Peaky Blinders fan Sara Cox contemplates Tommy Shelby tattoo
This week TV Mag gets to know the Love in the Countryside star
Peaky Blinders is my favourite TV show. If I were ever brave enough to have a tattoo, it would be Tommy Shelby’s face on my back.
The writing on that show is incredible, and the set, the costumes, the music, the acting… I love the character of Tommy – he’s the ultimate bad boy, but there’s a heart in there somewhere. Cillian Murphy [right, who plays him] is an incredible actor.
My perfect weekend starts with a sneaky lie-in, because if it’s school time I’m up at 6am, and if I’m covering for Chris Evans on Radio 2, I get up at 4.30am. If there’s some avocado and scrambled eggs going on, that’s lovely. We’ve accidentally adopted two tortoises, and we have a cat and two dogs, so they’ll pootle around the garden while I sit in the sunshine.
When it comes to the most famous contact in my phone, they’re all about even. They’re all DJs – I’ve got Annie Mac, Scott Mills, Nick Grimshaw [above], Zoe Ball – so they’re all on a level. I’ve basically got all of Radio 1 in my phone. If you ever need a song request, I’ve got it covered.
I’m reading Love After Love by Alex Hourston. I’m only a few pages in and I bloody love it already. I’m also obsessed with the The Pioppi Diet by Dr Aseem Malhotra – he’s a heart surgeon and writes about how we’re all heading for type-2 diabetes and obesity. Pioppi is a village in Italy, which they call ‘the village where they forget to die’. They’re all 90 years old and up on their roof fixing the tiles because they eat lots of olive oil!
Dartmoor is really beautiful – I want to take my kids [Lola, 14, Isaac, 10, and eight-year-old Renee] there on holiday. You get four seasons in a day there, that’s part of the magic – it’s really moody. You can be bathed in golden sunshine one second, then it’s sideways hail the next. I also love Cardigan Bay in Wales. I’m a real fan of loading up the car, taking the dogs and all your stuff, and schlepping off on holiday in the UK. Though it’s good to take a cagoule with you.
I don’t want to sound like I’m an art dealer, but I do have the Saatchi app on my phone. You can look at up-and-coming artists, although I’ve only spent a couple of hundred quid on it. I also quite like Peak, which is a brain-training app.
My favourite dinner is some nice crispy chicken thighs with a huge pile of veg. I could eat sweet potato and steamed spring cabbage with a bit of butter on all day long. The kids love it when we have a nice relaxed lunch. I’ll put out salmon, bagels, a bit of salami, sausages, hard-boiled eggs, cheese and some nice salad stuff.
Love in the Countryside, Wednesday, 9pm, BBC Two
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