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Philip Harben, bearded and striped apron clad, was BBC's
great post-war chef. His 50's series included "Cookery"
1946-51, "Cookery Lesson" 1950, several one-offs in
1952-53, and "What's Cooking?" 1956. During one of his
cookery programmes, Philip Harben went to retrieve a dish from
the oven and promptly declared, ‘Well, they’re not
quite ready yet. Goodbye everybody.’ Later, when asked why
he had finished the programme when there were several minutes
still to go, Harben explained, ‘It wouldn’t have done
any good, I forgot to switch on the oven!’
Philip
Harben often used his personal rations (Britain was on war
rations until about 1954) as ingredients. Harben showed his
audience how to cook with what was available, and he was famous
for his chips and steak and kidney pie. A former seaman, who was
the spitting image of Falstaff, Shakespeare's gluttonous
anti-hero, Harben sported a marvellous beard, a fruity BBC accent
and always wore a striped apron over his stout belly.
His
no-nonsense approach assumed his audience had never boiled an
egg, much less whisked up a cinnamon and calvados souffle.
Click on picture above for video clip
Marguerite Patten was another of the first TV cooks. She
popularised the one food stuff almost no one would even try to
popularise, let alone succeed -- SPAM. Marguerite Patten was most
often called, "the doyenne of British cookery" (but
alternatively known as, "the doyenne of wartime
cookery", "the doyenne of the tv kitchen", or
"the Queen of ration book cuisine") and author of more
than 165 cookery books. To say she's prolific is obviously a mild
understatement, sales of her books are well over 17 million and
of her recipe cards more than 500 million world-wide.
Kitchen Magic featured famed tele-chefs John (Johnnie) and
Phyllis (Fanny) Cradock in this series in which they performed
their unique brand of cookery to a studio audience. Fanny was an
extraordinary woman. She was the first real celebrity TV cook
with her evening gown, dangling earrings, pearls and bouffant
hair. We remember her strange mask-like face on our black and
white TV, ordering husband Johnnie about as she strutted between
counter and cooker.
Johnnie was
her stooge; she ferociously chased him around the studio and
verbally lacerated him with cries of "Come on, Johnnie,
hurry up." Fanny was the first to present food as a
ritualised form of TV entertainment. A still repeated line from a
Scottish TV chat show, with Fanny being interviewed by Bill
Tennant, is the immortal: "I hope all your doughnuts turn
out like Fanny's."
She was
ridiculous, rather glamorous, but very frightening too. She
introduced a new wave of sophisticated foods, including prawn
cocktail. They soon moved over to ITV to present ITV's first
cookery programme, where they quickly established themselves as
the countries leading experts on all things culinary.
Fanny
Cradock: First lady of food
Terrifying,
strange and rather grand – and that was just her cookery. In
the centenary year of Fanny Cradock’s birth, John Walsh pays
tribute to the original television chef
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