Fabulous Fanny Cradock

While Fanny Cradock cut a controversial figure berating Margaret Thatcher for wearing cheap shoes and clothes, writing off Eamonn Andrews as a blundering amateur and famously being forced to apologise for insulting a housewife cook on The Big Time her cookery programmes were enormously popular. Dressed in evening gown, drop earrings and pearls, donning thick make-up, she boomed orders to her partner Johnnie, a gentle, monocled stooge who was portrayed as an amiable drunk. The programmes were watched by millions and were hugely influential: the Queen Mother told Fanny that she and Johnnie were mainly responsible for the improvement in catering standards since the war; Keith Floyd declared that she changed the whole nations cooking attitudes; for Esther Rantzen she created the cult of the TV chef. Lavishly illustrated and illuminated by amusing facts and anecdotes, Fabulous Fanny Cradock paints a fun, entertaining portrait of this extraordinary woman.