Jay Rayner at Pizza Express Holborn [John Lyons]

Well, 2024 certainly started with a bang for me. In actual fact, it was more like a crack – I turned my ankle and snapped my fibula. Then walked around for three days before I realised it was more than a sprain. You probably know the routine – cast, crutches, boot etc. It curtailed my gig going because one suddenly appreciates how many jazz clubs are located in basements or (like the Vortex in Stoke Newington and the Parakeet in Kentish Town) upstairs.

But on Valentine’s Night I hobbled out to see the Jay Rayner Sextet at the Pizza Express Holborn (which does have a lift, but I opted for the spiral staircase).

Jay, of course, is the splendid and sometimes splenetic food critic of The Observer, a campaigning journalist on food issues and winner of the Master Chef celebrity edition. He has also spent 10 years getting his (other kind of) chops together as a jazz pianist.

He currently leads a very good sextet, featuring his wife Pat Gordon-Smith on vocals, Chris Cobbson on guitar, Dave Lewis on sax, Robert Rickenburg on bass and Sophie Alloway behind the kit.

Jay began his jazz career mainly performing a set of food related songs, heavy on repartee, but as his skill and confidence grew, he put together shows that were less snack and anecdote based, including his current one, Jazz Up The Eighties. This is based on the (correct) premise that bands such Matt Bianco, Everything But the Girl, Swing Out Sister, Working Week, Sade and post-Police Sting, mounted a guerrilla assault on the charts by in smuggling jazz arrangements and harmonies under the guise of pop music.

It helped that crack jazzers like Guy Barker, Chris Hunter, Phil Todd and Steve Sidwell were on hand in the studio.

Jay does not play these Eighties bangers by the above bands straight – there’s an injection of swing, Latin, samba and excellent Afrobeat courtesy of guitarist Cobbson (who is of Ghanian heritage).

It does mean plenty of abrupt stylistic gear changes for the sextet and especially Gordon-Smith, who has to channel (but not imitate) a whole gamut from Tracey Thorn to Paul Weller (twice), but she carries it off with aplomb. Plus, there’s Jay’s bottomless tranche of stories and stage chat which still gets a fair crack of the whip.

It’s a good, fun evening – even with a broken leg – that, judging by the crowd, attracts an audience way beyond the usual jazz constituency – I appeared to be the only one that knew the title of Cantaloupe Island by Herbie Hancock, one of the great man’s two melon-themed songs.

• Jay repeats this trip down what might be a hazy memory lane for some of you (it will inspire you to back to listen to the originals which you might not have played for a while) at The Pheasantry King’s Road (April 12), Pizza Express Holborn (May 19 and July 24) and Pizza Express Soho (June 13).
Perhaps because of his media profile beyond jazz these gigs sell out very quickly.

• See: https://www.jayrayner.co.uk/shows