Shooting the Cook

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.

Foreword

PART I

Chapter 1-A recipe for disaster

Chapter 2-Peking duck heaven

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 8-Over here, Clive

PART II

Chapter 9-Just for starters

Chapter 10-Is there anything better than jam roly-poly?

Chapter 11-The best of British

PART III

Chapter 12-Panzer division

Chapter 13-Spag bol and all that

PART IV

Chapter 14-Proof of the pudding

Chapter 15-If you don’t get this series on the network, David, I’m going to come down to Plymouth and shoot you!

Chapter 16-What is a script?

PART V

Chapter 17-Early rumblings

Chapter 18-Bungalow days

PART VI

Chapter 19-Lost in France

Chapter 20-A week in Provence

Chapter 21-Forty cloves of garlic anyone?

Chapter 22-The pelican

Chapter 23-The old battleaxe

Chapter 24-Through a glass darkly

Chapter 25-When the balloon goes up

Chapter 26-Please sir, the dog ate my homework

PART VII

Chapter 27-A slice of American pie

Chapter 28-Apocalypse any minute

Chapter 29-Be my buddy, Holly

Chapter 30-Anyone can be a TV cook

PART VIII

Chapter 31-There comes a tide in the affairs of man

Chapter 32-Fear and loathing in Benidorm

Chapter 33-The end is nigh

PART IX

Chapter 34-The world of Rick Stein

Chapter 35-Filmingland

Chapter 36-The odd couple

Chapter 37-La dolce vita?

Chapter 38-The Emperor’s clothes

Chapter 39-‘Mind the…!’

Chapter 40-Cabin fever

PART X

Chapter 41-Reunited

Chapter 42-Déjà vu

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Foreword

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.

Rick Stein

April 2009

A recipe for disaster

Once in a blue moon, when the tide and weather was right, I’d head out to sea. If you’re thinking I’m a salty old sea dog—I’m not. The sea has to be flat, oily calm and the sun should have warmed it sufficiently so that it gives off an effervescence that tingles the nose with a whiff of old seaweed. It’s the smell that transports me back to childhood and makes me want to take off my shirt and go paddling about in rock pools. I felt a bit guilty at first, but after a few times sneaking away from the office, those pinpricks of guilt changed to surges of pure joy.

I had a little boat, and a job in production and management at the BBC in Plymouth that I didn’t care for very much. The production side, yes; management, no. So I’d clear off every so often, until the land was a misty haze behind me. Just in case there’s a BBC employment lawyer reading this, I’d like to point out that I hadn’t been properly introduced to the art, if that’s what it is, of management. To me ‘management’ was saying ‘hello and good morning’ quite loudly to people I’d meet on the way to the office first thing. And it was a long time ago.

Someone had told me that the most important thing you can possibly do as a manager is to listen. So I did. But I had noticed that people nearly always said the same thing at least three times when they came to see me for a chat, so I would find myself drifting off into luscious thoughts of fresh fish, garlic, and wine, or lamb chops, as I thought of what to have for dinner that night. Or I would think about fishing.

There is nothing quite as wonderful as skimming over a glassy sea with the warm, salty wind in your face and the prospect of catching lunch an hour or so away. Through the heat haze the villages of Kingsand and Cawsand with their pastel painted cottages looked as though they would be more at home on the Amalfi coast, but I used to think that I’d rather be here in Cornwall than Italy any day, because once the attraction of boating had worn off (and it does), you still had the wonderful early evening prospect of a foaming pint of bitter in the local pub, followed by roast beef with Yorkshire pudding (of course) and then Inspector Morse on TV.

I would take a mobile phone the size of a jerrycan (well it was 1984), just in case something really important came up, a bottle of cider and a Cornish pasty as a precaution in case lunch proved reluctant to take the bait. I’d fish for bass, but only ever caught mackerel. Many people regard mackerel as the second-hand Ford Fiesta of the fish world, but they are delicious straight out of the sea, dusted in seasoned flour and fried in butter, with just a smidgen of mustard and a splash of lemon juice—but I digress. As I usually do at the mention of food.

I used to tell my assistant that I was off on a research trip to meet up with a Mr Bass down in Cornwall. Sometimes the phone would ring and on rare occasions it would be John Shearer in Bristol. He was one of my bosses, and although he looked the spitting image of John Denver, many of my fellow producers in the BBC rather unfairly I think, called him Vlad, after the famous Transylvanian prince with a penchant for sticking large nails through the heads of anyone who caused him displeasure—but only when Mr Shearer was well out of earshot. I liked him, because he was so unswerving in his thoughts and didn’t give a fig about tact and diplomacy. He made no secret of the fact that he thought the BBC was stuffed full of somewhat tired (and very often emotional) lacklustre staff who spent far too much time in the BBC Club.

For obvious reasons, his was the last voice I wanted to hear on a bright morning a mile off the Cornish coast, with the sun beating down and the waves gently lapping against the hull. I’d put on my serious voice, and speak quickly so he wouldn’t be able to hear the seagulls mewing overhead, but on one occasion he became suspicious and asked me where I was. I thought of saying I was in a meeting, but I ’d just pulled in six mackerel and they were wriggling and flapping at the bottom of the boat making a terrible din.

‘Well John, since you asked, I’m actually at sea at the moment researching a possible series on fishing in the south-west. It’s a very important industry down here, you know, and it’s been largely ignored.’

Amazingly he told me he thought this was most commendable and wished other producers would get off their arses and get out there to find out what was really going on.

It was after one of these delightful fishing trips that I returned to the studio in Plymouth and was making my way to my office when I heard the strains of the Stranglers’ classic song, ‘Peaches’. The studio, with its imposing veranda, lawns, and rosebushes, reminded me of one of those convalescence homes you saw in black and white films about recuperating fighter pilots and torpedoed seamen that were so popular in the Fifties. I could easily imagine nurses in starched white summer uniforms wheeling the staff about in the lovely gardens and bringing them cups of tea. Appearances can often be misleading though, because in these sedate surroundings the likes of Angela Rippon, Sue Lawley, and Jill Dando started their illustrious broadcasting careers. Like any television station, no matter how small, it was full of talented people keen to progress in the industry, tempered with a sprinkling of those whose love affair with television had finished a long time ago and who were now longing for a caravan in Brittany. I wasn’t quite sure where in this scenario I fitted in.

The sound of the Stranglers was coming from the technical area where they recorded and transferred programmes onto videotape. I had chosen this brilliant song to end a brand new series that I’d made, but was as yet unseen, called Floyd on Fish. I saw this as an antidote to all those rather starchy and clinical studio-based shows in which all the ingredients were measured out in teaspoons or carefully weighed, and they always had a finished dish they’d made earlier.

I’d never had so much fun making a television programme before and after long sunny days of filming, my ribs used to ache from laughing so much.

On one of the many screens in the room I could see that the end credits were running. They were superimposed over a shot of Keith Floyd, with a very young-looking Rick Stein, sitting down with full silver service on white linen, laid out on the deck of a trawler. It had all seemed like such a brilliant idea and I felt extremely pleased with myself as I entered the room. I didn’t have a clue how all this technical stuff worked but I thought it would be quite interesting to see what my very first programme for BBC South West looked like on a real telly, rather than an editing machine.

‘What a load of crap!’ was the first utterance I heard coming from an open talkback (this is a microphone and speaker system, which lets people in the recording studio communicate with people in the control room).

Greg, the video operator, went to switch it off but as I was nearer to the speaker I stopped him.

‘This is probably the worst programme ever to come out of Plymouth,’ said another voice.

‘That bloke’s pissed out of his head. It’s insulting.’

‘It’s a disgrace. It shouldn’t be allowed,’ said another.

Well I think there were a few more comments, but by then I felt as if my shiny brand new Spitfire was crashing down to earth with all my ammo used up and black smoke streaming from the engine cowling.

I could recognize nearly all of the voices. They belonged mostly to engineering staff, whom I’d see often in the BBC bar after work. Greg looked very embarrassed and kept finding interesting things to look at through the window. I put on one of my best smiles, the sort that says, ‘Hey, am I worried? I really do appreciate these thoughts. You’ve been most honest and I’ll bear your criticisms in mind…When I come round to your house and set fire to it.’

I was smiling so much my face hurt but on the inside I was unsettled and a trifle scared. Maybe I had been too cavalier, too much under the spell of the mercurial Mr Floyd? All this time I’d been happily filming away at wonderful locations in the south-west without a care in the world. We’d eaten well, drunk rather too much, and probably in the process I’d created a false sense of euphoria. Now, I wondered to myself, if it really is as bad as they say, how could I possibly get something so wrong? I’d probably have to resign and become a freelance, or, worse, be faced with the sack. My mother would be horrified, not to mention my wife and daughter and the Bradford and Bingley. And this would mean no more expensive, over the top food shopping. Bye, bye Scottish sirloin and Gevrey Chambertin—not that I saw very much of you. Adieu roast goose washed down with a serious bottle of Pauillac—well that was only for birthdays really. Cheerio to all the lovely things I love so much, especially lobster, turbot and Iberico ham—although you were strictly for high days and holidays. I would be entering a bleak world where no doubt I’d have to beg a commissioning editor half my age to grant me the opportunity to make a film about the state of rural transport in north Devon.

The last time something like this had happened to me was in 1978, when I’d made a new series for the BBC in Bristol. It was called RPM and it was about pop music, architecture, real ale, and lots of other stuff—basically things that I and my small production team found interesting. It was new, it was vibrant—or so I thought—and it was due to run for thirteen weeks. I had high hopes for it.

A day or so after the first transmission they started to appear. ‘They’ were pinned on the notice board outside the canteen, up and down the corridors, outside the studios, everywhere. ‘They’ were cuttings from the Bath Chronicle and they carried a searing review of my very first programme. The headline in the television section screeched something like, ‘Is this the worst television programme ever made by BBC Bristol?’ Clearly someone who didn’t care for the programme, or more likely, me, had been busy scampering around the studios with a roll of Sellotape.

Well, of course, I read the review—and then I read it again—desperately looking for something good that would stand out. I was searching for words like ‘innovative’ and ‘brave’, but the more I read it, the more I realized that the only good thing in there was the question mark. Something deep inside me told me not to touch these critiques that seemed to be everywhere; leave them where they were, and after a few weeks they’d shrivel up to brittle pieces of unreadable parchment, fall off and float away like autumn leaves, never to be seen again. As it happened RPM went on to be a big success and ran for eight years.

Over the years I had decided that there are four ingredients in the cocktail that is essential to the well-being of any television producer or director. One: an enquiring mind. Two (not surprisingly): imagination. Three: loads of passion. Four (and this was the big one): a total belief that whatever you do is going to be a resounding success. Optimism plays a large part in a director’s bag of tricks. I’ve known directors waxing lyrical about the dullest of concepts. One of my friends spent over four years making a film about the construction of the Scottish Parliament building and he was as passionate about it as if he was making Life on Earth. I suppose in 400 years’ time it might be quite interesting to see.

Also, I strongly believed in regional broadcasting, and still do, despite the fact that it has often been decimated over the last few years. I know that many executives and programme makers at the BBC in London think of the staff in the regions as rather like irritating sand fleas, but I see regional TV as a great place to experiment with new talent. Floyd, I thought, would never get off the ground in London. Most food programmes in those days came under the auspices of the Education Department and Floyd certainly wouldn’t have made for a good proposal on paper. I could imagine a committee discussing the glasses of wine and the haranguing of the cameraman. I’m a great optimist, but I don’t think they were quite ready for a culinary version of Reginald Bosanquet.

No, my plan was to make the programme with Floyd first and let the great and the good decide afterwards whether it worked or not. After all, as BBC features editor for the south-west, I was lucky enough to be my very own commissioning editor. So I didn’t have to convince anyone, except myself, which was why, that afternoon, I was sitting on a train on the way to London, running scared.

The only thing to do in a situation like this, I had decided, was to consult someone whose opinion I really treasured. This could be a pretty risky strategy, but I was desperate, because I had already commissioned myself to make a further five programmes with Keith Floyd. I was on my way to seek the opinion of one of the most talented producers in the land at the time, my good friend and mentor, John Purdie. John made the award-winning fly on the wall series Sailor, filmed on the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal.

Armed with a video cassette and a bottle of champagne bought from an off-licence in Chelsea, I arrived at John’s houseboat on the Thames. When he opened the door his little beady eyes lit up at the sight of the rather handsome bottle of Mumm. There are times when John reminds me of Captain Pugwash. He’s even got a parrot.

In the snug sitting room on the barge I told John what I’d heard on the open talkback in the videotape room earlier in the day. I couldn’t help but think that, for all our friendship, he was secretly enjoying my moment of intense insecurity. ‘Schadenfreude’, that lovely German word, is alive and well and thrives in the world of television. Although they pretend otherwise, television people love it when one of their friends makes an absolute turkey of a programme. After reading and savouring every ounce of vitriol in the newspaper reviews, they say things like, ‘I haven’t actually seen the programme but I’ve got it recorded and I’ve heard some good things about it. Is there anything in the papers?’

John covered the parrot’s cage with a grey blanket. In my paranoia I thought it was because the parrot might leap from his perch and start stomping around the bottom of his cage shouting out what a load of crap my programme was, but I was assured it was only in order to have an uninterrupted viewing. I charged our glasses, lit a cigarette and waited while the video clock ticked its way to zero.

The opening titles saw our chef quaffing a glass of wine aboard various boats and fishing on the Somerset Levels, cooking and laughing his head off. All this joyous imagery was accompanied by the Stranglers anarchic ‘Waltz in Black’. John watched unblinkingly, giving nothing away.

All television editors, directors and producers hate ‘viewings’, the tense affair when the commissioning editor or head of department casts their judgemental eye on a production that has inevitably taken months of blood, sweat and tears to create. Copious note-making by the boss is usually a serious sign of failure, spelling grim and uncertain times ahead for the producer and director.

I noticed that John had hardly touched his glass of champagne while I’d nearly finished the whole bottle, a most unusual state of affairs. But at least he wasn’t making notes. Eventually, shortly after the scene where Keith Floyd says to the cameraman, ‘Look, don’t put the camera on me. Put it down there on the blinking scallops. Don’t you understand, you idiot…it’s all about food? You simply can’t get trained staff these days!’ the screen went blank. John had switched the recording off. It was supposed to run for half an hour but after twelve minutes or so it seemed that my friend and mentor had had enough.

Peking duck heaven

I think it’s worth a small gastronomic detour at this point to explain why John’s opinion mattered so much.

I first worked with him in Hong Kong in 1976 making a series about the police called The Hong Kong Beat. He was a highly respected director and I was his researcher. Until then I hadn’t been further than Lloret de Mar on a Club 18–30 holiday, so this hot and steamy colony in the South China Sea came as a bit of a shock—an extremely pleasant one. When we weren’t in the back of police Land Rovers hoping for murder and mayhem (sadly I’m ashamed to say this is true) we would be in the street food markets that surrounded our hotel in Kowloon. I’ve been back to Hong Kong since and most of these street stalls have been swept away, but back then they were everywhere. For me they were the main attraction of the place, along with the Star Ferries which plied their way between Hong Kong Island and the mainland.

There was so much to choose from at the markets. Red ducks dripping with fat, and hunks of pork, the crackling cooked to golden perfection, hung from the frames of ramshackle counters. We’d normally be served by unsmiling, crew-cutted old men tossing a whole variety of vegetables and noodles in huge woks that, now and again, briefly caught fire. The stoves roared like jet engines, pushing out tremendous heat, so everything cooked quickly, which, of course, is the whole secret of this style of cooking; and the food was so cheap. Our mouths watered so much with anticipation that it became impossible to talk without spraying each other. This was the most delicious food I had ever tasted, and the combination of spicy noodles, crispy green vegetables, pork, duck, and prawns was light years away from any Chinese takeaway I’d ever had back home.