From Nigella to Heston, British television has been dominated by chefs – but there can be only one who reigns supreme
We should probably preface this by pointing out that the very notion of a “TV chef” is a peculiar modern invention. Being a TV chef isn’t necessarily about being an actual chef at all, but a chimeric blend of mediums: some are natural writers who TV execs realised would also be natural broadcasters (Nigella Lawson, back with a new BBC series this week); some are essentially reading out their columns, ASMR style, with the backdrop of a nice garden (Nigel Slater); some are chefs so obsessed with the exotica of travel that in another era they would likely have been mid-ranking colonial governors somewhere in the British Raj (Rick Stein).
The true golden age of the TV chef came somewhere in the late 90s, with the emergence of chefs who seemed to have been purpose-built for TV. Watching Ready Steady Cook, you never got the impression that Antony Worrall Thompson, Brian Turner and Nick Nairn were successful chefs running acclaimed kitchens, even though in reality they were; they simply existed as avatars of dad-banter who knew their way around a pot and pan. Remember, this was an era before the likes of Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal, when being a TV chef meant you could partake in gunge-related activities and strip nude in front of a baying audience of middle-aged mums for a charity telethon, and everyone thought it was an extremely normal thing to do.
