Get to know Andi Oliver: the many sides to the Great British Menu host

The show in which chefs from across the country compete for the opportunity to serve one of their dishes at a special banquet has been hosted by Andi since 2020. But this is just one step in a long connection with all things food, and in April 2023 we hosted the laytest one here at the Southbank Centre as Andi took over our Queen Elizabeth Hall to introduce her long-awaited first cookbook, The Pepperpot Diaries: Stories from My Caribbean Table.

But how did Oliver get to this point? What did she do before presenting? And what does she do when she’s not on our screens? Well, wonder these things no more as we take a look at the many sides of Andi Oliver.

Andi Oliver, the musician

It’s not always been about food for Oliver. She first came to public attention as a musician with the post punk band Rip, Rig + Panic. Formed out of the ashes of The Pop Group by Bruce Smith, Gareth Sager and Mark Springer in 1980, Rip, Rig + Panic grew from a trio to a band, when they were joined by vocalist Neneh Cherry and bassist, and brother of Andi, Sean Oliver. By the time the band put out their second album, I Am Cold in 1982, the still teenage Andi had become part of the band too, following her brother into the fold as an additional singer.

Even by the standards of post-punk, Rip, Rig + Panic’s sound was distinctive, featuring a blend of free jazz, funk, and reggae, plus an embrace of free experimentation which led to often chaotic live shows. Though they had little chart success, the band were well thought of in music circles, with positive press from NME and a prominent fan in John Peel, who invited them to perform a Peel Session. And they were even handed one of the coveted guest music slots on sitcom The Young Ones, performing ‘You’re My Kind of Climate’ in the series one episode, Flood.

By 1984 the band had ceased to be, but Oliver’s musical journey continued, initially with the band Kalimba, and then with her brother Sean as Mighty Hog, until his tragically early death of sickle cell anaemia aged just 27.

Andi Oliver, the best friend

Andi first met Neneh Cherry through her brother, or more specifically through her brother’s misfortune. As we mentioned, Cherry and Sean Oliver were in Rip, Rig + Panic together, when in 1981 Sean spent several weeks in hospital following a car crash. Cherry would visit him everyday and on one of these visits met Andi, as the former told The Independent in 1998, ‘It was love at first sight… like we’d always known each other. Within minutes we were outside in the smoking room, smoking fags and planning to make a record together’.

From there the friendship endured and the two became inseparable; through individual career peaks, through boyfriends, husbands and children, the friendship has continued as strong as ever. ‘If I hadn’t met her I think I’d be more scared of being me,’ Andi told The Independent in that same 1998 interview, ‘Neneh makes me cry through happiness a lot’. As well as a musical connection, the pair also shared a love of food, that began with them cooking together whilst they plotted their musical futures as teenagers, and has continued to this day, even making it onto our television screens in the form of the 2007 BBC series Neneh & Andi Dish It Up.

Andi Oliver, the chef

With and without Cherry, Andi has been in the kitchen all her life and gradually she began to share her culinary skills with a wider audience. For four years she ran the successful pop-up dining experience, The Moveable Feast and then, following a spell as creative director of The Birdcage restaurant she launched her own kitchen at Homerton’s The Jackdaw and Star. Then in 2016 came Andi’s her award-winning Stoke Newington restaurant, which has since been followed by a showcase of real Caribbean home cooking titled Wadadli Kitchen.

And interspersed with these culinary ventures have been appearances cooking on our screens, starting of course with Neneh & Andi Dish It Up, and progressing to appearances on food entertainment staples such as Saturday Kitchen and Sunday Brunch. Ultimately though, Andi is never more at home than when cooking up something fantastically flavoursome in her own kitchen, as she showed during lockdown.

Andi Oliver, the mother

The voice behind the camera in that last clip is a neat segue into this next aspect of Andi’s life, that of mother to Miquita. You only need to take a scroll through Andi’s Instagram feed to get a sense of how important her daughter is to her. There are more images of Miquita than of Andi herself, each one accompanied by short captions of pride, love and compliments. Like her mother Miquita Oliver found initial fame as a teenager, and with a musical connection too, presenting Sunday lunchtime staple Popworld between 2001 and 2006.

In recent years the close bond between Andi and Miquita – deftly captured by our own Misan Harriman in the above photograph – has spread into their working lives with the pair appearing together on a number of television programmes. In 2018 they teamed up for the BBC’s Eight Go Rallying: The Road to Saigon, driving a 1959 Morris Minor across East Asia, and were later reunited on our screens for Channel 4’s Celebrity Gogglebox. The pair’s latest television connection came just last year as they explored their Caribbean heritage in the much-praised BBC 2 series The Caribbean with Andi and Miquita.

Andi Oliver, the presenter

All of which brings us neatly back to Andi’s career as a television presenter, which began in the 1990s when she swapped an onstage microphone for a backstage one, presenting Backstage at The Brits. From music television Andi was nudged more mainstream in 1994  fronting Channel 4’s cult 1994 show Baadasss TV, alongside the decidedly leftfield co-presenting choice of Ice T.

Andi’s subsequent presenting duties have been rich and varied, including more music connections in the form of the BBC’s coverage of Glastonbury and the BBC Proms; radio work as a host on GLR and of The British Council’s The Selector, and leading literary discussion as presenter of Sky Arts Book Club. And then there have been the feast of food-related shows, which include Beat the Chef, Christmas Kitchen, Food Unwrapped, and of course, Great British Menu, where she has become not just a host, but a bonafide style icon to boot