Television
In 1955 Cradock 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 say in later years, "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. Her catchphrases included "This won't break you", "This is perfectly economical", and "This won't stretch your purse". When presenting her Christmas cake recipe she once justified the cost of ingredients, saying "But on the other hand, we do want one piece of decent cake in the year."
As time went by, however, her food began to seem outdated, and her love of the piping bag and vegetable dyes meant that her television show began to border on farce. As she got older, she applied more and more make-up and wore vast chiffon ballgowns on screen. She became a figure of fun and the BBC was aware of it.
Cradock 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 were a series of young men who didn't last very 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 newly wed women, on how to use gas cookers for basic dishes. Despite the BBC's ban on advertising, Cradock only ever used 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 been repeated in recent years, on the UK digital television channel Good Food, usually in the run-up to Christmas. Good Food also occasionally show Fanny Cradock Invites You To A Cheese And Wine Party.
Read more about this topic: Fanny Cradock
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