins.

0:20:01 - Charine
Only because I've got the only odd marilla.

0:20:04 - Fitz
How many years in the music industry, both of you in fact.

0:20:08 - Scott Fitzgerald
Well, myself I started singing with my dad. He had a barbershop quartet with his four brothers and I was the boy soprano in the middle and really really started from there when I was about probably ten Right, and I did try working in the meat market once but it didn't really work. The guy shook my hand and said you're fired, just stick to singing. He said, and he did, and so I started to sing. Probably run the boat, oh God, 60 years, or something like that, 60 years.

0:20:42 - Fitz
Yeah, but never, never ask a lady.

0:20:44 - Scott Fitzgerald
Oh, she started young as well, very young in the business.

0:20:49 - Fitz
I thought you were going to say you started before me, rude. Oh, no, no, no, no.

0:20:52 - Charine
My first audition was at 14, yes, but the show started when I was 15, thank goodness.

0:20:57 - Scott Fitzgerald
What was that?

0:20:59 - Charine
It was a pantomime in Wimbledon for Delphonse. We weren't going to move until we came down. When we came into the harbor I went oh gosh, bill, we're going to have to move. It is beautiful and the grandchildren are here.

0:21:15 - Fitz
Look at that just over your head at the moment. Oh, there's a beautiful rainbow, oh gosh, oh good luck and the swans have come over to see you and we've got a turnstone. Yes, they have.

0:21:26 - Scott Fitzgerald
It's absolutely lovely, you know. No, I'm so glad that we did move here. It's a beautiful place.

0:21:33 - Fitz
I will always remember you for Eurovision and losing out to Celine Dion, yes.

0:21:42 - Charine
You don't hear about nowadays, obviously.

0:21:44 - Fitz
She speaks very highly of. Scott, oh, she does.

0:21:47 - Scott Fitzgerald
Yeah, no, no, no, no. And then, oh, that was a beautiful time, that was. It was so exciting. And do you know something Everybody says to me oh, you get beaten by one point by Celine Dion, oh, I would have kicked her in the shin. I went, oh no, I said, look. After I picked myself off the floor because I thought we were going to win. You know, in the last two votes I was 14 points ahead and there was only two more votes to go. And of course, she was such a sweet girl who didn't speak English.

She did not speak English at all. She spoke a little bit of French Bonjour, and all that stuff that I could communicate with her. But her husband, renee I had a good conversation with him and the sweetest of man he was, you know, and this was at the beginning of her big success, and he was talking about how that he was going to develop her and it had been with her for such a long time and he knew her talent that she could be a massive star. And because at rehearsals she was marking we call marking, you're holding back, you're just doing your rehearsal, get the music right and all that stuff and stuff and we were watching and I thought, yeah, the kid's good, she's really good. But my goodness, on the night when she came out she was like an express train.

She came out with everything going on and it was like wow, this kid is brilliant. And then I went on and did my song, not Thinking it was Julie Forsyth that wrote the song for me.

0:23:17 - Fitz
Bruce's daughter.

0:23:18 - Scott Fitzgerald
Yes, Julia, she's my best friend and her husband Dominic. They used to be their guys and dolls from the group Guys and Dolls. There's a whole lot of loving going on in the house and she came. Actually, I was working at the career theater in Amsterdam at the time and I was working with Dionne Warwick. I did the first half at the Crayer Theatre and then Julie came and said I've got the song and I went okay, let's have a hear it. Can you do the demo? I said well, what are you going to do with it? I've got to put it into your Eurovision Song Contest. I thought do you realise how many?

0:23:55 - Fitz
You say the chances. It was a wonderful tune and I've forgotten which classical piece it's based around.

0:24:01 - Scott Fitzgerald
Oh no, you're talking about the other one.

0:24:03 - Fitz
You're talking about, if I had words, If I had words yeah, sorry, I'm getting mixed up. If I had words was based around.

0:24:09 - Scott Fitzgerald
Oh no, that was Sanson's Third Organs symphony. It was a little piece. That's another one. No Go was the one at Julie Rowe, and If I had Words was the one I had a hit with with Yvonne Keely, if I had Words. And, like you said, there was a piece of Sanson's Organs symphony, just a little touch of it, and they put a bit of reggae to it, as you can hear, and did a whole orchestration on it. What I did at the end was they said to me, can you do something with this? And so I had lipped at the end. That was all that. Stuff I do at the end is not written. That's off the top of my head.

0:24:46 - Fitz
Were you a little surprised when it turned up in the film Babe.

0:24:50 - Scott Fitzgerald
Oh, very surprised.

0:24:52 - Fitz
Did they even ask permission? No, no.

0:24:55 - Scott Fitzgerald
They didn't ask for nothing, they didn't make a deal, they were just cheeky. They just did it.

0:24:59 - Charine
And the funny thing, I'm sitting in and we took our children to see it when the thing comes up at the end and then the mice start singing. If I had Words, I went. That's you singing, because nobody else does those riffs, or the ad lib, like you do, because it's from the top of his head. He doesn't repeat it, he does it once and that's it.

0:25:24 - Fitz
And you were a mouse for a while.

0:25:26 - Scott Fitzgerald
Yes, I'm the mouse in Babe, the film Babe.

0:25:30 - Fitz
It's a bizarre industry that you two have been in. I mean, do you look back and think?

0:25:35 - Charine
Why yeah, no, just thank goodness. We've had a blessed life.

0:25:40 - Scott Fitzgerald
Yeah, really a lot of hairy moments, scary moments, but you know that's life, isn't it? Why sit there and be satisfied when you can get out there and I don't know, just to get your adrenaline going and get your heart pumping and stuff that you should be doing, rather than sitting watching the telly, you know.

0:25:58 - Charine
We never knew what was coming up next. A telephone call could totally change something else. We were quite happy in Holland, having a great living there, and all of a sudden Eurovision came back, which got us back to England, which was wonderful. Then we could spend more time with my mum was getting old and I wanted her to see the grandchildren. So yeah, but we've never known what we're going to do from one minute to the next, we didn't even touch on hair.

0:26:28 - Scott Fitzgerald
Yeah, because I didn't. It's not even up on my biography or anything like that.

0:26:32 - Charine
But we will next time.

0:26:34 - Scott Fitzgerald
And they wanted me in the Rocky Horror Show in the end, yeah, to play Rocky, but the only problem was Rocky didn't have a song. Then when they first wrote the musical, he just grunted and you were in bandages. Yeah, he didn't have a song. And then I thought, oh, I don't want to do this, I want to just stay in the West End for a while. And then, of course, the Rocky Horror Show opened up in the Kings Road in the little theatre there, and then I went down for the opening night and they said were you going to do it? I said no. I said there's no song. What's the point? I can't grunt for six months. You know I'm a professional singer and then I'm in bandages so they don't actually see you until they take them off At the end.