Seeing as it’s Easter, I thought I’d add a fun, competitive twist to the blog and have therefore hidden Ricardo Montalban three times throughout this treatise. See if you can find Ricardo Montalban at least once. Why not challenge a friend? Remember, you’re looking for Ricardo Montalban.
Technically, there are now more celebrity TV chefs in Britain today than restaurants. But this was not always the case. Post the Victorian Mrs Beaton age, no-one really had heard of anyone who cooked until the early BBC radio of the 1920s, when former Music Hall act, Tommy Giggles, gave up the baggy cravat and comical tie-pin of his ‘Posh Pecker’ character and instead took up the frying pan. His radio show ‘Honest Guv’ It’s Delicious!’ didn’t technically have any recipes in it, simply the sound of things frying in a frying pan whilst Tommy introduced musical acts, but that didn’t stop Giggles being lauded as the greatest British chef of the 20s alongside King George V who had displayed his frittatas for dignitaries at the 1924 Paris Olympics.
The first TV Chef was Jasper Smythe who taught the nation to make toast. Ever since Alfred the Great burnt the cakes, the British had been very anxious about heating baked goods, and Smythe’s 1936 programme ‘Look alive! Let’s Cook with Smythe!’ helped calm the fears of a nation, becoming a hit with the viewers. After the success of ‘toast’ in the first episode, Smythe went on to do ‘cheese near some toast’, ‘cheese beyond toast’ then finally ‘cheese on toast’ which became a hit and in parts of the Home Counties is still referred to as ‘Smythe’s Cheesy Folly’.
Women weren’t allowed on BBC TV for the first five years of broadcasting for fear that high oestrogen levels would interfere with the radio waves. Musical comedy star, Adele Dixon, who supposedly appeared in the first broadcast was actually twelve cleverly arranged water voles who were then dubbed over by a young Mel Blanc.
Marjorie Flange and her husband, Dick, became TV stars in the mid-1950s with their show ‘Flambé with Flange’. At the end of each episode, Marjorie, who was sporting enough hairspray to power a land-speed record, would get Dick to strike a match and ignite her hair. Marjorie would remain alight for the entirety of the length of the credits before putting out the flames by submerging her head in lobster bisque.
Flange’s recipes were all economical, looking to make her food affordable for Post-War Britain. She would, however, insist that all her dishes be presentable for formal occasions by applying make-up to them. Her ‘boeuf avec rouge’, ‘trout and lipstick’ and ‘mascara scallops’ were typical of her recipes and frequently appeared in households up and down the country.
Former Military Intelligence officer, Dick Flange, spent the majority of the shows as a verbally assaulted kitchen helper until, much to his relief, he suffered a major coronary event in 1968 and collapsed dead into Marjorie’s pork chop and blusher. Marjorie had a series of terrified nieces to lend her a hand post-Dick, but the show never really felt the same.
Emerging from Flange’s heavily coiffured shadow, Delilah Jones took things back to basics when she started broadcasting in the 1970s. First, she taught us all how to boil an egg. This was controversial because, at the time, the Catholic Church had listed ‘eggs’ as heretical alongside oven gloves and the colour mauve. Jones’ unassuming and polite manner with her catchphrases such as ‘would you mind awfully rinsing that?’ and ‘that’s gas mark scrumptious o’clock’ won over the hearts of the British people.
Jones was a staple on the British screen for over two decades. Since retiring, she has gone into luge in a big way, sponsoring East Anglia in the National Luge League. The East Anglian team rarely does well due to the twin setbacks of not having any snow or slopes to speak of. Jones enjoys drinking and shouting obscenities at the crowd in her mistaken belief that this will help the Luge go faster.
Scooby and Scrappy Roux, French chef brothers gained fame in the 60s when they opened the ‘Gavotte’ restaurant in London, becoming the Queen Mother’s favourite, before occasionally popping onto our screens over the following decades. Scooby’s son, Velma, is much more camera happy and can be seen passing comment on food frequently on the more reputable channels.
Kevin Pink drank his way on to our screens in the 80s with a series of sozzled ‘on-location’ cooking shows: ‘Pink on Beef’, ‘Pink on Belgium’, ‘Pink on Entry’, ‘Pink on Meth’ and ‘Pink on Narnia’. His ‘haunch of fawn in a raspberry jus’ won the Anita Dobson Course of the Year in 1985.
Pink famously spent 95% of his time insulting Clive his cameraman and only 5% of the time on what he was cooking. Consequently, the majority of his dishes burnt, curdled or withered to nothing. Despite this, Pink’s shows proved highly popular as the majority of British people burnt, curdled or withered their food away to nothing every time they stepped into the kitchen.
Swiss professional chef’s hat wearer and low-budget superhero, Tony Mosquitoman, graced the box from time to time promoting his ‘natural cooking’ where he would light matches ten inches away from ingredients before displaying them nicely on a plate. “I wanted to avoid the contamination of flavouring that directly heating food brings, and instead want that ‘natural’ feel like we get in the wild where fire is used to obliquely bring warmth – Nature’s cooking“.
In the nineties, Richard Stone rose to fame by introducing Britons to the concept of eating fish. Before then, fish had been seen as inedible in Britain like lampposts and glove compartments. Thanks to a mistranslation in the original Caxton’s Bible where the feeding of the five thousand involved two loaves and five steak and kidney pies, the British had no ideas that you could actually cook fish and eat them. Thanks to having been to France, Stone knew the truth and his initial show ‘Stone Me, You Can Eat Them!’ on BBC2, which featured the recipe ‘cod near some lemons’ caused a revolution. Britain went fish-mad! Soon, mongers who had until that point had to iron, coster or war, switched to specialise in fish, catering to the overwhelming demand. Everyone wanted to have a go at Stone’s recipes including: ‘a hatful o’haddock’, ‘apres skate’ and ‘squid balls’.
“It struck me,’ said Stone in an interview with ‘Cod That!’ magazine back in 1997, “to be the perfect opportunity to cash-in on the public’s poisson-fever, and open up sixteen fish-focused restaurants in my home county of Dorset.“ Stone’s plethora of sea-themed eateries led to a skyrocketing in the number of tourists flooding to Dorset. At one point in the Summer of 1999, Dorset got that jammed with people, that if you moved your leg, everybody else had to move theirs like a giant caterpillar. Since 2001, Dorset has operated a ‘one-in, one-out’ policy, so if you intend to visit an elderly relative there, you’ll have to coax someone out of the county with promises of cheese.
Emerging on the scene in the wake of Stone, was kindly eyed Norris Roofer. Primarily a food writer, Roofer was initially reluctant to get in front of the camera. What eventually coaxed him out was the promise of a large sum of money and the opportunity to chat to famous people about they like to eat. His uncovering of Joan Collins’ falafel and Lennie Henry’s penchant for pickled eggs and vodka-soaked melons really won over viewers. He became famed for his ability to blend deeply thoughtful questions and food, like in this extract from his interview with William Shatner:
Roofer: Of course, you boldly went to the final frontier. What do you think is beyond that final frontier of death?
Shatner: Well that’s the big one, isn’t it! I like to think that there’s some form of plane of existence beyond our current mortal realm – one even Starfleet Command aren’t capable of reaching! Perhaps a place of peace, rejuvenation and reconnection with the loved ones we’ve lost.
Roofer: And your favourite dessert?
Shatner: Jello.
(‘A Nibble on My Existence with Norris Roofer’ BBC1 Episode 4 ‘Shatner’ 2006)
Seamless.
Food writer, Soapy Grogson, specialised in vegetables, capturing the hearts of mid-90s Britain with her show “Grow your own sodding vegetables“ on Channel 4. Her work in legumes was particularly noted and her manipulation of broad beans left many grown men weeping.
Gary Street, the spiky-haired chef with a penchant for English grub had a plethora of programmes in the 90s in which he journeyed about bothering people about food. The success of his ‘Street of London’, was followed by ‘Street of Britain’, ‘Street of India’, ‘Street closed – access only’ and ‘Streetety Street’ – a failed game show.
Huge Furtive-Wishingstool was first seen on our screens in the mid-nineties, but really gained notoriety for his ‘Lake Manor’ programmes in the noughties. His willingness to eat any bit of an animal, alive or dead, made him stand out from his more squeamish peers. His home, ‘Lake Manor’ was a farm/abattoir/entrails theme park, and acted as the perfect backdrop for his fetishist feasts. His serving of panna cotta stuffed udders to nuns from the local convent, where he insisted his guests had to suck the dessert through the teats, has gone down in TV history as having inspired the most complaints and table reservations of any show ever.
Over time Furtive-Wishingstool has calmed down somewhat and now will only eat entrails during lent.
Hester Neanderthal, a mad scientist from children’s comic book stories became sentient in the noughties and took to carrying out diabolical scientific experiments on unsuspecting hors d’oeuvres to the delight of Michelin who decided to stop making tyres and focus on critiquing food. His restaurant, The Obese Dabchick, became internationally famous, and consequently Neanderthal was thrust into the public limelight, being given his own TV series that combined cooking with the sort of experiments Johnny Ball had been doing on the googlebox since the 70s.
For the entertainment of the general public, he used his culinary laboratory to prove that tomatoes are technically a gas, cheese has the same boiling point as a Fiat 500, and that using stock cubes can make you infertile. He was briefly touted as the next Bond villain for ‘Quantum of Solace’ opposite Daniel Craig, but it was felt that the nuclear crème brulee plot was too far-fetched for Craig’s more gritty and realistic Bond.
The Sweary Man first appeared on Channel Four’s ‘Simmering Session’ in 1999, instantly earning him international acclaim for his ability to swear at people repeatedly without being punched in the face. Having initially having success for shouting at people in his own kitchens, he came up with the original idea of going into the kitchens of strangers and shouting at them instead. This appealed greatly to the British public as it combined their twin loves of seeing people fail with inventively gratuitous swear words.
Sultry food goddess, Douglasina Hurd, first soft-focused onto our screens in 1999, providing an innuendo-laden counterbalance to the blunt vulgarities of the Sweary Man. Her insistence that all cooking must be done at one in the morning in flammable nighties led to the highest spike in fire brigade call-outs since the Blitz.
Emotionally shattered avocado on toast became a staple food for the upper middle classes thanks to her programmes in the noughties, and it was considered a social faux-pas on a level with crapping in a neighbour’s rockery not to offer the dish to guests at any house party in Chelsea for much of 2009. In fact the working title for ‘Made in Chelsea’ that launched in 2011 was originally ‘Narcissistic Toast Munchers’ before Channel 4 chickened out.
The amount of Vaseline on the lens led to her cameraman, Edward Stint, being dubbed ‘Greasy Ted’, and to his inability to get any work outside of the adult industry.
The third of the triumvirate to emerge in ’99 was the impish juvenile cook, Jimmy Twist, with his series ‘The Nudist in the Kitchen’, in which the eponymous chef made a range of dishes whilst completely starkers, with his particulars obscured by handily placed whisks, mixing bowls and passing waiters. After threats from the Food Standards Agency and Mary Whitehouse, Twist donned trousers and his programme shifted onto focusing on the food rather than if keen-eyed viewers could catch a glimpse of his winkie.
Beside naturism and cooking, Twist’s favourite pastime is helping to make children. He has, to date, with his lovely wife June produced 73 children, a record for the Home Counties. On becoming a father, he suddenly became acutely aware of how fat children could become if you force-fed them lard. The so-called ‘foie gras’ generation were in danger of collectively having 80% clogged arteries before puberty kicked in, and as such Twist led the campaign to encourage toddlers to eat lettuce.
Marie Beret first began baking professionally in 1814 just before the end of the Napoleonic Wars where she had been in charge of the soufflés for the 4th Corps. Her success in the field led Wellington to promoting her to be in charge of all cakes and puddings for the Battle of Waterloo. The scent of her pineapple upside-down cake famously led to the Prussians arriving just in time to turn the tide of the battle. And afterwards everyone enjoyed her muffins.
Although highly regarded in military fields and on the domestic baking circuit, it wasn’t until the TV show, ‘Battle of the Buns’ that Beret became a household name across the nation. At an impressive 223 years old when the show started, Beret broke the world record for oldest TV debutant, beating the record that Bruce Forsyth had set sixty years earlier.
“One of the greatest temptations,“ said Beret in an interview with TV Quick magazine in 2017, “is to succumb to the veritable smorgasbord of double entendres that the baking profession affords us. After wrapping my lips round a contestant’s cream horn, it would be very easy to quip about being a big tart. Would you be tempted by one of my floury baps, dear?“
Beret’s replacement on ‘Battle of the Buns’, Prune Leaf, had been on and off our screens for decades. Her Michelin-starred restaurant ‘Leaf’ that she founded in the 60s and many tomes on cookery, including the much-lauded ‘Leaf’s Kitchen Quran’ meant that she has been highly sought after as a judge on the classier cooking shows for a long time. Despite in her own words “hating puddings“, the money was too good to turn down for ‘Battle of the Buns’ and she gets through the shows by spitting everything she pops into her mouth out into her handbag.
In the past decade and a half, TV audiences found themselves with two possible paths for their celebrity chefs: the middle-class intellectual or the criminal. Yoda Longotter has wooed BBC4 audiences (all twenty seven of them) with his sophisticated Middle-Class Middle-Eastern food. The exclusivity of the ingredients such as: mountain goat-dried za’atar, orphan-tear-soaked wheat germ, and misua incubated in weasel-spleens, means that pretention is key, and if you’re not spending your spare time sneering at people who pronounce quinoa with three syllables you really shouldn’t be buying his cookbooks (or ‘gastronomic pamphlettes’ as he dubs them).
The other path you could take is following those who’ve interested members of the police constabulary. Tony Wirrall-Goblin, having found fame cooking on a Saturday morning – a time that had previously been reserved only for crown green bowling and car-boot sales, got into bother for nicking shiny things and had to leave our screens. His successor as King of Saturday mornings, Jimmy Housemartin, just made a lot of people cry whilst timing omelettes. Gregorian Gromit was overly keen with showing his knick-knacks to unsuspecting females, and Italiano-Irish Jean O’Camp turned out to be unable to break his cultural stereotype and instead decided to be overly lascivious towards anyone with a pulse.
There are, of course, exceptions to these two paths. Tim Porridge, spent most of his early career using lard as a main ingredient and ballooning to the size of a Ford Mondeo, before deciding to only cook wheat and gasses, and so becoming a much healthier Suzuki Swift. Jon Beeroad, spends his time judging others to distract from the very little cooking he has to do himself. The Two Fat Ladies became Two Greedy Italians before morphing finally into the Hairy Bikers.
So what next for TV chefs? With the rise of AI, an algorithm has been developed by Google alongside Channel 5 to create bespoke TV celebrity chefs for the individual. By simply typing in a series of answers to personality questionnaires and your relevant bank details and social media passwords, a virtual TV chef will be able to broadcast constantly and directly into your brain without any of the faff of a production company having to hire cameras, editing equipment or ingredients.
So, to avoid that metaphorical broth being spoilt, we can now all relax and focus on our on personal sous chef. Someone to steam your pears, someone with flair.
Did you spot all the Ricardo Montalbans? I threw in a fourth just to spice things up.
Treatises of Gloria 