Download or read book Fabulous Fanny Cradock written by Clive Ellis and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 nation’s 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.