WEB PAGE NO. 2888 6th March 2022 Fanny Cradock First Picture: Fanny Craddock

Second Picture: Major Johnny Craddock

Third Picture: Gwen Troake

Forth Picture: Gwens book

You must all remember Phyllis Nan Sortain Pechey better known as Fanny Cradock, as she frequently appeared on television with her fourth husband Major Johnnie Cradock a slightly bumbling hen-pecked partner. She was born in Leytonstone, London and the birth was formally registered in West Ham. As a child she lived with her family, with her maternal grandparents. A plaque (with her name misspelled) 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 fortunes began to change when she started work at various restaurants and was introduced to the works of Auguste Escoffier. Fanny and Johnnie Cradock began writing a column under the pen name of "Bon Viveur which appeared in The Daily Telegraph from 1950 to 1955. This sparked a theatre career, with the pair turning theatres into restaurants. Fanny 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. In 1955 she 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, "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. As time went by, however, her food began to seem outdated, with her love of the piping bag and vegetable dyes.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. She 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 British 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. Despite the BBC's ban on advertising, she used only gas stoves in her television shows and often stated that she "hated" electric stoves and ovens. Her series Fanny Cradock Cooks for Christmas is the only one of several she made to have survived in the TV archives and to have been repeated in recent years and she appeared in twenty-four television series between 1955 and 1975. 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. Gwen Troake was to organise a three-course 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 Fanny 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 she admired to advise her. The result brought the end of Fanny Cradock's television career Gwen 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 Mr Heath’s love of sailing and also be an appropriate salute to the former Admiral Mountbatten. Fanny Cradock, grimacing and acting as if on the verge of gagging, told Gwen that her menu was far too rich and she would "never in a million years" serve a seafood cocktail before a 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 the dessert was delicious, she insisted that it was not suitable, as it was "too sickly" served after the sweetly-sauced, rich duck, countering Gwen’s numerous objections with "Yes, dear, but now you're among professionals." Fanny suggested that unless a salad and cheese dish was served 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. Gwen kept insisting that she liked her signature coffee pudding with "nautical" rum in it, while Fanny Cradock appealed to her to think of her diners' taste buds and stomachs, and try to achieve a balance in her menu. Unfortunately, the replacement dessert was not executed properly, and Robert Morley said he felt that the original coffee pudding was perfect. The public were incensed at her eye-rolling rudeness and condescension, and felt that Fanny Cradock had ruined Gwens special day. The Daily Telegraph wrote "Not since 1940 can the people of England have risen in such unified wrath....". Fanny wrote a letter of apology to Gwen, 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. (Gwen by contrast, published A Country Cookbook of recipes the following year; it included the coffee cream dessert Fanny Cradock had vetoed). Fanny and Johnnie Cradock spent their final years at Bexhill on Sea. They became regulars on the chat show circuit, and also appeared on programmes such as The Generation Game and Blankety Blank. When she appeared on the television chat show Parkinson with Danny La Rue and it was revealed to her that La Rue was actually a female impersonator, she stormed off the set. She married four times, twice bigamously. She died following a stroke, on 27 December 1994, at the Ersham House Nursing Home, Hailsham, East Sussex. Johnny died in 1987. Stay in touch Peter gsseditor@gmail.com