The cult of the television chef started in the 1960s when Fanny Craddock presented her BBC programme ‘Adventurous Cooking’. Each week she would teach the viewers a new recipe which they could later make at home.
Since then many more chefs have become household names by teaching the UK how to cook. Their impact on the nation’s eating habits has been highly significant. Almost six out of ten people in Britain claim that TV cooking programmes have changed the way to cook.
There are now so many celebrity chefs on our screens that it is hard to remember who is who. Chefs have different specialities – some are seafood geniuses, others focus on cooking on a budget , one chef, Ken Hom, specialises in Chinese food.
What makes a good TV chef? Obviously, he must have highly-developed culinary skills. However, to capture the public’s attention as a celebrity chef it is necessary to have an engaging personality . Some TV chefs are as well known for their personalities as they are for their cooking.
Gordon Ramsay, for example, is famous for his fiery temper and foul-mouthed outbursts. The UK’s most famous TV chef, Jamie Oliver, is, by contrast, a likeable, happy-go-lucky figure.
Jamie Oliver’s television career took off in 1999 with the BBC series ‘The Naked Chef’. He made two more series with the BBC before being head-hunted by Channel 4.
Jamie Oliver broke the mould for making cooking programmes with his two most recent series. In ‘Jamie’s Kitchen’ he trained fifteen under-privileged teenagers to become chefs in his London restaurant. And in ‘Jamie’s School Dinners’ he set out to improve the quality of food in Britain’s schools by getting rid of junk food in the canteen.