David Pritchard - 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

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

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.