SEWING BEE SECRETS: Patrick Grant
Tell us about this year’s celebrity sewers…
We had the fantastic Johannes Radebe from Strictly Come Dancing. He's so much fun and not surprisingly quite competitive. We had Natalie Cassidy from EastEnders – a proper icon. We had Penny Lancaster, who's just lovely, and Rosie Ramsey, who’s also very funny and good fun. All of them were absolutely game for a laugh.
What was the standard of sewing like?
Well, I'm not sure there was an enormous amount of evidence of a great deal of practice, but that didn't stop a certain amount of competitiveness. In the first challenge, we went fairly easy on them and they all made Christmas aprons with reasonable aplomb. Some were quite distinctive. I mean, if you can do rock ’n' roll in an apron, Penny managed it. And I'm very much looking forward to seeing photos of Rod Stewart carving the turkey in his festive apron. That's going to make Christmas. The others were great, too. Johannes has a good eye for colour and shape. And he’s very precise and meticulous. That stands you in good stead.
The transformation challenge is always harder as they don’t have a pattern…
It’s very tricky and it was definitely a mixed bag. They were supposed to be doing a festive-themed outfit from old clothes. We carefully organised the packages of clothes we gave each of them into colours to guide them in a certain direction. Natalie chose the brown ones and we were envisaging either a Christmas pudding or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer… and we didn't get either of those. We tried to be as helpful as possible, but not all of them accepted our generous help. LAUGHS They went their own way. Even if you've got tons of skills, it’s still difficult to bosh something together in 90 minutes. You can either visualise this stuff or you can’t. Esme and I sometimes forget we can look at a pile of stuff and see things in our mind's eye. We can imagine: ‘Oh, that’s going to be a reindeer…’ or ‘That's clearly an elf…’ Not everybody thinks the same way we do… and that's why it's great.
The made-to-measure sounds fabulous – a pop star-inspired New Year's Eve outfit…
Yeah! Those were genuinely great. They all nailed the brief and they all had a fun time doing it. And then, at the end of the show, Rosie sang her amazing Dolly Parton number 9 to 5 as Esme, Sara and I donned our own pop star-inspired fancy dress. LAUGHS Johannes’s face was an absolute picture when we arrived dressed up. The sewers had no idea. It's quite ridiculous, but it was super fun. As usual for festive Sewing Bee, it was a slightly surreal finale.
What was your favourite moment from the show?
The finale and the pop star fancy dress was great, but if Rod Stewart wears his apron, that will be my favourite moment.
Christmas isn't Christmas without… a frosty Edinburgh Christmas Day. It's very rare I'm not in back home in Edinburgh. What family I have is all gathered there.
What are your festive traditions?
We normally go for a decent walk first thing in order to develop the appetite we need for a day's worth of feasting. Normally, we walk up the Braid Hills or Blackford Hill. We haven't had a snowy Christmas for a few years, but it's always bitterly cold and frosty. You get an amazing view from the top of the Braid across Edinburgh and right up into Fife and the Trossachs.
Do you don your festive apron or does someone else do the cooking?
It's usually my mum. I cook on Christmas Eve with my nephew. He’s 12. That’s become something of a tradition over the last few years. It’s typically some sort of bake-in-the-oven Italian something or other.
What do you wear on Christmas Day?
I used to have a favourite lamb's wool cardigan: a bright red one. I don’t indulge in novelty festive jumpers – a jumper should be for life, not just for Christmas – but a nice woolly pully is definitely required for an Edinburgh Christmas… particularly in my mother's house. And especially, I suspect, this Christmas when it will be a choice between turkey and central heating.
What about Hogmanay? Do you always get your knees out and wear your kilt?
It depends where I'm going. Last year, I was in Crail in Fife and I'm probably going again this year. A friend of mine has a house out in Crail – this beautiful little fishing village on the way to St Andrews. So it’ll be lots of board games and I'm in charge of fireworks at midnight. So it’ll be normal clothes rather than fancy dress or kilts. Edinburgh Hogmanay is fun and we used to do it, but I'm too old for all that now.
Penny’s thinking about sewing some Christmas presents…
I’m delighted to hear it. It's really nice to give something you've made yourself – even if it's something as simple as adding a bit of embroidery to a hankie. Or even making something for the table like a table runner or a set of table mats out of something old. A gift that is made, to me, is so much more valuable than anything you could go out and buy. Generally speaking, we've gone mad for presents. I would rather have one thing crafted with love by hand than 100 presents bought in a shop.