episode came when he cooked a classic carbonara for Sarah, Duchess of York when she guest edited the show.


In addition, he works as a private chef across the world and consultant for hospitality companies, helps out friends in their own kitchens from time to time, supports charities such as The Shrewsbury Ark and the Shrewsbury Food Hub, is the author of The Good Chicken Cookbook and has only just closed The Brompton Cookery School, which he ran with his wife Jenny for 11 years.


Those with particularly long memories will also remember his success on the Channel 4 series Iron Chef UK, during which he beat Martin Blunos, who held two Michelin stars at the time.


It’s not bad going for a self-taught chef who had studied sound engineering and originally wanted to pursue a career in the music industry but ended up in the kitchen out of necessity when he and his wife were running a pub and found themselves in need of somebody to do the cooking.


“Jenny and I were at the New Inn at Baschurch in Shropshire for nine years,” he explains. “We found ourselves having to make a decision over who was going to take charge in the kitchen.


“I was very much a basic home cook, able to throw a couple of sausages on the barbecue.


“I had to teach myself how to cook from scratch. I researched ingredients, watched demonstrations and practised every day.”


12


“I appeared at the event for the first time last year and really enjoyed the combination of gardening and food and drink, which work really well together,” Marcus says.


“As a chef I love to showcase the use of the freshest, seasonal ingredients, many of which you can grow yourself, and the flavours that can be produced.


“When I’m not on stage I hope to be in and around the showground looking at the show gardens and meeting new people.”


The festival takes place between May 8 and 11 and Marcus will be appearing at the Kitchen Garden Theatre on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday.


His stint at Malvern falls fewer than two weeks after he’ll have taken part in the London Marathon, which he’s running for the Royal Marsden Hospital in memory of a friend whom he met while taking part in a charity trek in Peru.


It will be the eighth time that Marcus has pounded the streets of the Capital, but the first in five years that he will have been there and follows surgery on both his knees.


“I used to do a bit of training with Ben Shepherd (This Morning presenter) and he would call me the Bean Machine as I can just go and do a run,” says the soon-to-be 46-year-old.


“It makes me happy that running for charity is something I can do to help others; I’ve raised money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association, Macmillan Cancer Support and Parkinson’s UK in the past.”


Marcus has long been a firm favourite with viewers of This Morning, on which he appears most months. An especially memorable


LIVE24-SEVEN.COM


Marcus’s move to the kitchen isn’t quite so surprising given that he grew up in pubs run by his dad and mum, Gerry and Ann Bean, in Oxfordshire, although he says there was little opportunity to learn the basics back then.


“Mum was always busy cooking for customers; as children we would choose what we wanted to eat that evening from a menu,” Marcus explains.


“While my mum didn’t teach me to cook, I think what we ate every night gave us a good palate; I knew what the taste should be like. I was lucky to grow up in the business.”


INTERVI EW MARCUS BEAN


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