Fuelled by the success of TV shows like Come Dine With Me the trend to host dinner parties is back with a vengeance, with more of us inviting our friends round for an evening of socialising, food, wine and conversation. But what do we look for in our ideal dinner companions that will keep us enthralled in them from the first chink of the wine glasses through to when the last taxi arrives?
Hollyoaks actress Gemma Bissix, has the glamour and brains to grace any dinner party, though her evil alter-ego Clare Devine might be less welcome! Gemma’s recent experiences on Master Chef also stand her in good stead as an authority on how to socialise in style without necessarily cooking up a seven course meal. I caught up with Gemma to find out how to impress my guests.
Hey Gemma, what are you up to at the minute then?
Well the reason I’m here today is because I’ve been doing some research with Echo Falls wine who sponsor Come Down With Me and they’re focusing on this new craze that eating in is the new eating out!
We’ve been doing all these surveys to find out the top dinner party typologies, for example the top celebrity guest and things like that, it’s been really interesting.
Well I love wine and I love Come Down With Me! So, you’re doing this and we saw you earlier this year in celebrity MasterChef, are you a bit handy in the kitchen then?
Well I wasn’t until I signed up for MasterChef and then I started having dinner parties and invited my friends round to test my cooking ability. We’ve always got together me and my friends but they were always the ones who cooked! I wouldn’t say I’m an expert because I only got to the quarter finals in Master Chaf so I wasn’t that great…
Oh well, so what do you think makes the idea dinner party?
Well personally for me it’s the guests, and that’s what we found in the surveys as well. The guests we far more important than things like presentation - which come right down at the bottom! - I’d probably disagree with the top celebrity guest though…
Ooh, what were they?
Well, nationally, Stephen Fry came out at the top by far. I mean I’d talk to him, but for me it would be Johnny Depp for all intellectual reasons of course. Then I’d move on to people like Jennifer Aniston and Jeremy Clarkson because I love Top Gear…. Get me in the reasonably priced car and then come have a dinner party.
Ooh, good idea, I’d invite Jenson Button or Sebastian Vettel I think, I hear the way to a mans heart is through his food… But who came out as the worst dinner party guest?
Well, obviously I don’t want to put the negatives in, but the bottom guests were Victoria Beckham, [FF: Well she probably won’t eat much!] well that’s what someone else said to me, it’s not my opinion but I’d like a meat eater at my party, I’m not into the old veg and steamed fish. I don’t think Cheryl Cole or anyone on a diet would be interested in my party because it will be full of cream and fat!
Yumm, I love it!
Oh, Katie Price also came down the bottom as well.
Now I can’t cook to save my life, how can I pull off a great evening without serving up fancy food?
If you cant cook? You’d probably be better off getting a takeaway!
Brilliant advice! So, although we’d all like to share a bottle of wine with a successful actress like yourself, we all know you as nasty Clare Devine in Hollyoaks, how did you find playing that role and did you ever get people screaming at you in the street?
Quite a lot of people used to shout at me… it’s usually the mothers rather than the children though. One woman came up to me and told me that I was a murdering witch and the daughter was like “shut up, you can’t say that!” and another Grandmother hit me with her handbag!
Oh no! That’s terrible…
It was just a little handbag, but she was going on saying I should be ashamed of myself.
Cringe! Now, you said you’d like Jennifer Aniston to come to your dinner party, which is interesting, because we all know Angelina Jolie is being branded a bit of a bitch, and you love to play bitchy, headstrong women, so are you definitely ‘team Aniston‘ or do you admire Ange too?
No not at all. I think that she’s beautiful and stunning and a good actress, it’s difficult to give an opinion on someone I don’t know, but from what I read, I would have to say that Jennifer Aniston, for me, gives off something that is more like myself and seems chilled out.
I go for personality more than looks, and don’t get me wrong Angelina Jolie is beautiful to look at, but each to their own and I would definitely have Jennifer Aniston over Angelina Jolie at my own dinner party.
If you could play any ‘baddie’ woman in a film about her life, who would you take on?
Oh my goodness, I don’t really know, but I’d like to do Thelma And Louise, not that they’re bad women but they’re running away aren’t they? We could do a new-age Thelma And Louise… I could be the blonde and someone like Megan Fox could be the brunette! That would be lovely!
The other half of our readers will know you as playing yet another Claire, this time Clare Bates from Eastenders… so which character did you enjoy playing most of all?
First of all, if there’s any Hollywood movies out there in need of a character called Claire, feel free to give me a call! I can’t really chose between them because they’re both different, in Hollyoaks the job was fantastic because I got to play such and evil role and got to attempt to kill people and stuff like that so it was so far fetched from reality that it was really fun to play. However, when I came back to Eastenders it was equally as fun because I got to work with people I hadn’t seen in ages and I was working near to where I’m from back in London and the character was really fun and the character was really un too, I mean come on, seducing Ian Beale….
Who wouldn’t want to do that?!
I know, I think it’s quite funny because he’s one of the iconic legends on the show, so for me it was a great honour in a really weird kind of way!
You’ve also been busy with other TV work, so are you going to settle with another long running soap any time soon?
Not at the moment, I’ve just signed for a play starting this month so I’m touring around the UK! It’s called The Game Of Murder and I’m playing a nice character for a change which should be quite good, I’m really excited to get into the theatre world and train a bit more and learn a bit more about my art because the theatre world is really respected in the acting industry and I haven’t done any theatre acting yet.
So, if you could cook me one meal to make me forgive you for being horrible to my beloved Max and O.B, what would you knock up?
Oh, I think we’d have to do a Fillet Steak with some Dauphinoise potatoes and some mixed green vegetables and for pudding I’d make a home made Banoffie pie! Any maybe some chilli prawns for starters.
Ooh, I’m hungry already, I’ll hold you to that! But for now, thanks for taking the time out to chat to us and best of luck in the theatre world!
FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison
Fuelled by the success of TV shows like Come Dine With Me the trend to host dinner parties is back with a vengeance, with more of us inviting our friends round for an evening of socialising, food, wine and conversation. But what do we look for in our ideal dinner companions that will keep us enthralled in them from the first chink of the wine glasses through to when the last taxi arrives?
Hollyoaks actress Gemma Bissix, has the glamour and brains to grace any dinner party, though her evil alter-ego Clare Devine might be less welcome! Gemma’s recent experiences on Master Chef also stand her in good stead as an authority on how to socialise in style without necessarily cooking up a seven course meal. I caught up with Gemma to find out how to impress my guests.
Hey Gemma, what are you up to at the minute then?
Well the reason I’m here today is because I’ve been doing some research with Echo Falls wine who sponsor Come Down With Me and they’re focusing on this new craze that eating in is the new eating out!
We’ve been doing all these surveys to find out the top dinner party typologies, for example the top celebrity guest and things like that, it’s been really interesting.
Well I love wine and I love Come Down With Me! So, you’re doing this and we saw you earlier this year in celebrity MasterChef, are you a bit handy in the kitchen then?
Well I wasn’t until I signed up for MasterChef and then I started having dinner parties and invited my friends round to test my cooking ability. We’ve always got together me and my friends but they were always the ones who cooked! I wouldn’t say I’m an expert because I only got to the quarter finals in Master Chaf so I wasn’t that great…
Oh well, so what do you think makes the idea dinner party?
Well personally for me it’s the guests, and that’s what we found in the surveys as well. The guests we far more important than things like presentation - which come right down at the bottom! - I’d probably disagree with the top celebrity guest though…
Ooh, what were they?
Well, nationally, Stephen Fry came out at the top by far. I mean I’d talk to him, but for me it would be Johnny Depp for all intellectual reasons of course. Then I’d move on to people like Jennifer Aniston and Jeremy Clarkson because I love Top Gear…. Get me in the reasonably priced car and then come have a dinner party.
Ooh, good idea, I’d invite Jenson Button or Sebastian Vettel I think, I hear the way to a mans heart is through his food… But who came out as the worst dinner party guest?
Well, obviously I don’t want to put the negatives in, but the bottom guests were Victoria Beckham, [FF: Well she probably won’t eat much!] well that’s what someone else said to me, it’s not my opinion but I’d like a meat eater at my party, I’m not into the old veg and steamed fish. I don’t think Cheryl Cole or anyone on a diet would be interested in my party because it will be full of cream and fat!
Yumm, I love it!
Oh, Katie Price also came down the bottom as well.
Now I can’t cook to save my life, how can I pull off a great evening without serving up fancy food?
If you cant cook? You’d probably be better off getting a takeaway!
Brilliant advice! So, although we’d all like to share a bottle of wine with a successful actress like yourself, we all know you as nasty Clare Devine in Hollyoaks, how did you find playing that role and did you ever get people screaming at you in the street?
Quite a lot of people used to shout at me… it’s usually the mothers rather than the children though. One woman came up to me and told me that I was a murdering witch and the daughter was like “shut up, you can’t say that!” and another Grandmother hit me with her handbag!
Tagged in Gemma Bissix