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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!’
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. We
remember her strange mask-like face on our black and white TV,
ordering husband Johnnie about as she strutted between counter
and cooker. 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.
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