It's hard not to get enthusiastic about food when you chat with chef Brian Turner. As he speaks lovingly about potted meats, fish and chips and roast lamb, it's also very hard not to get hungry. "We're coming into the season now where we'll have potted meats on the menu," says Brian, who recently opened his new Turner's Grill at the Copthorne Birmingham. "I remember potted meats 50 years ago when I was a lad; it's just slow cooked pieces of meat to retain the flavour, take all the bone and the fat out of it, just spread it on good hot buttered toast and just like you, my mouth is salivating completely. We love those kind of dishes - to me that's real British grub is that. "I love fish and chips from Yorkshire, it's fantastic," he adds. "I love roast meat - a nice roast leg of lamb, roast loin or leg of pork..." Brian, who makes his annual pilgrimage to the BBC Good Food Show this month, may have turned 60 this year but shows no sign of slowing down - in fact he admits he's busier than ever: "I don't really have a day free between now and Christmas," says the genial Yorkshireman. "That doesn't mean we can't fit some things in and tweak things around - nevertheless it's a very hectic season. "We don't worry about days off, we have a good time when we're working, it's not a problem working," says Brian. "When you get to my time of life I take the view that all these are a bonus, and at some stage people are going to start asking for other people and not ask for us, so rather than cut the work down and then find that you haven't got enough is a difficult one, you just keep moving. "It's getting busier and busier which is wonderful, but realistically at some stage my energy will just dissipate a little bit." So where does he get his energy from? "D'you know, I don't really know," says Brian, who was awarded a CBE in 2002 for services to tourism and training in the catering industry. "I did Celebrity Mastermind last night with Matthew Wright and Josie D'Arby who studies reiki, which is all about the use of energy, and we were talking about how much time people need to sleep. "I get five hours a night sleep and for some reason it just is that way, metabolically it just works for me... it's just using the energy you've got." Whilst Leeds-born with his principal restaurants down south (in Mayfair and Slough), Turner is no stranger to Birmingham - both from his visits to the Good Food Show and his eponymous restaurant at the Crowne Plaza NEC. Brian has now transferred his restaurant to the Copthorne Hotel, Birmingham, Turner's Grill priding itself on good quality fresh ingredients, simply but well-cooked. "At the Copthorne Grill we want to produce honest simple food so we're not looking for Michelin stars at all, it's not that style - yet you want to have the same appetite and satisfaction saying 'I really enjoyed that', lick the plate, do whatever," says Brian. "However you look at it, a really good piece of English meat, simply grilled with a few French fries, perhaps a little bit of creamed spinach, is delicious to eat, but you'd hardly call it gastronomic - but there are moments when that's what you want." He adds: "[In Birmingham] you've now got two Michelin star restaurants - Jessica's and Simpsons - I think they're great places to be; like everything, one needs to make sure you don't get complacent and you make sure there's a marketplace for it and it works right. "I think like lots of things when it kicks off there's a giant explosion and certainly from the early 90s - which is what, 16 years ago - we've seen a great improvement, lots of people coming onto the scene, Michelin stars arriving; it's slowed down a bit and that's right, we need to make sure we stabilise and then build on solid foundations. "Training is what we need to put in now to keep us going, so there's lots of training needed but it's extremely healthy; we run lots of competitions through the Midlands Association of Chefs and the Academy of Culinary Arts - by running these competitions you see young people healthily coming through. "Having built the reputation we feel there's now an importance for people to sustain it." Whilst happily the adage 'too many cooks...' may not apply, this year's Good Food Show promises to be awash with more celebrity chefs than ever - from Jamie Oliver to Phil Vickery, Gordon Ramsay to James Martin. So how does someone like Brian, who has been to every show since it started, keep himself and his ideas fresh in the face of so much young(er) competition? "I employ other people!" he laughs. "No - we have a good team around our estate, but there is no real reason to keep trying to reinvent the wheel, nor to find things which people haven't had. "That is something young people need to learn; 'I've got this great dish that I've never ever seen before, it's fantastic', says Young Person, and then you say 'well let me tell you the reason - it sounds bloody disgusting'; it's getting that balance and perspective. "Good products, simply cooked, put together properly will actually rate above any new sophisticated terrine where you have to stuff a mange tout with an anchovy soufflé. It sounds fantastic but the work doesn't justify it; we need to control our movement forward and I think that's what we're doing." The BBC Good Food Show runs at the NEC from November 22-26; for more information call 0870 909 4133 or go to www.bbcgoodfoodshow.com Turner's Grill features in the new Taste of Birmingham volume III - see P5 features BRIAN ON: EATING HEALTHILY "That's difficult, [in fact] it's an impossibility in many ways; I try hard not to have a pudding because you can eat too much; I taste too much - I'm trying a health cereal bar every morning to try and kill some of my appetite, but when you walk through a kitchen, before you know it you've eaten a meal already. "I was at a pub the other day and there was a picture of me when I was 29 - thin as a rake; now no-one would believe it was me. Now twice that age I'm not fat but I'm actually well-built, comfortable with it and I'm conscious that I need to keep fit, but in this business it's very difficult. "I think 'never trust a thin chef' is absolutely spot on... if you're disciplined to not eat your food I think that defeats the object." THE BBC GOOD FOOD SHOW "I've been coming since its first show, been there every year and it's great fun, it's a great place to be. "A great place to meet the public, your peers, the chefs, your mates and Birmingham is up and coming, it's a place that's thriving these days, it's great to go there, great fun. "It's magnificent now in terms of size - I suppose we get a bit spoilt; I'm going to something out on the Norfolk coast on Sunday which is a good show, they're expecting 1500 people a day and they will be thrilled to bits if they get anywhere near that... whereas you've got the Good Food Show it's 25,000 a day, and to put that into perspective is not easy sometimes."
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