TV COOK Fanny Cradock, the husky-voiced half of a double act which set
out to take the drudgery out of cookery, has died in an East Sussex
nursing home, a family spokesman said yesterday. She was 84 and had been
ill for a short time.
Her appearances with monocled husband Johnny, who died in 1987, were
highlights of television's monochrome days. Following a recent
documentary on the couple, the BBC considered re-running their series.
Their enthusiastic preparations saw their style parodied by comedians.
Betty Marsden sent her up as Fanny Haddock in the cult radio comedy
Round the Horne in the 1960s and Ernie Wise put on a frock to play her
in a sketch with Eric Morecambe.
She and her Harrovian educated husband wrote about wine and food for
several newspapers before achieving fame on the BBC.
Their television debut came in 1955 on a programme called Kitchen
Magic, when they prepared a swiss roll, eclairs, and a souffle.
While he rarely got a chance to speak, it was their on-screen
chemistry which made them household names for more than 20 years.
Quietly-spoken Johnny appeared dominated by his wife but she always
insisted their match was much more equal than it appeared.
''He is the only person who can handle me,'' she said. ''We're never
apart. The only things that separate us are rugby and the lavatory.''
Mrs Cradock was brought up in Nice and wanted to be a professional
violinist. Instead, she wrote dozens of cookery books and novels and
staged A Cooking Story at the London Arts Theatre in 1957.
She and her husband moved home frequently. They left Little Bentley,
near Clacton, Essex, after a series of burglaries.
They also lived in south London's Blackheath, the Channel Islands, and
briefly in the West Country.
Born Phyllis Primrose-Pechey in 1909, her life before fame was as
colourful as what followed.
Her father was wealthy and in his 30s and her mother was a flighty
teenage bride. During winter seasons in Nice, he would be in the casino
and she would be wooed by an admirer who would send young Phyllis away
with some money.
She would end up in the hotel kitchen, perched on a shelf watching the
chef and his staff for hours.
That experience, along with the tuition of her grandmother, who cared
for her until she was 10, was the basis of her craft, she would later
say.
At 16, she eloped with an RAF pilot but he died in a crash four months
later while she was pregnant with her first son.
In 1939, she met Major John Cradock at a troop concert on the Hackney
Marshes and romance flourished.
He encouraged her to write novels and enter journalism, and soon the
couple were writing the Bon Viveur column on cookery and restaurants in
the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail.
The following year, in a bold publicity coup, Fanny challenged
France's television chef M Raymond Oliver to a cooking duel at the Cafe
Royal.
He had ungallantly and unwisely averred that women were poor chefs. It
was declared a draw.
Mrs Cradock's solicitor Mr Christopher Doman said she died on Monday
after being in failing health for some years. The funeral will be at
Eastbourne Crematorium on January 5.
A BBC spokesman said: ''Fanny Cradock, with her husband Johnny,
entertained and instructed millions of television viewers with their own
mixture of cookery and comedy.''
He said Mrs Cradock had been a pioneer of cookery programmes with the
BBC who would be missed by all who had worked with her and her husband.
Keith Floyd, one of the inheritors of her cookery quips, said: ''She
changed a whole nation's cooking attitudes. She really was an imperious
lady.''
She had two sons, Peter who lives in Nairobi and Christopher who runs
an inn in Exmouth.
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