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Cooking on the air.

© Allan Lee

It's a natural progression. What is the one activity that most people do most often? Answer: Watching TV and listening to the radio. What's the activity that people do almost as often? Answer: Eating. There is a synergy. After all, the term "TV dinner" has gone from pejorative to perfectly acceptable. These days, we are as likely to eat our meals with the TV or radio burbling away as not.

So broadcasting cooks are here to stay. Here in New Zealand, we have the perfect TV cook, Allyson Gofton. She presents a 60-second long segment every night before the main evening news called "Food in a minute," in which she whips up a three-course dinner for 12 people using nothing but a can of beans and a packet of individual frozen fish cakes. Surely Allyson is the epitome of the TV cook. She's quick, she's painless, she makes it look easy (and she doesn't do the washing up).

Soufflés with Fanny

Perhaps the earliest famous TV cook was Fanny Craddock, a fearsome lady who ruled her kitchen with a rod of iron. Her husband, Johnny, surfaced occasionally to talk about wine (and this was in the days when the only wine you could get in Britain was plonk!), but he was soon dispatched to the cellar while Fanny created her "bombe surprise" - or whatever it was. Of course, in the days of grainy black and white, everything looked more bomb than surprise, all dishes apparently prepared during the worst days of post-war austerity Britain. (I digress to a poem which sums it up...

Mary had a little lamb

But her sister came to grief:

She lived in 1951

And only got corned beef.)

Fanny, alas, has gone to the great kitchen in the sky, where the cakes always rise and the soufflés never sink. TV cooking shows are seen, sadly, as ephemeral, and I doubt that anything survives of her pioneering work. I found few mentions of her on the web - one was a track listing of her TV theme music (apparently called "Buttered Crumpet" which raises more questions that it answers, I suspect) and the other recorded her ignominious end, when she was rude to a member of the public on a popular TV show ("The Big Time" since you ask) and was consequently never seen again.

Galloping with Graham

For many people around the world, the first TV cook to make the preparation of food look like fun was the Galloping Gourmet, Graham Kerr. Graham's a New Zealander who's done most of his broadcasting work in Canada, though his programmes were hits right around the world. Famous for his measuring technique when it came to wine ("Add two tablespoons of wine.... That's about two glugs.... Glug.... Glug..."), he's now undergone something of a renaissance and his latest series "Graham Kerr's Gathering Place" is about eating and living healthily. You can find out more at http://www.grahamkerr.com/ and if you live in or near Toronto, you can even join the audience at a taping by ringing 1-877-287-5253.

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