Outrageous life of UK’s first celebrity TV chef Fanny Craddock – rude quips, bigamy and maggot meals

The camera’s eyerolls were what caused it, not the camera. Although the exaggerated shaking of the head, mock retching and plummy-toned exclamations didn’t help.

Fanny Cradock chuckled, “A seafood cocktail straight into the duck.” “Dear God,” As for the proposed blackberry jam…. She sneered with a ton of upper middle-class disdain as she “bramble jelly.” My love, it’s for melting down and brushing the flans! You’re with the professionals now”.

The first celebrity chef in the UK, Fanny, was perfectly summed up in one terrible two minutes of television: over the top, unapologetic, and blunt to the core. She was showcasing the full Fanny experience to the audience, including the extravagant ballgowns, decadent make-up, and a sharper-than-a grapefruit (dipped in vinegar) tongue.

Fanny was unaware that she was going too far on this particular occasion, which was 1976’s BBC’s The Big Time. Before her sat the unassuming Devonshire farmer’s wife Gwen Troake, an amateur cook who had won the chance to create a banquet – with the ‘ help ‘ of her TV heroine.

Instead, 10 million viewers watched the modest Gwen lose her self-assurance in a blaze of fire. and the fork-wielding Fanny was the one with the fork. “It was Cruella de Vil meets Bambi”, the show’s host Dame Esther Rantzen would later say.

Fanny’s debut BBC cookery show was 70 years old in February, defining a whole new line of entertainment. There had previously been chefs on television, but none did it like her: lavish food, a lot of personality, feminist themes, a whole “Bon Viveur” brand, and affordable dishes.

For 20 years she kept her series – under various titles. However, the 1975 Christmas Special would come to an end, 50 years ago this year. Nobody knew about it at the time, but the BBC severed Fanny’s contract after two weeks following “The Big Time” PR disaster, and she never appeared in her next season.

It was the most extraordinary end of an era. However, Fanny’s game-changing experience was never ordinary. Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey, who was born in 1909 to an 18-year-old mother, was born at her wealthy grandparents’ house in Leytonstone, east London, as a baby and lived there until the age of 10 while attending boarding school.

Her grandmother Emily and grandfather, Charles, a retired surgeon-major, had an unusual approach: She was given ballet and violin tutors before she was five and made to translate the newspaper opinion column into French and German every morning.

In his book Fabulous Fanny Cradock, biographer Clive Ellis explains how “Fanny’s grandmother introduced her to color-themed cookery as well as the self-sufficient pleasures of bottling, potting, pickling, and preserving.” Her grandfather unintentionally cultivated her love of cigars, giving her a weekly puff after filling his pipe, and an appreciation of the grapes at first.

By the time I was old enough, my wine was pale pink at five, deep pink at eight, and frequently straight from the bottle. Her skills also teetered on the macabre: “She claimed to have a hotline to the court of Louis XIV of France and played levitation games”, says Ellis.

She later turned down royalties for a novel because a “nine million-year-old priest” had inspired her. The fit for a board school was poor. “I learned nothing, forgot all I knew and hourly hoped to die”, was Fanny’s withering verdict. The emotions were reciprocal. For holding recesses, the school tried to remove her.

The peculiarities of her early years were nothing compared to her turbulent lovelife. Four months after marrying an RAF pilot at the age of 17, she was expecting and widowed. His plane crashed in a freak bout of fog on Sunday after being informed that she was pregnant on a Wednesday.

Fanny gave birth, shipped son Peter off to his paternal grandparents and was not reunited with him until he was 21. She then wed Arthur Chapman, who had a second child named Christopher, but separated them both a year later.

Chapman stayed in Catholicism until she decided to wed Gregory Holden-Dye, but around nine years later, she met the racing driver. And, after getting no response from their wedding banns, presumed Arthur was dead.

After marrying her, she met her devoted Bon Viveur sidekick, Army Major Johnnie Cradock, who she had known for decades. That “marriage” lasted eight weeks.

Rugby and the bathroom are the only things that separate us, according to Fanny once. It was 1954 when Greg, wanting to remarry, wrote to her enquiring about their divorce.

“Don’t worry,” She replied, “Everything is fine. “I met Arthur in London. Our marriage was annulled because he is still alive. Her flimsy admission of bigamy was unmoving.

Fast forward to 1977 and she did it again. The pair were hitched after being struck by Johnny for spotting an Arthur Chapman death notice in the newspaper (both putting their ages on the certificate by 10 years). However, they discovered the passing of another Arthur Chapman two years later!

But, in the public’s minds, Fanny and Johnnie were a bonafide national treasure double act. When Fanny released a cookbook in 1949 and wrote a food column for The Telegraph, Bon Viveur, her ascent to the top of television chefs was a start.

Fanny and Johnnie started hosting live “Kitchen Magic” cookery demonstrations, which were sponsored by the gas board, after the event became so well-liked. Billed as “the only stage cookery show in the world”, Fanny would pretentiously slip into French to rave about the famous chef Auguste Escoffier, while dishing up the likes of dyed green potatoes and baked hedgehog – wearing a ballgown and no apron. She once said, “Only a slut gets in a mess in the kitchen.”

Johnnie was her helper, the poor “put-upon husband”. The crowds consumed it. They regularly entertained The late Queen, Prince Phillip, The Queen Mother, and Elizabeth Taylor at The Royal Albert Hall, selling out The Royal Albert Hall.

Fanny would later insist the harridan schtick was just an act. Peter Botterill, who was with her in Edinburgh for one fateful night, disagreed.

He wrote, “The poor old lighting man, she tore him off a strip really badly.” “He collapsed and had a minor heart attack. She only said, “Get somebody else quickly,” and he was taken to the hospital. Tonight, we must get the show going.

Despite her caustic manner, Fanny and Johnnie’s fame landed them a late night show on the BBC in February 1955. It immediately received rave reviews.

According to Ellis, “there were “several hundred” letters. “One woman wrote: ‘ Your demonstration on TV was superb and was responsible for two big decisions in my life – A, to keep my TV set after all – B, to go right out and buy a 10” x 14 “tin and have a go. ‘”

Their new era was just beginning there. For the next 20 years, TV viewers would never be able to get enough of it, whether it was teaching Johnnie four different souffles or preparing a goose with garden secateurs.

In 1968 their shows went full colour. And of course, they were also making a fortune with endorsement deals, including everything from Fairy Liquid to new refrigerators, which was unfortunate for the BBC.

She would be competing for the Ramsay Millions, Ellis explains. “And she would be more plain-speaking and outrageous than Anne Robinson and Simon Cowell combined”.

However, when 600 people complained about her treatment of Gwen Troake, things were already changing and people’s tastes were already. According to Ellis, “Fanny was criticized as being self-centred, condescending, insulting, patronizing, rude, tactless, pathetic, and offensive.”

So Fanny was “cancelled” and Troake was given a cookbook deal. Bon Viveur’s story, however, didn’t come to an end. Before settling near Colchester, Fanny and Johnnie frantically moved around the country and settled in. They had fingers in several pies.

Their home was as madcap as they were. They had a long-running feud with all cleaning equipment and raised 89 bunnies from one single doe. A rotten ham that was crammed with maggots is remembered by assistant Wendy Colvin.

She suggested they threw it away. No one ever died from eating maggots, Fanny said. “Boil it up and it’ll be delicious,” Wendy said. I wouldn’t eat it, but she and Johnnie did”.

By the 1980s, Delia Smith’s straightforward, contemporary cooking was gaining popularity. However, the real end of Bon Viveur came in 1987 when Johnnie passed away from lung cancer at the age of 83. Fanny lost her way, refused to see him in hospital, shunned the funeral and hid away.

She admitted: “I think I should have been more dignified” when she was 85 years old in 1994. If I had been more restrained, I would now have more friends.

Britain however is conflicted. Looking back, we still had a strong love for her. When he first met her on set, TV chef Anthony Worrall-Thompson was seven. His mum was her stage manager.

Who does this ugly little runt belong to, she said in her opening statement? He recalls, “. I thought she was a witch, a very scary witch. “But … “

He continues, “She inspired me to cook.” Dame Esther Rantzen added:” In a notoriously bad-tempered profession, her rages were legendary.. However, I do not stop admiring Fanny. In a world of fakery and retakes, she lit up the screen, demonstrating that that glorious, unpredictable burst of rage was real.

Some 70 years on from that first TV show, and with Fanny’s clips now shared on TikTok, the world would seem to agree.

The History Press has released Clive Ellis’ television show Fabulous Fanny Cradock: Outrageous Queen of Cuisine.

Source: Mirror