Fanny Cradock
Today a post which I wasn't sure would really fit the description of this blog, and this lady may not be that well known abroad. On reflection I don't see how I could have had any doubt, since the country's first celebrity chef, who cooked in evening dress in The Royal Albert Hall, was a serial bigamist, invented her own past, cooked food dyed blue and green to look like trees and all sorts of strange things, publicly roared at her common law husband and assistants, and entertained the nation with her cookery programmes... Well if that isn't Cult TV I don't know what it is! I will try to stick to the TV I promise, and not get too caught up in her scandalous private life, but I must just say that Fanny Cradock with her husband Johnny was also the real person behind the character called 'Bon Viveur' who has a column in The Telegraph for years and years. I have found some reflections by her successor in the same role: Trawling the Telegraph’s archives, I ...