Fabulous Fanny Cradock : TV's Outrageous Queen of Cuisine by Antony Worrall Thompson

While Fanny Cradock cut a controversial figure - berating Margaret Thatcher for wearing `cheap shoes and clothes', writing off Eamonn Andrews as a `blundering amateur' and famously being forced to apologise for insulting a housewife cook on The Big Time - her cookery programmes were enormously popular. Dressed in evening gown, drop earrings and pearls, donning thick make-up, she boomed orders to her partner Johnnie, a gentle, monocled stooge who was portrayed as an amiable drunk. The programmes were watched by millions and were hugely influential: the Queen Mother told Fanny that she and Johnnie were `mainly responsible' for the improvement in catering standards since the war; Keith Floyd declared that `she changed the whole nation's cooking attitudes'; for Esther Rantzen `she created the cult of the TV chef'. Lavishly illustrated and illuminated by amusing facts and anecdotes, Fabulous Fanny Cradock paints a fun, entertaining portrait of this extraordinary woman.
Binding: Paperback / softback