There are so many remarkable playwrights working right now, that I see everything I can. Annie Baker is a genius, I’ll see anything she writes. The same for Lynn Nottage, Cynthia Hopkins, and Lisa D’Amour. Anything they’ve got going on, I’ll go see.
When I was in my late 30s, I lit a figure on fire on Baker Beach in San Francisco. It was me, a friend, and maybe eight people, tops. There wasn’t any premeditation to it at all. It was really just a product of San Franciscan bohemian milieu.
Marketing is not bragging, and touting one’s wares is not evil. The baker in the medieval town square must holler, ‘Fresh rolls!’ if he hopes to feed the townfolk.
I realized, year of the tiger was 1974, which was the year my father passed away when I was a kid… My family, at that point, were Christian Scientists. So basically, this woman Mary Baker Eddy started this in the 1800s, and the premise is that you don’t go to doctors. You believe that God is gonna heal you.
I was a nut for Dostoevsky. You can tell a lot from what people read between those ages. My brother was a Steinbeck freak and now he lives in a little village in New Hampshire and he’s a baker.
Before I was ever a baker, I was a teacher. Or, at least, that is what I thought I was going to be. After O-levels, I went to art school in Wallasey on the Wirral, and my mate Cavan and I did a teacher training course.
Well, we can study aging in people, but of course those studies take decades. So what we try to do is we use simpler organisms to try and understand the basic mechanisms and so in my laboratory, for example, we use things like simple baker’s yeast that we use to make bread.
I have been a baker for more than 30 years now, and in terms of equipment, all I really need is flour. It still amazes me what a versatile commodity it is, as you can do so many different things with it, and I never tire of trying new blends and recipes.
My dad actually makes the best cookies. My mum is great baker, too, but doesn’t share them – it’s tantalising! Luckily for me though, my dad shares his!
Chet Faker’s a reference to the late Chet Baker. I’m a big fan of his vocal style; it’s quite fragile and soft, and that was a style I wanted to take on.
I never got lessons. I took influence from Chet Baker, Ian Dury, and Joe Strummer. I don’t hear my voice and think, ‘Yeah, that’s a banging voice!’ It’s more about putting the right emotions into the right words and the lyrics than anything else to me.
I listen to a lot of jazz. I’m a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker.
When you come into the food industry from the ‘Bake Off,’ you’re very much at the lower end of the food chain, if you’ll excuse the pun. In the industry, you have to get the experience, you have to learn the skill. As a home baker – that’s how you win the competition – you aren’t a professional.
I’m not a baker, and I don’t know anything about baking, and I don’t claim to.
I remember, for my fifth birthday, Chet Baker sat me on the upright piano, and he played just for me for a few minutes. I can still remember the pressure of the air on my chest. It was my first physical contact with sound.
Even if I hadn’t been cast as Doctor Who, my acting would probably have been influenced by William Hartnell or Patrick Troughton, Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, and all of the other guys. Because those were the actors that I really watched every moment of, as opposed to Laurence Olivier.
Being a great baker and pastry chef requires the upmost open mind. I try every dessert that comes my way!
I am Dr. Britt Baker, DMD, and I’m a professional wrestler. I don’t mean to brag or boast, but I love the recognition for it.
It’s very easy to confuse Sean Connery with James Bond. Sometimes in the entertainment industry, people believe the cake is more real than the baker.
The sax solo as we know it today would not exist without Gerry Rafferty. His 1978 soft-rock classic ‘Baker Street’ has to be the ‘Ulysses’ of rock & roll saxophone, giving the entire chorus over to Raphael Ravenscroft’s sax solo, creating one of the Seventies’ most enduringly creepy sounds.
I listen to music mostly in the evening. I’ve come to love what is called world music, like the Zimbabwean Oliver Mtukudzi and the Colombian singer Marta Gomez. I also love the Irish folk singer Mary Black. Other favorites include Chet Baker, Eva Cassidy, and Billie Holiday.
I remember Tom Baker once said to me many years ago: never go back, particularly with TV shows. This is because the track record for characters returning to series they’ve left is not very good.
I was filming in Roscrea in Co Tipperary. I had great fun watching monks in the monastery there making bread. They even offered me a job as their main baker. One of them said I would make a good monk, but I told him there was a slight problem because I was married.
I never made kimchi before. I talk about my first time making it in the book, and I’m not a big baker, but I imagine it’s like a similar kind of feeling for a lot of people who are bakers where it’s just something that takes time. There’s so much space to be reflective and meditative.
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