English restaurant critic, television cook (1909?1994)
Fanny Cradock
|
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Cradock in 1976
|
Born
| Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey
(
1909-02-26
)
26 February 1909
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Died
| 27 December 1994
(1994-12-27)
(aged 85)
|
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Occupation(s)
| Television cook, novelist and food critic
|
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Spouses
| -
Sidney A. Vernon Evans
(
m.
; died
)
-
Arthur W. Chapman
(
m.
; died 1978)
-
Gregory Holden-Dye
(
m.
, void)
-
|
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Children
| 2
|
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Parents
| |
---|
Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey
(26 February 1909 ? 27 December 1994), better known as
Fanny Cradock
, was an English
restaurant critic
, television cook and writer.
[1]
She frequently appeared on television, at cookery demonstrations and in print with her fourth husband, Major
Johnnie Cradock
, who played the part of a slightly bumbling hen-pecked husband.
Early life
[
edit
]
Cradock was born at her maternal grandparents' house, 33 Fairlop Road,
Leytonstone
, Essex. The birth was recorded in the registration district of
West Ham
.
[2]
As a child, Cradock lived with her family at Fairlop Road, with her maternal grandparents. A plaque (with her name misspelt) can be found at Fairwood Court, Fairlop Road, London E11: "Fanny Craddock 1909?1994. On this site until 1930 stood a house called Apthorp, birthplace of the famous TV cookery expert Fanny Craddock; born Phyllis Pechey."
Her birthplace was named after Apthorp Villa, in
Weston-super-Mare
, Somerset, where her grandfather Charles Hancock had been born. Cradock's parents did not manage their money well; her mother, Bijou, spent extravagantly, and her father, Archibald, had sizeable gambling debts, many run up in
Nice
. In attempting to keep their creditors at bay, the family moved around the country, going to
Herne Bay
in Kent, then to
Swanage
in Dorset and on to
Bournemouth
in Dorset, where Archibald's brother, Richard Francis Pechey (1872?1963), had become the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church in 1912.
[3]
While in Bournemouth the 15-year-old Fanny attended Bournemouth High School (now
Talbot Heath School
).
[4]
Archibald moved the family again to
Wroxham
in Norfolk, around 1927, where his creditors caught up with him, and by 1930 he was appearing in Norfolk's bankruptcy court faced with debts of £3,500. Cradock began the next ten years of her life in London living in destitution, selling cleaning products door to door. She then worked in a dressmaking shop.
[
citation needed
]
Culinary career
[
edit
]
Cradock's fortunes began to change when she started work at various restaurants and was introduced to the works of
Auguste Escoffier
. She later wrote passionately about the change from
service a la francaise
to
service a la russe
and hailed Escoffier as a saviour of British cooking.
Fanny and Johnnie Cradock began writing a column under the pen name of "Bon Viveur"
[5]
which appeared in
The Daily Telegraph
from 1950 to 1955. This sparked a theatre career, with the pair turning theatres into restaurants. Cradock would cook vast dishes that were served to the audience. They became known for their roast turkey, complete with stuffed head, tail feathers and wings. Complete with French accents, their act was one of a drunken hen-pecked husband and a domineering wife. At this time, they were known as Major and Mrs Cradock. She also wrote books under the names Frances Dale, Bon Viveur, Susan Leigh and Phyllis Cradock.
TV personality
[
edit
]
In 1955 Cradock recorded a pilot for what became a very successful
BBC
television series on cookery. Each year the BBC published a booklet giving a detailed account of every recipe Fanny demonstrated, allowing her to frequently say in later years, "You'll find that recipe in the booklet, so I won't show you now." Fanny advocated bringing
Escoffier
-standard food into the British home and gave every recipe a French name. Her food looked extravagant, but was generally cost-effective, and Fanny seemed to care about her audience. Her catchphrases included "This won't break you", "This is perfectly economical", and "This won't stretch your purse". When presenting her Christmas cake recipe she once justified the cost of ingredients, saying "But on the other hand, we do want one piece of decent cake in the year."
[6]
As time went by, however, her food began to seem outdated, with her love of the
piping bag
and
vegetable dyes
. As she grew older, she applied more and more make-up and wore vast
chiffon
ballgowns on screen. Cradock had always included relatives and friends in her television shows. Johnnie suffered a minor heart attack in the early 1970s and was replaced with the daughter of a friend, Jayne. Another assistant was Sarah, and there was a series of young men who did not last long.
Throughout her television career, the Cradocks also worked for the
Gas Council
, appearing at trade shows such as the
Ideal Home Exhibition
and making many "infomercials", instructing cooks, usually newlywed women, on how to use gas cookers for basic dishes.
[7]
Despite the BBC's ban on advertising, Cradock used only gas stoves in her television shows and often stated that she "hated" electric stoves and ovens.
[8]
Her series
Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas
is the only one out of several she made to have survived in the TV archives and to have been repeated in recent years, on the UK digital television channels
BBC Four
,
Good Food
and
Food Network UK
, usually in the run-up to Christmas.
Good Food
also occasionally broadcasts
Fanny Cradock Invites You to a Cheese and Wine Party
, one of a few surviving stand-alone episodes from other series.
Cradock appeared in twenty-four television series between 1955 and 1975.
[9]
[10]
[11]
Career decline
[
edit
]
In 1976, Gwen Troake, a farmer’s wife from Devon, won the
Cook of the Realm
competition, leading to the BBC selecting her for its TV series
The Big Time
, where talented amateurs were given the opportunity to take part in a spectacular professional event. Troake was to organise a three-course
Foyles
' Literary Lunch at
The Dorchester
in honour of the former prime minister
Edward Heath
, with
Earl Mountbatten of Burma
and other dignitaries in attendance, and asked Cradock?by then a
tax exile
in Ireland?along with chef Eugene Kaufeler, actor and gourmet
Robert Morley
, nutritionist
Magnus Pyke
and many other experts Troake admired to advise her.
[12]
The result brought about the demise of Cradock's television career.
[13]
Troake went through her menu of seafood cocktail, duckling with a lemon jelly-and-cornstarch fortified
bramble
sauce and coffee cream dessert with rum. Her idea was that with seafood, water fowl and rum, the meal had a nautical theme, which would appeal to Heath's love of sailing and also be an appropriate salute to the former Admiral Mountbatten. Cradock, grimacing and acting as if on the verge of gagging, told Troake that her menu was far too rich and she would "never in a million years" serve a seafood cocktail before duck. She appeared not to be familiar with the term "bramble", and when told it meant a blackberry, was horrified that it would be paired with a savoury duck, remonstrated that a sauce like that should be brushed on flan. She derisively declared that the jam in it was "too English" and that the English had never had a cuisine, erroneously claiming that "
Yorkshire pudding
came from
Burgundy
". While accepting that Troake's dessert was delicious, she insisted that it was not suitable, as it was "too sickly" served after the sweetly-sauced, rich duck, countering Troake's numerous objections with "Yes, dear, but now you're among professionals."
Cradock suggested that unless Troake were to serve salad and cheese afterward, as is done in France, then she should use small almond pastry barquettes filled with a palate-cleansing fruit sorbet with spun sugar sails, as this was equally suitable for the naval theme. Troake kept insisting that she liked her signature coffee pudding with "nautical" rum in it, while Cradock appealed to her to think of her diners' taste buds and stomachs, and try to achieve a balance in her menu.
[14]
Unfortunately, the replacement dessert was not executed properly, and Morley said he felt that Troake's original coffee pudding was perfect.
The public were incensed at her eye-rolling rudeness and condescension, and felt that Cradock had ruined Troake's moment.
The Daily Telegraph
wrote "Not since 1940 can the people of England have risen in such unified wrath".
[15]
Fanny wrote a letter of apology to Troake, but the BBC terminated her contract two weeks after the broadcast of the programme. She would never again present a cookery programme for the BBC. (Troake, by contrast, published
A Country Cookbook
of recipes the following year; it included the coffee cream dessert Cradock had vetoed.)
[16]
[
full citation needed
]
Speaking about the incident on
Room 101
in 1999,
The Big Time
's
producer
Esther Rantzen
described Cradock as "hell on wheels", and that she had "reduced this poor little lady [Troake] to nothing".
[17]
Final years
[
edit
]
Fanny and Johnnie Cradock spent their final years living at
Bexhill on Sea
, East Sussex. They became regulars on the chat show circuit, and also appeared on programmes such as
The Generation Game
and
Blankety Blank
. Fanny appeared alone on
Wogan
,
Parkinson
and
TV-am
. Her final
BBC
appearance and her final television appearance was in early 1988 on
Windmill
presented by
Chris Serle
.
Personal life
[
edit
]
Cradock was legally married twice; two later marriages were
bigamous
and therefore
void
ab initio
. First, she married Sidney A. Vernon Evans on 10 October 1926; she was 17 and he was 22.
[18]
Cradock married as "Phyllis Nan Primrose Pechey"; "Primrose Pechey" was a form passed down her father's side. Sidney Evans died in a plane crash on 4 February 1927,
[19]
leaving her pregnant with their son Peter Vernon Evans,
[20]
who was raised by his paternal grandparents. Thanks to Johnnie Cradock, Peter later became a
sous-chef
at
the Dorchester
.
By July of the following year, Cradock had become pregnant again, and married the baby's father, Arthur William Chapman, on 23 July.
[21]
For this marriage, Cradock gave her name as "Phyllis Nan Sortain Vernon Evans".
The couple had a son Christopher,
[22]
but their marriage lasted less than a year before they separated. Cradock left her son Christopher and husband Arthur for a new life in central London. Christopher was brought up in
Norfolk
by his father, an aunt and grandmother, although he made contact with Fanny in his adult life. Arthur Chapman became a Catholic and so would not give Fanny the divorce she later requested, as it was against the teachings of the Catholic Church. He was given only a single line in Fanny's autobiography,
Something's Burning
.
Cradock married again on 26 September 1939, as "Phyllis Nan Sortain Chapman"; her husband this time was Gregory Holden-Dye, a daredevil minor racing driver, driving
Bentleys
at
Brooklands
in Surrey.
[23]
The marriage lasted only eight weeks, and produced no children, as she had soon met the love of her life, Johnnie Cradock. Gregory's mother had expressed a low opinion of Fanny, and ended up as a loathsome character in Fanny's first novel
Scorpion's Suicide
. Cradock later concluded that as Arthur Chapman had not granted her a divorce, her marriage to Gregory was not lawful, and so never publicised it.
John Whitby "Johnnie" Cradock was a major in the
Royal Artillery
who was already married with four children. He soon left his wife, Ethel, and children to be with Fanny. Unable to marry Johnnie, because of Arthur's refusal to get divorced, she changed her surname to Cradock by deed poll in 1942. When she was misinformed that Arthur had died, she married Johnnie on 7 May 1977.
[24]
(Arthur actually lived until 1978.) For this marriage Cradock went with a pared-down version of her name ("Phyllis Chapman"), and the then-68-year-old recorded her age as 55 on the marriage certificate, even though she had a son who was nearly fifty.
[25]
Johnnie died, in
Basingstoke
, Hampshire, on 30 January 1987.
[26]
Death
[
edit
]
Cradock died following a stroke, on 27 December 1994, at the Ersham House Nursing Home,
Hailsham
, East Sussex.
[27]
The cause of death was given as 'cerebrovascular atherosclerosis'. She was cremated at
Langney Crematorium
,
Eastbourne
, as was Johnnie when he died in 1987. There is a memorial plaque and a rosebush in the grounds of the crematorium for both of them.
[
citation needed
]
Legacy
[
edit
]
Cradock came to the attention of the public in the postwar-utility years, trying to inspire the average housewife with an exotic approach to cooking.
[28]
She worked in various ball-gowns without the customary cook's apron, averring that women should feel cooking was easy and enjoyable, rather than messy and intimidating.
[29]
In her early anonymous role as a food critic, working with Johnnie under the name of 'Bon Viveur',
[30]
Cradock introduced the public to unusual dishes from France and Italy, popularising the
pizza
in the United Kingdom.
[31]
She and Johnnie worked together on a touring cookery show, sponsored by the
Gas Council
, to show how gas could be used easily in the kitchen and, as their fame increased, her shows transferred to television, where she enjoyed 20 years of success.
[32]
Cradock has also been credited in the UK as the originator of the
prawn cocktail
.
[33]
[34]
However, some have suggested that she popularised her version of an established dish that was not well known until then in Britain. In their 1997 book
The Prawn Cocktail Years
,
Simon Hopkinson
and
Lindsey Bareham
note that the prawn cocktail has a "direct lineage to
Escoffier
".
[35]
In the course of her shows, Cradock made frequent concessions to the economic realities of the era, suggesting cheaper alternatives which would be within reach of the housewife's purse. The BBC published her recipes and suggestions for dinner-parties in a series of booklets, consolidating her reputation as the foremost celebrity chef of her day.
[36]
Despite their extravagant appearance and eccentricity, her recipes were extremely widely used and her
cookery
books sold in record numbers.
[
citation needed
]
Marguerite Patten
has described Fanny Cradock as the saviour of British cooking after the war.
Brian Turner
has said that he respects Fanny's career, and
Delia Smith
has attributed her own career to early inspirations taken from the Cradocks' television programmes. In a 2008 interview with
The Daily Star
, singer
Amy Winehouse
said that she discovered a love of cookery after reading Cradock's books.
[37]
Others are less complimentary. The BBC series
The Way We Cooked
featured an episode dedicated to Cradock, in which
Graham Kerr
,
Keith Floyd
and
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
, amongst others, disparaged her methods and cooking skills.
[38]
In the third series of
The F Word
,
Gordon Ramsay
held a series-long search for a new Fanny Cradock.
Media portrayals
[
edit
]
Fanny Cradock's husky voice and theatrical style was ripe for mimicry, such as
Betty Marsden
's 'Fanny Haddock' in two BBC Radio comedy shows,
Beyond Our Ken
(1958?1964) and
Round the Horne
(1964?1968). Fanny and Johnnie were also parodied by
The Two Ronnies
and on
Benny Hill
, with Benny as Fanny and
Bob Todd
as an invariably drunk Johnnie.
[39]
Cradock's life has also been the subject of the plays
Doughnuts Like Fanny's
by
Julia Darling
and
Fear of Fanny
by Brian Fillis.
[40]
After a successful run by the Leeds Library Theatre Company, touring the United Kingdom in October and November 2003,
Fear of Fanny
was turned into a television drama starring
Mark Gatiss
and
Julia Davis
and featuring
Hayley Atwell
. The production broadcast in October 2006 on
BBC Four
as one of a series of
culinary
-themed dramas.
[41]
Sucking Shrimp
by Stephanie Theobald has Fanny Cradock as one of its central characters. To provincial Cornish heroine Rosa Barge, Cradock represents glamour, sophistication and the life she aspires to in her concoctions of a Taj Mahal out of Italian meringue and duchesse potato dyed vivid green.
[42]
In 2019, the cabaret group 'Duckie' staged
Duckie Loves Fanny
as part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest's programme of events marking the locale's year-long status as London Borough of Culture. Members of the cabaret group described their performance as a "very queer mashup of postwar pop culture, style, food and gender politics in honour of the fearsome TV cook in her home area of Leytonstone".
[43]
On the 2022 mystery programme
Sister Boniface Mysteries
, season 1, episode 8, titled "Queen of the Kitchen", the characters of Prunella Gladwell and Major James Gladwell (portrayed by
Sylvestra Le Touzel
and
Adam Morris
, respectively) - are clearly
[
who?
]
modelled on Fanny and Johnnie Cradock.
[
citation needed
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Levy, Paul
(2017). "Cradock, Phyllis Nan Sortain [Fanny] (1909?1994)".
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(online ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi
:
10.1093/ref:odnb/54851
.
(Subscription or
UK public library membership
required.)
- ^
GRO Register of Births: June Qtr, 1909, Phyllis Nan S. Pechey, at W. Ham, vol 4a, page 369
- ^
Crockford's Clerical Directory, 1923, page 1173-74
- ^
"Bournemouth: a town with so much character! (From Bournemouth Echo)"
. Bournemouthecho.co.uk. 3 November 2010
. Retrieved
30 December
2011
.
- ^
The Cradocks were still using this byline at the end of their
Telegraph
career (
Daily Telegraph Cooks' Book
, London, W. H. Allen, 1978
ISBN
0-491-02472-X
- ^
"Fanny Cradock Cooks For Christmas- Christmas Cakes part 1"
. YouTube. 1 February 2008. Archived from
the original
on 11 December 2021
. Retrieved
24 June
2012
.
- ^
"Kitchen Magic - Fanny Cradock (1963) Gas Council film NEW TRANSFER"
. YouTube. 24 January 2015. Archived from
the original
on 11 December 2021
. Retrieved
25 January
2015
.
- ^
"Fanny Cradock on TV-am ? 1985"
. YouTube. 19 February 2009. Archived from
the original
on 4 November 2019
. Retrieved
30 December
2011
.
- ^
"Cradock, Fanny (1909?1994)"
.
BFI Screen Online
. BFI
. Retrieved
23 April
2020
.
- ^
"Fanny Cradock on Screen"
.
Fanny Cradock
. Retrieved
23 April
2020
.
- ^
"Radio Times"
.
BBC Genome
. BBC
. Retrieved
23 April
2020
.
- ^
"The Big Time: 3: Gwen Troake's Banquet"
. BBC One London. 11 November 1976
. Retrieved
4 April
2020
.
- ^
Ellis, Clive (18 December 2007).
"Fanny Cradock ? a Christmas cracker"
.
The Telegraph
.
Archived
from the original on 12 January 2022
. Retrieved
27 February
2017
.
- ^
"Fanny Cradock on The Big Time"
. YouTube. 30 January 2008. Archived from
the original
on 28 November 2021
. Retrieved
4 April
2020
.
- ^
"The Big Time"
.
The Radio Times
(2821): 61. 1 December 1977
. Retrieved
13 December
2018
.
- ^
London, McDonald and Jane's
ISBN
0-354-08513-1
- ^
Presenter:
Paul Merton
(3 September 1999).
"Esther Rantzen"
.
Room 101
. Series 4. Episode 7. London. 3:57 minutes in.
BBC
. Retrieved
13 December
2018
.
- ^
GRO Register of Marriages: 1926, December Qtr, Phyllis N. Primrose Pechey & Sydney A. V. Evans, in Sheppey, Kent, vol 2a, page 2368a
- ^
GRO Register of Deaths: MAR 1927 2b 309 NEWHAVEN ? Sidney A. V. Evans, aged 22
- ^
GRO Register of Births: December 1927 4b 78 Erpingham ? Peter S. Evans, mmn = Primrose-Pechey or Pechey
- ^
Marriage: 1928, September Qtr, Phyllis N. S. V. Evans & Arthur W. Chapman, in Norwich, Norfolk, vol 4b, page 316
- ^
GRO Register of Births: September 1929 4b 422 Downham ? Christopher A. J. Chapman, mmn = Primrose-Pechey
- ^
Marriage: 1939, September Qtr, Phyllis N. S. Chapman & Gregory L. E. Holden-Dye, in Fulham, London, vol 1a, page 1615
- ^
Marriage: 1977, June Qtr, Phyllis Chapman & John Cradock, in Surrey South Western, vol 17, page 1154
- ^
"Fanny Cradock"
.
The Scotsman
. 9 September 2006
. Retrieved
10 December
2022
.
- ^
GRO Register of Deaths: February 1987 20 127 Basingstoke ? John Whitby Cradock, DoB = 17 May 1904, aged 82
- ^
Ellis, Clive (26 August 2011).
Fabulous Fanny Cradock: TV's Outrageous Queen of Cuisine
. History Press.
ISBN
9780752469713
– via Google Books.
- ^
'Something's Burning: The Autobiography of Two Cooks’ by Fanny Cradock and Johnnie Cradock (1960)
- ^
Fabulous Fanny Cradock: TV's Outrageous Queen of Cuisine
by Clive Ellis
- ^
The Daily Telegraph Cook's Book
by Bon Viveur (1964)
- ^
Common Market Cookery: France
by Fanny Cradock (22 Nov 1973)
- ^
Time to Remember: A Cook for All Seasons
by Fanny Cradock and Johnnie Cradock (10 Aug 1981)
- ^
"The origins of 10 modern classic foods"
. Channel 4
. Retrieved
6 June
2014
.
- ^
Scott, Chloe (18 June 2013).
"How to make the ultimate prawn cocktail"
.
Metro
. Retrieved
11 June
2014
.
- ^
Hopkinson, Simon (13 September 1997).
"House of Brown Windsor"
.
Independent
. Retrieved
11 June
2014
.
- ^
Giving a Dinner Party
(Publications/British Broadcasting Corporation) by Fanny Cradock and Johnnie Cradock (June 1969)
- ^
Petridis, Alexis (18 July 2018).
"Can Fanny Cradock bring Amy and Blake back together?"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
4 September
2020
.
- ^
Episode Guide: The Way We Cooked
,
BBC Two
- ^
Ross, Robert (1999).
Benny Hill - Merry Master of Mirth: The Complete Companion
. London: Batsford Ltd.
ISBN
978-0713484229
.
- ^
"The Knight Hall Agency Limited"
. The Rod Hall Agency. 23 October 2006
. Retrieved
30 December
2011
.
- ^
"Kitchen dramas set for BBC Four"
.
BBC News
. 12 September 2006
. Retrieved
24 September
2020
.
- ^
Sucking Shrimp
. Hodder and Stoughton. 2001.
ISBN
978-0340768433
.
- ^
Brown, Mark (30 October 2018).
"Cabaret group Duckie to honour TV chef Fanny Cradock"
.
The Guardian
.
External links
[
edit
]
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