Before the TV roles, Katherine Parkinson waited tables, and at her restaurant, even that took an audition. On Dish, the Waitrose food podcast co-hosted by chef Angela Hartnett, she looks back at her time at TGI Fridays and where the money went.
Clip: Viral Podcast Shorts YouTube Short from the full source linked below.
This article follows the Short and keeps to Parkinson's own account.
"They called it an audition"
The talk turns to restaurants when the host points out that she has worked in one. Asked whether she enjoyed her time at TGI Fridays, Parkinson explains what drew her there in the first place.
The chain, she says, "sold it as a kind of a place where wannabe actors would work." That shaped the hiring process. "They called it an audition to get a job there," she says.
You also needed a certain personality. Staff, she says, had to have a bit of "fun about you."
The kooky hat and the squat
The job came with a hat and a routine. "You had to wear a kooky hat," she remembers. You also had to "squat down," which she calls "the hardest bit."
Then there was the greeting. Parkinson recites it in the Short: "Hi, I'm Katherine. I'm your waitress for this evening." It all had to be delivered in that upbeat style, she says, "all like that."
She doesn't say what the hat looked like or how long the audition took. What she remembers is the performance of it, which fits a place she says was pitched as somewhere actors would work.
Serving Torvill and Dean
The job did come with one memorable table. "But I did serve Torvill and Dean," she says, which earns an "Oh, fancy" from across the table.
For readers outside Britain, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean are the ice dance pair who won Olympic gold in Sarajevo in 1984 with their famous Bolero routine, as BBC Sport recounts. Parkinson doesn't say when they came in or what they ordered.
Saving for a year out
Asked how long she worked there, she says she was there "full-time for quite a while." She had a reason. "I wanted to go to Italy in my year out," she explains. She was young for her school year, so she had a year out, "saved up money and went to Florence."
She says she has been "a bit crushy on all things Italian" all her life. She even jokes that she married a man who looks Italian but was "from down the road."
So she went to live in Florence on her waitressing money. She remembers "falling in love with food." She says it wasn't even street food exactly. She mentions pizza from bars, and the feeling of "time standing still." For someone who had spent a long stretch squatting down in a kooky hat, it sounds like the opposite of a work shift.
Three hours of school, then eating
Asked what she actually did in Florence, she keeps it short. She went to language school for "3 hours a day," she says, "and then the rest of the time I ate."
The Short ends on a quip about flirting with Italian men. It's a fitting end for an episode of a food podcast. According to the Waitrose Dish page, Hartnett cooked mushroom risotto for the episode, which is dated November 11, 2026.
Who is Katherine Parkinson?
Parkinson is an English actor known for The IT Crowd and, more recently, the Disney+ drama Rivals, as The Guardian has covered. In the Short, though, she is talking about a time before any of that, when the only audition on her mind was for a waitressing job.
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FAQ
Did Katherine Parkinson work at TGI Fridays?
Yes. She says she worked there full-time for quite a while, saving for her year out.
Why did TGI Fridays call it an audition?
She says it was sold as a place where wannabe actors worked, so getting a job there was called an audition, and you had to have a bit of fun about you.
Who did Katherine Parkinson serve at TGI Fridays?
She says she served Torvill and Dean.
What did she do with the money?
She says she saved up and went to live in Florence, doing language school three hours a day and eating the rest of the time.