Tom Dunne's Music & Me: When my wife cooked for the Rolling Stones

Tom Dunne and his wife Audrey, a chef who cooked for the Rolling Stones. Left, Audrey with Mick Jagger; right, with Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood.
We all have a past. Once you turn about 25 and you meet someone new it’s a given. Best advice: Don’t ask questions. The past is another country and all that. Even if there is a framed photograph of your new potential partner in the arms of Mick Jagger on top of their TV. Move on, nothing to see here.
There was a second framed photo in the bathroom. This time it was ‘future partner’ in the arms of Keith Richards. This also made but a cursory impression on me. Flush the toilet, wash your hands and banish all thoughts of Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithful from your mind, I told myself.
Reader, I married her, but I have never pried. Audrey is a chef and often cooks for very famous people. They are by design private dinners and beyond wondering if the people were nice or what they had to eat, I don’t ask much more. No tabloids in this house.
But, God, the Stones photos were very cool. When she opened her restaurant in 2015 we put them and some framed albums on the walls around a secluded table at the back together with some music books and a cool John Peel print. The 'Rock and Roll Table', the most sought after in the house, was born.
It was 1994’s Voodoo Lounge she’d been involved with. Recorded in Windmill Lane the Stones had pre-production and some recording at Ronnie Wood’s House in Kildare. Audrey cooked at the house for these during September of 1993. On its release it was their first number one since 1980’s Emotional Rescue. Coincidence? I think not.
And then Charlie died. “Ah,” said Audrey sadly, “he was the funniest of them.” She did a bit of digging and new photos emerged. One showed Charlie pretending to vomit into a bucket having eaten her food – brave man I thought. The other showed Charlie giving her our blue cast-iron cookbook holder.
“Our cookbook holder was a present from Charlie Watts?” I asked incredulously.
“Yes,” she explained, “and he actually went into town himself to buy it.”

I was stunned. Later, a bit sombre, we settled into an evening of Rolling Stones records. As we listened, Audrey asked me about a track called Ivy League that hadn’t made it to the album. We found a version partially recorded in early 1983. It’s a classic bluesy, swampy, Stones song, that still seems unfinished.
And then Audrey recounted how, as it was playing one night at dinner, she’d mentioned to Mick that she loved it. Mick was so delighted that he started getting her to listen to other works in progress. Then one night he dropped the bombshell.
“Can you sing, Audrey?” he suddenly asked.
Author’s warning: We are moving onto very thin, dangerous ice at this point. Audrey’s singing voice is the subject of much debate in our house. It is untrained, a natural force of nature, that so far has never been successfully captured. And some might argue, not me obviously, that if it was captured it should be shot.
With this in mind, and remember, please I beg you, that this predates any view I could have brought to the table, Audrey politely declined. Mick was insistent. It’s a very simple part he kept saying, it’ll be mixed low, it’s just to add texture. The lady was not for turning.
I was incredulous: “You turned down the chance to be on a number-one selling Rolling Stones’ record. It could have been Mick, Keith, Ronnie, Charlie and Audrey!”
“It gets worse,” she added. “Ronnie was just getting into his art at the time. As we were finishing up he called me into his studio and told me to pick something, as a gift. But I was lashing into town to meet friends and was sure I’d lose it.”
“So?” I asked “So I said to leave it for now and I’ll pick it up when I see him again.” “And did you?” She shrugged. I know that shrug.
His art has since become very collectible and is also striking brilliant. Hate to say, but I’d prefer that to a cookbook holder, no offence Charlie.
At this point, with the radio etc, it is more likely that I will talk to Ronnie before Audrey does. I wonder how he’d react. “Ronnie, my wife left a painting behind last time she was in your gaff, I don’t suppose...?”