Shooting the Cook
The true story of a bumbling and undistinguished television producer who inadvertently changed the landscape of cookery programmes forever to give rise to the world of the 'celebrity chef'.As the producer behind the phenomenally successful Keith Floyd and Rick Stein BBC cookery programmes, David Pritchard tells the tale of the ascent of the chef celebre. Twenty five years ago, no one could have foreseen the incredible popularity commanded by food programmes on television today. Now we have a whole army of chefs representing virtually every single personality trait from sexy to aggressive, to young and experimental. But back then, charismatic, erratic, always happy to have a slurp of wine or two and not afraid to say exactly what he thought on air, Floyd was a revelation. This was a chef that television had not seen the like of before. Freed from the constraints of studio filming, Floyd brought us the idea of cooking on location, but most importantly, he simply invited viewers to have fun and enjoy being in the kitchen.Shooting the Cook divulges the stories of what went on behind the scenes to the groundbreaking television that inspired the event of modern television chefs as we understand them today. David Pritchard shares the overwhelming excitement that went into making the early Floyd series – from sitting down to a silver service dinner aboard a tiny fishing trawler heading out of the Plymouth Sound, to attempting abortive hot-air balloon adventures over Alsace.Tangled up amid the tales of the bust-ups, the botched camera shots and the exquisite regional food are reminisces also about the David's life growing up in ration-starved, post-war Britain. Also containing snapshots of life behind the scenes of Sixties television making and spanning the era from when avocados were virtually unheard of to a time where the term 'foodie' has gaining an almost cult-like status, this is an outstanding memoir from the producer who single-handedly changed the face of food as we know it today.
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DAVID PRITCHARD
SHOOTING
THE COOK
A TRUE STORY ABOUT FOOD, TELEVISION AND THE
RISE OF TV’S SUPERCHEFS—THE DIRECTOR’S CUT
To Jane, who forced me to write this; to Prudence, my English bull terrier, for being such an inspiration on walks, and to my mother, who is the best cook in the world.
Over the years there has been the odd fleeting moment when I’d have eagerly swapped the camera for a revolver.
Contents
Chapter 1-A recipe for disaster
Chapter 3-David believe me, cooking’s the new rock ‘n’ roll
Chapter 4-The owl and the pussy cat went to sea—eventually
Chapter 5-Am I supposed to rehearse this? And do I need more than one fish?
Chapter 6-Old dogs can learn new tricks
Chapter 7-Fair stood the wind for France
Chapter 10-Is there anything better than jam roly-poly?
Chapter 11-The best of British
Chapter 13-Spag bol and all that
Chapter 14-Proof of the pudding
Chapter 21-Forty cloves of garlic anyone?
Chapter 24-Through a glass darkly
Chapter 25-When the balloon goes up
Chapter 26-Please sir, the dog ate my homework
Chapter 27-A slice of American pie
Chapter 28-Apocalypse any minute
Chapter 30-Anyone can be a TV cook
Chapter 31-There comes a tide in the affairs of man
Chapter 32-Fear and loathing in Benidorm
Chapter 34-The world of Rick Stein
David read the first chapter of his memoirs to us in the film crew van while we were waiting for a tiny rusty ferry to take us from Haiphong to Cat Ba Island, one of the 367 islands of the Cat Ba Archipelago in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. It took about five boats to get us there, a voyage of a mile or so to one island then a short drive to an even smaller boat on the other side of the island. We had plenty of time to listen. There was nothing else to do, certainly nothing to buy, only purple, green, or orange soft drinks on sale in dusty bottles at the kiosks on the slipways. We were all laughing so much after the first couple of pages anyway. He really wasn’t being self-effacing. His early days in TV were chaotic and his first cookery series with Keith Floyd happened only because he loved food, liked going to Floyd’s restaurant in Bristol, put him on a local arts meets rock TV programme called RPM, and thought it would be fun to make a cookery series using the Stranglers’ ‘Peaches’ as the soundtrack.
Why ‘Peaches’, I don’t know, but it worked. There had been nothing like Floyd on Fish before, it was as if rock ‘n’ roll had met cookery. The truth is that David has remained the same ever since; he does what seems fun to him at the time and pursues it single-mindedly. Sometimes this can be a little disconcerting. He thinks it’s funny that I am the clumsiest person on the planet and will go to enormous ends to film incidents of me tripping, banging, burning myself with hot fat, or cutting myself. Once when I sliced myself rather badly on a Japanese mandolin while making Taste of the Sea, he accused the cameraman, Julian Clinkard, of having no journalistic sense. Julian had stopped his camera as I was jumping up and down bleeding and swearing. David fumed that he could see it all coming and was just waiting to catch it on film. He calls me the ‘talent’ and says he’s a ‘mere technician’, but I often feel that I’m just the material. However, a few years after the mandolin incident I was leaning over the stern of a massive trawler off the Scottish coast, doodling away on my long defunct Psion organizer, when suddenly he grabbed me and pulled me back over the deck as a ton net weight swung right through where my head had been seconds before. Maybe he does care after all.
The truth about David is that because he knows what he wants and has an uncanny ability to gauge what our audience wants too, working with him, though massively annoying at times, when he’s overpoweringly in charge, is exhilarating because I always think we’re onto something new. There is something reassuring about just letting things evolve when we are filming. Sure we have a schedule, but he takes delight in changing it all at the last minute because something, maybe a stall selling dried fish by the road we’ve just passed, has excited him. In a world where TV seems to have become more and more formulaic it’s nice to have someone around with an eye for passing life. I’m not his best friend, Bernard is, but I’m very glad I’m his second best one.
