i'm kasia madera with bbc world news. our top story: north and south korea have agreed to hold military talks to defuse border tension. and the two countries‘ teams will appear together at next month's winter olympics in the south. it follows their first high—level meeting in two years. the us has given the talks a cautious welcome. but the north's delegation ruled out any discussions on its nuclear weapons programme. former trump strategist steve bannon has quit his right—wing news group, breitbart. it follows unflattering comments attributed to him in a new book about the white house. and this video is trending on bbc.com. it's the alligators of north carolina demonstrating their ability to survive the cold weather. they poke their snouts through holes in the ice to breathe. when it's this cold, they enter a state of hibernation. that's all from me now. stay with us on bbc world news. it is just after half past midnight on bbc news. it's time for hardtalk.

welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. not so long ago, british food was the laughing stock of the world — bland, stodgy and flavourless. but how things have changed. today, the nation seems obsessed with cooking and baking on tv and fine dining. my guest today is one of the new breed of top celebrity television chefs, marcus wareing. yes, we are now obsessed with good food, but is that altogether healthy? marcus wareing, welcome to hardtalk.

there are an awful lot of chefs in the world. only a very few elite, top chefs. what distinguishes the very best from the rest? i think it is — i think first of all it's a mindset, it's a work ethic and i think there is a type of sacrifice that a top chef has and wants to sort of drive themselves individually, and as an individual, to excel head and shoulders above everybody else. and a lot of advice that i've ever had through the years coming through the ranks was... and it came from my father originally, was to stand out from the crowd and to do that you need to do something different. most of the great chefs around the world started as apprentices to other truly great chefs. if we look at your cv, you worked with albert roux, you've obviously famously worked

a lot with gordon ramsay, both in their different ways great chefs. so did you acquire skills and knowledge directly from them? without a doubt. your travels, your working in kitchens is the foundation of who you are as a chef. the most important thing about trying to be a good chef or someone who is going to be a little bit different is working with some of the best chefs. when you work through all the different kitchens, you're inspired, you're energised, but you're also gathering knowledge, education and discipline. they're leaders of examples and leaders of their industry and they have something to offer. they may not tell or talk to you every day, they may not tell you an idea or recipe, but you have to go into their kitchens and feed off their energy, like a big battery that you are sucking everything out of. you store it while you're training, you go and train more, you put it on a shelf, you go and train in another kitchen, you put all that information on the shelf and when you become a head chef you bring it all down

and use all of that experience. i've got, as it happens, your menus from last night here at marcus, your flagship two michelin star restaurant. and therefore, i'm looking at this, it all looks delicious, i notice a very big emphasis on british produce. yes. you know, from starters of wood pigeon and portland crab and glazed ox tongue with dorset snails, through to your mains — herdwick lamb, cumbrian veal, grouse, all of this, it sounds delicious, but very british. yes. so this ‘who am i‘ question, what are your menus saying about who you are? so the way i look at my restaurants, and because the way in which industries change and farming and the way we receive our produce, i look at the uk as my local community of food. because i can put an order in this morning from scotland and get it tomorrow morning. so things move quickly.

so local, uk, and then i spread further afield into europe for other different types of produce that are better orfarmed better or just taste better and we're always searching for something really nice. but i don't like to go too far across the world to gather food produce. so this idea of food miles matters to you? very much. i think now in the world we need to be very careful that we aren't purchasing too much from all over the world. i don't have japanese flavours through my menu, or curries. certain things i don't need to put into this menu because it's not really a reflection of me as a person. i've never trained in lots of different cuisines, but i will never experiment them on my menu. so the reflection of the menu and the ingredients that you've talked about are about a local lad from the north—west of england, using the produce from this fabulous country, this island, that we live on. i love it — the phrase "a local lad from southport", wasn't it, in the north—west of england, with a dad who was a market trader. it's a great story.

does it sit uneasily with you in anyway, that here we are in a posh, expensive part of london, and all this fabulous food you are serving comes at a price. your tasting menu is £120, roughly $140, your a la carte, i imagine a dish, a main, would be about £60, £70. just a bit less than that. yeah, but these are big numbers and out of reach for most people. for a local lad from southport, does that bother you? no, it doesn't, because i think it is not about all men being equal, it's about a matter of choice and i think what we do offer is choice and there are tasting menus, there are a la carte menus, but there are also very good reasonable lunch menus. the wine, you can come to this restaurant and spend the same amount of money on a glass of wine than you would in a good bar or pub. it's all a point of choice.

so with the thousands of bottles we have on oui’ menu, when you come here, there's something for everybody. so i don't look at it as a rich man's room, or we're in knightsbridge, anyone who comes to my restaurant, you can have tap water, a glass of house wine and the lunch menu for two people you could be out of the door for less than £100 if you wish, but it's your choice to come and spend the value that you want to spend. but isn't it nice, even for a northern lad, to maybe come with your girlfriend or your wife and dress up, come to knightsbridge, come to london, do something different? we're not on everyone‘s doorstep, we just happen to be in the heart of london. i sort of love it. i'm proud to have worked my way from there. it didn't arrive on a silver tray, it was a lot of hard work. and what about food snobbery? i mean, you have two michelin stars. not many chefs around the world do. but there is something about this whole sort of fetishisation of the michelin star which sticks in some people's throats.

do you sometimes feel that it's the wrong way to reallyjudge the quality of food and restaurants? no, i don't. i think michelin are very, very important and very present. i think their history determines how good they really are. they are judging chefs as a guide and they're giving you a point of recognition and giving you an accolade. it's not something you ask for, it is given to you. it's almost a gift of your standards of what you do. but it puts you under enormous pressure. some chefs have started saying to michelin, even if they've had in the past one or two stars, they are now saying, i don't want to be part of your network. i don't want to be judged by you any more. the pressure is too constant, it's too immense. the things you require of us in terms of the level of service, the presentation, arejust actually making us a restaurant we don't want to be.

i disagree. i completely disagree, because i don't think it's the michelin putting the pressure on the chef, it's the general public and the expectation of the general public. in the last ten years, social media has become a big part. everybody in your restaurant now can post their thoughts of the dinner, of the experience they are eating. so i think it's more thanjust michelin. every person at your table is now a reviewer. exactly and they can post something on the internet... does that scare the hell out of you? oh, no. no. it's a challenge, it sets standards, it even tells me what my restaurant is doing when i'm not here. you have to embrace technology, you have to embrace it. even if i don't like it and do it as well as the next chef, i do have a team of people around me that can advise me and show me how to move forward. but if i look down on that process, and i look down and say michelin delivers pressure, then i would be a nervous wreck.

you must always turn pressure into positive thinking and positive energy and enjoy yourjob. go back to your roots. think about those ingredients. stop worrying about what everyone is saying. the late aa gill, i don't know if you knew him, but he was one of britain's sort of best known restaurant reviewers and he rebelled against the michelin spirit. the sort of smart, formal dining that it seemed to encourage. he said this, "the guide now seems to be wholly out of touch with the way people now actually eat. it's still rewarding fat, conservative, fussy rooms", maybe he meant rooms like this, "that use expensive ingredients with ingratiating pomp to serve glossy plutocrats." is that marcus? no. absolutely not and i don't think fine dining is that. i think there are lots of food writers and critics maybe that don't see the fun or the luxury

or the enjoyment in fine dining, because it is a homage to the chef and i think the world has changed. i think a chef cooking in a high street restaurant, that's got 20 seats in and he's slaving away in the back of a kitchen, an open kitchen. that is today as enjoyable as eating in a fine dining restaurant. it's all about what somebody wants for an occasion and if i'm going to set up a restaurant in this hotel, a 5—star hotel, it is known all over the world, there's a level of luxury i have to provide and i want to provide. it strikes me that as you've become more successful, like so many top chefs you've developed the brand and become a tv personality, you're on the british masterchef show, which has made you enormously popular in this country. you've also opened other restaurants in central london, so now you've got a stable of three. it all means that you are not every single lunchtime

and dinner actually in the kitchen, here at your number one restaurant, doing it yourself. it strikes me that when people come here, and as we've discussed they do pay a substantial amount of money for food from the marcus restaurant, they expect marcus wareing to be slaving away in the kitchen. i think life has changed and up until four years ago when i revamped this restaurant i was in this kitchen every single day. i never looked for television, it came and found me. i never, ever woke up and wanted to write a cookery book and i never needed to open two of the restaurants on top of this. i was very satisfied with what i had. so why did you do it? why did you stretch yourself? because i found i had some very talented people underneath me that i had to find opportunities for. and what i see is having those other restaurants, i've created opportunities for very talented people to become bosses within their own right, within my stable. but what if you stretch yourself too thin?

no. what if the standards at this restaurant to be honest are not quite as good when you are not here? i come back. i say goodbye to television and goodbye to books and i do thejob that i'm paid to do, which is cook. the rest is a luxury item that is added my life. interesting you talk about the team. there's been a lot of discussion recently about the workplace sort of temperature in top kitchens and there is a lot of discussion about, and there's no other word for it, bullying and abuse that happens in kitchens and is often driven by the character of the number one chef, which in this case of course would be you. have you bullied your staff in the past? i think bullying is a word that is dressed up in many ways. i was born in the ‘70s and bullying was something that was done in the playground. it was a fight, a push, it was verbal. i don't think that happens in kitchens. i've never experienced it myself in kitchens. i'm amazed.

i've raised my voice, swear, shout and drive people very, very hard through a hard service? yes. i've had it done to me and i've done it on my staff in the past. there have been serious incidents in kitchens. i'm looking at one in france, where a station chef deliberately and repeatedly scalded his kitchen assistant, there were other incidents that came into light after that with sous chefs and assistants recounting tales of abuse ranging, i'm quoting here — it sounds absurd, but it's not, including a slap in the face with a wet fish, being stabbed in the calves with a kitchen knife, all sorts of different burning incidents. 0ne ex—assista nt told a reporter in france, quote, these torturers must be told that they are destroying lives. what the heck is going on in some of these kitchens? i think these are very few incidences that are overshadowing

a fabulous industry that's bigger than a handful of incidents or many, many more. there are millions of people working in our industry and thousands and thousands of kitchens just running through london alone. i think the kitchens are pressure cookers. what has changed, and this is something we really must focus on, is kitchens have become very much open places and the chef is part of the front of service as well as the back. chefs are now delivering food. so i believe that the way... you actually come out here of an evening? yes, we can come out and even my chefs can come out here and speak to customers. but what's changed is we, the chef, have now neutralised error in kitchen. the pressure cooker of the kitchen was driven by hard cookery on top of a hot stove and in the oven. it was all cooked last minute. so the science of food has allowed us to change the way we cook, we are sometimes taking the training out of our young chefs to make thejob easier. because there's so much choice and so few people wanting to necessarily work in our industry. maybe that's because you don't pay enough as well. that's wrong.

we pay our staff minimum and above minimum wage. minimum wage is a bit of a low bar you're setting yourself. minimum wage is a point of, if you work an 8—hour day, you find it tough to survive and some of my chefs do much longer days and they can have about £30,000 which is just below a trainee chef. the average wage in the uk is £27,000 and you're saying, if they work ridiculously long hours, your guys mightjust get to that sort of threshold. you own one of the most luxurious restaurants in all of london. but we are delivering a standard... this is a school of education as well as a job. and we must identify the difference. you don't enterfine dining just for a job. you have to want to be here. the key thing here is choice. everybody who wakes up

in the morning in this part of the western world can have a choice in life. you can get out of bed and look for a job, you can work as many hours as you like and you can pretty much never, ever be out of work but don't work in fine dining at the top end if you want an easy life because it doesn't exist. british people spend £3 billion a year on ready meals. that's six times more than in spain. whatever we do when we switch on the telly and watch you cooking up fine food, we go to the shop and buy a ready meal. we buy ready meals for one reason. first of all they're sitting on the shelf, available, there are more of them and people are working hard with less time and maybe don't want to cook. schools finish later, the school run's different. everybody‘s lifestyle is changing. social media is changing things. go to supermarkets,

there's your problem of obesity, there's your problem of convenience. it's interesting you talk about the obesity problem and you say you believe you are part of a culture which is beginning to respect and understand food much better but you actually opposed your fellow top chef jamie oliver when he campaigned so long and hard for a sugar tax to be put on the example the sugary drinks, the pop that so many kids still consume. you seemed to think that was a very bad idea. why? i don't think it was a bad idea. my concern was, what are we going to do with that money? that tax? my concern is, what happens with that tax? the thing thatjamie 0liver has done over the years is really open people up to how we have cooked at home. he's the one that put all the petitions together, he's the guy that went to downing street... campaigned for better quality school lunches.

you can't just stop at downing street with a tax. it isn't so much what we do with a tax, it is to send a price signal to people that they shouldn't be buying all of these very sweet and fizzy drinks. the price goes up a little bit... they will still buy them. you still think so? alcohol will go up in a pub... you seem to have a view that government and authorities have no role to play. you said, it is not the responsibility of government but parents. we are all human beings who can read and write. let's not blame the government. there are only two people to blame for the obesity crisis, mum and dad. doesn't it start at home? why should the government be responsible for what people purchase in the shop? why should we hold the government responsible for our choices? they're not our teachers or guardians. they have a completely different role and a hard role at that.

i think they've got more important things to worry about with the economy and with brexit and what they are going to do with our taxes to worry about what we are consuming at home. is brexit worrying you as a restauranteur? is it going to change your business. yes, in many ways. i voted to remain. i've learned more about brexit. i am excited about the choice of leaving. i was shocked the morning i woke up and heard the result. after 2a hours of thinking about it, "we've just got to get on with this." the country has made a decision. let's do it. what is the positive we can drive from leaving europe? that is that we have to potentially build our own future? why i voted to remain was purely from the employment point of view. there are restaurateurs saying they are losing staff,

there are people saying the double whammy of losing key staff who are heading for home or not applying forjobs that have become vacant from europe, the pool of talented european staff who are available to british restaurants is diminishing. but also the pound is much weaker and that's affecting you as you import some of your foodstuffs with a double whammy and some restaurateurs are saying they will have to close. from the point of view of where we purchase, the customers will get a hit on that. you have to pay your bills and wages but it's interesting in not having more of the european community coming into the uk to work and that is that we, the brits, have got to get out of bed and maybe work a bit harder and it will make us better employers. i think we need to change our approach a little bit more because what quality we have, we're going to have to take really good care of it. secondly, we're going to have put

better apprenticeship schemes in and start talking to the youth about exciting industries. when i was at school and at college, two or three things stood out. woodwork, metalwork, cookery, sewing and all sorts of different things i did as a young boy at school. you don't see a lot of this. we need to really get back to really good industries and saying it's not all about going to university. that's fine if it comes to pass but in the short run, for example, how many of your kitchen staff, the team here at marcus restaurant, are from other parts of the european union? about one—third. more at the lower end. what i find is that they are here for better opportunity. you probably get a better wage over here even though they might say that they don't. it's also the opportunity i think we can give people. many of these folks may well over the next year or two may have

to reconsider their position. we, the employers, must make some big changes. i think on a negative note, a european family coming to work with us, we need to work closely with our schools and colleges and create a workforce from our own pool of talent. we need to be growing our own talent now and put more emphasis on us and not relying upon our european neighbours to work for us. and briefly, in terms of the produce as well. because of the weaker pound and the more expensive produce brought in from abroad, you need to source more and more of everything you provide to customers from the uk. and that's going to make us better farmers, we need to look at agriculture and change lots of different things going forward. it's going to take a long time. this will be going on way beyond my time. i do think there is a great chance for us to put the great back

into great britain again because this is our time to live again and not rely upon that fabulous european flair that's been taking care of our industry for so many years because you can't deny that our european neighbours, they do bring a sense of class to our catering industry that maybe we, the brits, don't have. we've got to find it. we have to, we have no choice. we now start to create and make our own noise in the world. who would ever say that we'd grow and make wine in this country? we're making more english wine than ever. that's going to continue and that's a celebration. marcus wareing, that's a great place to end. thank you very much for being on hardtalk. my pleasure. tuesday was a disappointing day up

and down the country, cold, damp and grey with the exception of western scotland which saw a little sunshine. into wednesday we start to see a bit of change to the weather. a band of rain slowly moves eastward across the country. first thing on wednesday, across central and western areas, clear skies and quite chilly with a touch of frost, a little fog. wednesday for many of us looks brighter. we should see some sunshine, particularly in the afternoon because it begins cold with ice in northern ireland central, northern and east areas has a weather front slowly moving out into the north sea.

in fact, for a good portion of scotland it could stay damp all day. there will be a little mist and murk and hill fog. most of the rain across north—east of scotland and into the northern isles so i think some western fringes and south—western parts of scotland should see sunshine in the afternoon. that veil of cloud with the weather front is draped across the eastern counties of england down towards the south—east. the further west you are, the brighter the afternoon. it will feel a little warmer in the sunshine. ten, 11 degrees maybe and a couple of showers across the south—west. as we head towards wednesday evening and overnight a few heavy showers will clear away from the south—west of england. the weather front will eventually clear from the eastern side of england but is confined to the northern isles there. elsewhere under clear skies with light wind it will be quite chilly some mist, ice and fog — that is a sign of things to come towards the end of the week with morning frost and fog. it could cause a little

bit of a problem. for thursday it is a cold start with a little mist and fog around. frost as well but it should generally lift. there is a little that could be stubborn in a few places but there should be sunshine breaking through for many although for the northern isles will remain damp. a bit more cloud across the coastal and eastern counties. as we head into friday, high pressure holds on with tightly packed isobars and more breeze. clouds arriving in northern ireland late in the day but for much of the country should be dry, chilly with an early fog but a few sunny spells in the afternoon. on saturday the weather front across the west will vary and move eastwards during the course of the day. it won't reach the east until later on where it will stay dry and on the cool side. i'm rico hizon in singapore. the headlines: a thaw in relations, as north and south korea stage their first talks for more than two years.

we'll be live in seoul, where the south korean president is about to speak. from trump's closest confidant, to outcast. five months after he was forced out of the white house steve bannon quits breitbart news. i'm kasia madera in london. also in the programme, growing calls for the release of two journalists held in myanmar for their coverage of the rohingya crisis. and running out of space. low gravity triggers a surprising growth spurt for this japanese astronaut.