Comfort Eating with Grace Dent

This week, Grace is joined by east London’s plant-based princess Bimini who shot to fame in 2021, after the second season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, where they captivated the BBC audience with quippy one liners, high fashion runway looks, and death drops. Although Bimini didn’t snatch the crown, they remain the most-followed UK contestant. Since filming the show, Bimini has released several singles and a book, signed modelling contracts and become a mainstay at fashion shows around the world. The question still remains: what is this British drag icon eating when the knee-high 10-inch heels are off?

Grace welcomes the legendary DJ, producer and founder of Soul II Soul, Jazzie B, to the podcast. Over a bowl of ‘yellow’ – one of his childhood comfort foods –Jazzie takes Grace on a journey from playing his sound system, aged 12, at a silver jubilee street party for the Queen, to finding inspiration on tour in Japan and Korea, and on to Buckingham Palace, where he received an OBE in 2008. The jobcentre suggested he should become a milkman, but instead Jazzie chose to channel his energy into his north London community through music. This decision transformed Soul II Soul into a global success and established Jazzie as an internationally renowned musician who has collaborated with some of the world’s most talented artists

Joining Grace this week is actor and director David Harewood, who found global fame in the hit CIA-thriller Homeland 13 years ago and hasn’t stopped working since. David was born and raised in Small Heath, Birmingham, where he lived with his older siblings and Barbadian parents. He tells Grace about how his mum kept the flavours of the West Indies alive in his childhood home, while he navigated the racist world of 1970s Britain growing up as a young black boy. Sitting down over his favourite comfort food, David talks about how messing about in school led to the ‘lightbulb moment’ when he realised he wanted to be an actor; arriving in 80s London to attend Rada and discovering the excitement of ‘filthy’ Soho; and the underrated wonders of corned beef

Allan Mustafa joins Grace to share the dish he turns to for comfort food. Allan shot to fame playing MC Grindah in People Just Do Nothing, his Bafta award-winning, semi-autobiographical mockumentary, which was inspired by his early life in south-west London. Allan talks about growing up with his Czech mum and Kurdish dad and eating the ultimate fusion cuisine. He dishes the dirt on his teenage life as a graffiti artist, how he met and bonded with his People just Do Nothing co-stars on a beach in Thailand and how he turned what looked like a life of doing nothing into a life of awesome comedic success.

Actor Golda Rosheuvel joins Grace this week to share what she eats when the wigs are off. Golda is best known for her role as the formidable Queen Charlotte in the record-breaking Netflix series Bridgerton. Before Bridgerton fame, Golda’s breakthrough role was playing a female Othello at the Liverpool Everyman, rooting herself as an actor who challenges traditional casting. Golda talks to Grace about her South American upbringing in the church, with her Guyanese father and British mother and her stint in a squat in south London, and reminisces about her recent wedding, where nosh from her local falafel takeaway took centre stage.

Joining Grace this week is one of Ireland’s most acclaimed comics and host of the award-winning podcast My Therapist Ghosted Me, Joanne McNally. With a number of sell-out shows and tour dates in the US later this year, they discuss how Joanne uses comedy to process difficult periods in her life, how her mum is her favourite cocktail buddy, and what exactly she stole to get herself kicked out of the Scouts. Hot off her stint on the latest series of Taskmaster, and with an upcoming show at the Edinburgh festival fringe, the real question is: what is the banger of a sandwich Joanne McNally turns to whenever she’s shut off from the outside world and has a rare moment of peace?

Katherine Ryan joins Grace this week to share her favourite comfort foods. The Canadian comedian, writer, presenter and actor is best known for her deliciously wicked comedy, delivered with a side dish of couture. Katherine shares memories from her past, including her father’s attempts to bring Indian food to Canada via Ireland, her difficult early days in London as a single parent trying to makes ends meet, and the deep fried delights on offer at her first place of work: Hooters. Now, Katherine has had two Netflix Comedy specials, and is a regular on the UK panel show circuit. But the question is – what is fuelling her funny?

Comfort Eating with Grace Dent is back for a seventh course on 11 June. Join her and celebrity guests as they reveal the comfort foods that have seen them through their lives in series seven

Joining Grace this week is the multi-talented actor, comedian and rapper, Kiell Smith-Bynoe. Long before becoming a household name as the exasperated boyfriend in the hit series Ghosts, Kiell (AKA MC Klayze Flaymz) tells Grace how, as a teenager, he combined his performance skills in the ultimate London arena: the chicken shop. With the taste of success, Kiell and Grace chat about his journey to the stage and screen, via several years working in a call centre for unemployed actors. Answering the big question: what is an appropriate lunchtime meal to eat at your desk?

Welsh standup, podcast host and panel show queen, Kiri Pritchard-McLean, brings her finest bowl of scran to Grace’s house. Over this steaming ultra-value concoction, she reveals how her upbringing on a Welsh sheep farm led to a hankering for performance, humour and cheap noodles. Cutting her teeth on the Manchester comedy circuit and finding solace with fellow newbies, Kiri learned to win in an industry still steeped in sexism. Her latest solo show, Peacock, is about the unlikely subject of becoming a foster parent – a journey Kiri and her partner have recently embarked on. Their offering to children centres around home-cooked food made with love. Comfort eating just took on a whole new meaning.