Whether it's smashing out tunes, mucking about with telescopes, getting his hands dirty on the farm, or diving headfirst into the chaos of parenting, Alex James doesn't do things by halves. Pressure? He eats it for breakfast on top of a giant frazzle.
Whatever Alex James does, he goes “all in” and doesn’t hold back.
Not one to sit back and just watch from the sidelines, James rolled up his sleeves and launched his own brand of sparkling wine last year to add to his "Britpop" range. He did his research and located a partner he was confident would help him to produce a top-quality wine. The partner- Furleigh Estate- is located in an area James grew up in.
If twenty years on the farm have taught him anything, it's that it takes time to get it right. James is a firm believer that you're not just paying for the cost of production; you're paying for the centuries of time and dedication put into improving wine production to make it that bit better each time. He’s absolutely convinced that these are the best times ever for British winemaking. And he refers to food, wine, and music as the “holy trinity.”
James most recently launched Britpop Rosé and Britpop Elderflower Wine Spritz, which are available from wine merchant Laithwaites. The new additions will go perfectly with seafood, cheese, or for toasting Christmas and the new year. And when the weather improves, they'll be the ideal picnic companion.
The past couple of years have been a madcap rollercoaster for Alex. One minute, he’s living the rural dream, and the next, his phone rings, and everything’s flipped upside down. Blur are getting back together. He’s suddenly working on a new album, “The Ballad of Darren”. Then a tour. Oh, and just a casual couple of gigs at Wembley.
His journey is living proof that music isn’t just noise. It’s the glue that sticks us all together. Case in point: years ago, both Alex and I owned the same classic record, “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines” by Pinky and Perky. We were clearly destined to meet at some point.
Music has a way of ripping your heart wide open, and when Alex reunited with Damon, Graham, and Dave, it did just that. We're talking proper emotional stuff, including witnessing Damon Albarn and DJ Steve Lamacq in tears.
In typical Loaded style, I crash into our interview twenty minutes late, due to unforeseen circumstances. I’m flustered and stammering out apologies. But this is Alex James. He’s cool as a cucumber, and a total gent about it. He thankfully laughs it off.
He’s in good form and seems happy with the new Loaded demographic.
“I read somewhere that when men hit 40, they want to know more about cheese, wine and classical music”.
Perfect. I’ve got just the feature for them. It’s a tale of passion, euphoria, and just how bloody awful blokes are at keeping in touch.
The last time you were in Loaded you were quoted as saying “I’m back to not knowing what’s going to happen next, and that’s quite exciting.” To be fair, I don’t think you could have foreseen what was coming next. But, let’s go back a bit further. When I got married, I bought a toy puffin on my honeymoon as a souvenir. On your honeymoon, you bought an entire bloody farm. Please explain.
“Haha, yes. After twenty years of grunting and groaning, Clarkson’s-farm style I think I’ve finally got to grips with how it all works now. Twenty years of throwing every last ounce of sweat, energy, and money at it. Fortunately, when Blur stopped being a full-time job, we were all young enough to pursue other interests.”
“Then came the Big Feastival. It’s a way of putting everything on the farm that I fucking love. I mean, all festivals copy each other, but no one was really talking about food until Feastival kicked off and now they’re all doing it. When you do something you always want to do it better than anyone else so you always think of a way to raise the bar.”
Alex launched The Big Feastival in 2011. It’s been described as being “Like Glastonbury but with spectacular food.” It works with organisations that focus on creating positive change and family initiatives to provide food education.
“Feastival is a fucking juggernaut quite frankly, Juggling that with five teenage kids, cats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and ducks to look after it’s quite a job. I guess the premise of any story is ‘When a stranger comes to town’ .”
“It’s a huge amount of work, but it’s like being in a band in that it doesn’t really feel like work. Until you realise you’ve only had two hours sleep and you collapse from exhaustion.”
You could have just put your feet up and had a rest, but you’ve thrown yourself into farming; one of the hardest jobs in the world. Why?
“A lot of people I know who are of a similar age are retiring, but sometimes I feel I’m just getting started. I guess all of the band are grafters. Damon, in particular, has an incredible work ethic. He makes everyone else look lazy. But hey, there’s nothing like working really hard on something that you really care about and see it paying off.”
“Cheese is probably the world’s worst business to get into. But I really fucking love cheese. I’m not a golfer, you know. I think the more time you spend living on a farm and making it work, the more compelling it becomes. You’ve got to have something to do, so why not do something you love?”
Your passion for cheese has been obvious since your earlier years. You had a nice chat about the subject with model Helena Christiensen back then.
“Haha. That was a good night, yeah”, he smiles.
I’ve got an idea for a new salad for you—a bit of lettuce, cucumber, homegrown tomatoes, and cheese. We can call it “The Salad of Darren”.
“I like it, I like it.”
One cheese from your range that caught my eye was Blue Monday, named after the famous New Order song. How does that rate strength-wise?
“Well, a mouthful of “Blue” is a very powerful one indeed. Cheese competitions tend to be won by blue cheeses, I think cheese aficionados tend to get more excited about blues than anything else. I think it’s because you can smell thousands of smells but only taste six different tastes, and blue cheese has all of those distinct tastes in one. It’s bitter, it’s salty, there’s sweetness from the sugars, it’s got acidity, and it’s got a really ‘Marmitey’ punch to it.
“Whack that on a frazzle and you’ll be dreaming your tits off.”
“It was my daughter that started the cheese on frazzles thing. I tasted it and thought it was amazing. It kind of ripped through the house like wildfire. I’ve basically burned through 12 Michelin Star chefs trying to create a giant one. We’re hoping by the time of the Big Feastival next year we’ll be able to unveil it”.
“Running a festival you have to use compostable plates and a giant frazzle seems like the perfect alternative. The compostables are really expensive, so I thought an edible alternative would be the way forward. In years gone by, food was served on crusty bits of bread, so if the frazzle doesn’t work, maybe we’ll go the old-school way. Rediscovering old recipes is a great joy.”
“When we bought the farm many years ago, the farmer who sold it was crawling out on his knees. It was a hard time then with foot-and-mouth disease hitting hard. Whenever you saw a farmer on TV they were usually crying. But the last twenty years have been an incredible time for British food culture. Going back to the Second World War there was only one kind of cheese being made and now we have over nine hundred.”
And of course, nothing washes cheese down better than a good wine…
“So, yeah, we had the ‘Great British Cheese Explosion’ and now we’re into the ‘Champagne Supernova’ years. English wine in particular has experienced an incredible rise to eminence in recent years. It was non-existent back in the ‘90s apart from hobbyists and amateurs and now they rank up there with the best in the world.”
“We’re very lucky where we are, though. The Cotswolds has always been a kind of agricultural economy. Although it’s close to London, it’s still deeply rural. There’s lots to celebrate around here and I’ve got the venue.”
“The demise of the record industry has been well-documented, with the likes of Lily Allen and co having to go onto OnlyFans to fund their tours. Chefs are the new rising stars. I bumped into Tom Straker the other night, and he’s the man of the moment right now, he’s practically James Bond.”
“I’ve been saying chefs are the new rockstars as part of the Feastival promotion.”
So, tell us about your new book. Somewhat unsurprisingly, you were trying to make a giant frazzle when you got the Blur reunion phone call.
“So I’m living this quite isolated, monastic existence in my sanctuary and suddenly the Blur monster reawakens and I find myself back in the explosion of parties. We’re booked in to do our biggest-ever shows and festivals then it’s back to our house for another party, this time full of teenage kids trying to drink me under the table.
“How on earth do you keep a balance with all that going on? It’s always at the point of collapsing into everyone doing the splits and dancing to “Rasputin”. It was a fucking wonderful year, and I didn’t intend to write a book about it, but about halfway through the journey I thought, “This has got a nice story to it.” The first thing I did last year was to sit down and write. You know what it’s like. Writing is fucking horrible isn’t it?”
I’ve no idea what you mean.
A nervous laugh from me.
You’ve mentioned before that writing is therapy. Was writing the book a satisfying process?
“Oh, absolutely. It really just flowed and I was sitting here where I am now, writing and laughing my head and it was actually a joy to write. It was really cathartic and helped me to process just what the hell had just fucking happened.”
“I mean, it was a really busy year and so many bridges were built. We weren’t estranged, but there wasn’t much contact. Any relationship that lasts as long as Blur’s has is going to have peaks and troughs. I was bloody nineteen when I first met Damon. I turned fifty-six this week. Maybe it’s just a matter of when the time is right.”
“Reaffirming relationships with the band members was a hugely important aspect of my daily existence. I mean, every day I think about Blur so to have them all in a good place was really satisfying. It’s worth everything.”
“So there’s the wonderful story of the reconciliation, but I’ve also got five teenage kids in the background to deal with and they’re so hard to connect with. Cooking for them, or driving them to parties and McDonalds is pretty much all you’re good for really.”
“The kids were too young to get it last time they saw Blur. I remember looking over during the last song at Hyde Park and they were all in a big pile asleep under the monitor as the rest of the audience was erupting in euphoria. So this time around I really didn’t know what the kids were going to make of it.”
“Thankfully, they all really enjoyed it this time and now they get involved in Feastival and everything else. It was a great experience taking them all around the world to experience other festivals, too.”
Your passion is clearly there in everything you do, but in preparing for the 2023 tour you found a new one in running. This was the exercise you chose to try to lose weight so you could fit into your Britpop trousers again. Ironically, it was time to cut down on your pork life and get some exercise. How did that go?
“I was too fat to run. Even the guy in the shop said so. I went in and asked the assistant if I could get some running shoes and he literally said “Who for?””
Ouch!
“In the past, I’ve always kept fit through running. Running in spikes is awesome, especially at night around the farm with a headtorch. It was a feeling of floating in space. My wife Claire is a real stalwart of the gym and epic bike rides and stuff. We go to the gym together. Well, I say gym, it’s more like a shed with a broken running machine and a few dumbbells in it.”
“In getting fit for the tour I was starting to feel like the odd one out, cos everyone else seemed to have a knee problem. Rountree did his knee in and it was touch-and-go as to whether or not we were able to do Wembley. There was the whole sense of everything being on a knife edge all the time.”
“There was this incredible sense of exhilaration and pure joy at what was happening, and at the same time worrying as to what could go wrong to ruin it. I was worried about my knee. Sauna boxing was what really did it. I found that cranking the heat up in the shed and boxing for half an hour with weights strapped to my legs really helped the weight fall off. But god, it was painful!”
Do you feel you’re stronger for it?
“That’s what’s terrifying. Being in a band is supposed to fuck you up. It’s what sends most people into the muppet ward. The Blur reunion was the opposite. It was like fucking rehab. There was no question. I HAD to get fit. You can’t point a super trooper at a fatso.”
“Then there was the pressure of making a new record as well. I was cacking it on the M40 on the way to the studio on the first day. I mean, what band even likes each other thirty-five years in, never mind ends up making a decent record again?”
“But, there’s a real sense of enchantment about Blur and there always has been, and that’s hopefully reflected in the title of the book. It was like going to an enchanted place again.
“All those years ago, Graham was the first person I saw when I arrived in London. It’s absolutely insane. He was getting out of his parent's car, holding a guitar. I was getting out of my parent's car, also holding a guitar. We went to a rehearsal studio and played a song that we still play to this day.”
It felt like the universe had aligned itself again at Wembley. With all the fans singing along too, it was like a big family reunion, but without the punch-ups.
“Haha, yes, absolutely. Didn’t it just? It’s spooky. It did seem this time around that the audience was much younger. though. There were a lot of 18-32-year-olds buying the tickets. A whole new audience. There was so much to be surprised, joyous, and even frightened about. Hopefully, the book makes a good read.”
Dare I ask what’s next? We’ve already mentioned that you like not knowing what’s around the corner, but do you have any idea?
“Well, it was nice kicking it again with the band last year. Now the kids are a bit older it could get a bit more interesting. I’m lining something up which is a bit spectacular for Feastival, but I can’t really say at the moment.”
If it’s ‘The Salad of Darren’ I’ll be knocking on your door wanting my cut.
“Haha. Well, you know, next year it’s 30 years next year since the Blur vs Oasis thing. I was in the car years ago with Lily and Keith Allen listening to the chart rundown, waiting to see if ‘Country House’ had beaten ‘Roll With It’ to the top. Lily was a child back then.”
I’ve got a scarier fact for you.
“Go on…”
Sam Fender was born on the day that Blur’s Parklife album was released.
“Really, oh no! God, that’s terrifying.
Alex James is a man at peace with himself and the world. Something tells me there’s a lot more to come yet and we need to brace ourselves. With his new book, ever-expanding farm, and Feastival surprises, we could be in for a right old treat in 2025.
Alex James is a man at peace with himself and the world. Something tells me there’s a lot more to come yet and we need to brace ourselves. With his new book, ever-expanding farm, wine business and Feastival surprises, we could be in for a right old treat in 2025.
