Chef’s 50 years of feeding MPs

Terry Wiggins, a chef who leads the catering team at Westminster’s Portcullis House, is retiring this month after 50 years. He reckons he has served 13 prime ministers in that time and is still dreaming up new recipes.

“Can I have more pork please?”

Terry bellows in the direction of the kitchen.

Under the heat lamps of the serving counter his team of chefs are busy carving a chunk of crispy pork belly, plating haddock fishcakes and replenishing huge bowls of new potatoes and roasted carrots.

A long line of parliamentary staff, MPs, a few police officers, political journalists and visitors are all waiting with their trays.

We’re in the Debate canteen in Portcullis House, the relatively new building beside the River Thames where many MPs have their offices.

It’s just across the road from the Palace of Westminster. There are many places on the Parliamentary estate to eat but this is always one of the busiest.

“It’s a hub, a meeting place. Everybody eats together, MPs queue up with the general staff… they all stand together and chat,” sous chef Terry tells me proudly as we talk beside a vat of soup.

After 50 years spent feeding our politicians, he is retiring this month.

Today he has swapped his chef’s whites for a floral shirt and a green tweed blazer.

He’s just back from meeting the Speaker of the Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, and is mid-way through a celebratory lunch with his wife.

Terry started working in the House of Commons in September 1974. Harold Wilson had been elected prime minister, Brian Clough had been dismissed as the manager of Leeds United and Kung Fu Fighting was topping the charts.

He was just 16 when his school’s careers office suggested he apply for a catering job in Parliament.

“I’d done home economics at school and I cooked with my mum. I thought it was a great opportunity.”

He remembers being very shy as he went to work with the “older gentlemen”.

“Now it has come full circle and I am one of the older gentlemen.”

David Cameron once asked for the recipe of Parliament’s famous (it had its own social media account) jerk chicken.

John Major used to send his staff over from Downing Street to pick up one of his curries.

He remembers Margaret Thatcher as “a lovely lady” and Sir Keir Starmer as a busy “grab and go” man.

It’s not just politicians. Terry also counts Frank Bruno, Brian May, Rick Wakeman and Gary Lineker among his customers.

Over the years politicians have changed and so have their palates.

House of Commons catering services began in 1773 when the deputy housekeeper, John Bellamy, was asked by MPs to set up a dining room.

Famous at the time for its veal pie, tastes hadn’t evolved much by the time Terry arrived in 1974.

There was a lot of what he calls “school food” – dishes such as spotted dick.

Classical French dishes were popular and there was an experiment of offering “nouveau cuisine”. That didn’t last very long, says Terry.

There was also plenty of beef tongue and halibut.

He remembers two politicians who would eat together and regularly put in the same order: “Two working man’s portions of your beef and two pewter mugs of your finest ales.”

“They reminded me of Statler and Waldorf from the Muppets.”

These days he says MPs tend to be healthier but also have more cosmopolitan tastes.

“People go on international holidays,” he says and like dishes that replicate what they ate when abroad.

Jambalaya, jollof and pho are all popular.

Terry says he researches his own recipes but also gets help from members of staff who come from places like the Caribbean or Vietnam.

“They know the little tricks that make that dish memorable.”

Food tastes have changed and so has Parliament.

Back in 1974, Terry says Parliament was “Hogwarts and Eton all joined into one”.

“That was a great time but that was that time. Now we have moved forward.

In particular, he welcomes the change to hours, which has reduced the number of late night sittings.

“When I first started we were here until two in the morning, three or four days a week.”

“Female members have helped to change that – that’s for the good. MPs should have a work-life balance.”

He says people often have the wrong idea about MPs.

“People think they’ve got two heads and talk funny but they are just the general public who we have voted in.

“It is very sad that society puts them under the amount of pressure that they do.

“They are just really good people.”

Parliament has been his workplace for 50 years. It is also the place where he met his wife, Christine.

He was serving cold cuts of meat at the buffet. She worked in one of the members’ dining rooms.

One day, by the hot plates, he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him.

Thirty-seven years later, they are still together.

Terry admits he feels “a little bit nervous” about his impending retirement.

“I had structure in my life for 50 years – maybe there is hardship in getting up at five in the dark and going home in the dark.

“But it is a fantastic job, like working in a museum.

“Everyday is busy or an adventure.”

Listen to Ben Wright’s interview with Terry Wiggins on BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour at 2200 GMT on Sunday