Book description
Fanny Cradock was one of the first TV celebrity chefs. Rude,
snobbish, and short-tempered, she was reviled, relished and admired in
equal measure. While she berated Margaret Thatcher for wearing 'cheap'
shoes and clothes', wrote off Eamonn Andrews as a 'blundering
amateur', and famously was forced to apologise for insulting another
TV cook. Her cookery column in the Daily Telegraph, 'Bon Viveur' ran
for 35 years and her cookery programmes - which she presented in
evening gown, drop ear-rings, pearls, and thick make-up, booming
orders at her partner Johnnie, a gentle, monocled stooge who was
portrayed as an amiable drunk - were watched by millions. They were
hugely influential: the Queen Mother told Fanny that they were 'mainly
responsible' for the improvement in catering standards since the war;
Keith Floyd declared that 'she changed the whole nation's cooking
attitudes'; for Esther Rantzen 'she created the cult of the TV chef'.
