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Well this is a fine pickle with the advent of all manner of cook books, cooking and lifestyle shows and now the reality television type food shows it is time I set about to create my top ten list of the who’s who in celebrity cooking. Will it be the “Kitchen Stadium” of the Iron Chef or the ever hot Hell’s Kitchen of the animated Gordon Ramsay? Maybe you are into the lovely jubbly chimes of Jamie Oliver or you might be keen on the comfort food and shape of Nigella Lawson and the two Fat Ladies. It really doesn’t matter if you are a carnivore or a vegetarian food is fantastic when you look at it and just who presents it is as individual as us all.

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Let’s begin with an oldie but goodie:

10 Two Fat Ladies: Clarissa Dickson Wright and the late Jennifer Paterson
These Ladies have made the No 10 place for providing a great entertainment if not guilt inducing antidote to any foodie, political correctness is not their strong suit or should it be but as a double act they are very entertaining as far as TV cooking shows go. The Ladies were a fabulous and plausible team they just remind me of an old aunty who cooks no nonsense normal food (well normal for old England). You can easily see yourself touring around the country on Jennifer’s Triumph Thunderbird and popping into convents or old school halls to cook calorie busting Christmas dinners for nuns or the old boy’s and even giving those wayward vegetarians a taste of real food (smirk).  As such robust reminders of the effects of unfettered gastro hedonism, they really should have made us want to cook nothing but a sautéed rice cake with a side order of broiled Swiss muesli, but until the Ladies revved onto the screens, fat hadn’t looked like so much fun since Rubens plied his trade during the resonance. As Clarissa would always lament you always need and cannot go wrong if you wrap your food in streaky bacon and give it a good coating of lard, apparently it keeps your food moist and your appetite at bay. I really think this is old time British inspired food and entertainment. So just knot up your hankie and put a fag into your mouth sit back crack a can and enjoy the fun that is the 2 fat ladies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Fat_Ladies

9 Graham Kerr: The Galloping Gourmet
I know he hasn’t been on television for years but I grew up watching his recipes. Graham is possibly the first television chef I remember, and he was entertaining did a few take’s and by magic the bottle of red seemed to evaporate before your very eyes with this the gallivanting and raving in the kitchen grew ever larger.  

In the 1970s, when Fanny Craddock was still confidently terrorising cringing domestic chefs into constructing meals of elaborate sculptures and gaudiness, I loved watching the charmingly tacky, laid-back Canadian, yes that’s right not a pom (I only realised when I went to research him). The Roger Moore of the frying pan I believe was a title he held.  Not only was this the first time television cookery hadn’t been presented like a chemistry lesson, but it was also the first time a TV chef had dished up food, chatted and flirted in front of a live studio audience. He always managed to pick a thrilled member of the audience to share the meal (see the pattern here Jamie and others did not invent that), and though I cannot remember a single thing he cooked it really doesn’t matter the show was the main thing for me. For his sins, Kerr was the obvious forerunner of the popular daytime TV cooks, though I wouldn’t hold that against him (maybe not ready steady cook).  

He’s still at it, though after his wife had a heart attack in the mid 1980s he became a swift convert to a healthier cooking style (what would Clarissa think?). Well good on him like a fine wine he has improved with age.

http://www.grahamkerr.com/gk.php

8 Delia Smith
Delia makes it to number 8, but only just. If this were a list of top 10 cookery writers, however, it would be a different story because of her books. Delia has sold over 10 million to date, but as a celebrity chef? I’d rather eat placenta than watch 30 minutes of the bland and complicated Delia. Mind you, out of all her shows I probably enjoyed “How To Cook” the most we are used to seeing chefs pushing out the culinary envelope but there are still very few chefs who would be prepared to demonstrate egg-boiling with such clarity and without patronising the viewer. For this reason alone Delia deserves her place in the list. OK well maybe not a celebrity chef but I am just checking if you are reading or skimming.

http://www.deliaonline.com/

7 Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
While Hugh’s series – TV Dinners, A Cook on the Wild Side and Escape to River Cottage – were undeniably ‘lifestyle TV’ (indeed, he’s less of a cook than a whole lifestyle), they certainly don’t peddle the predictably modern, glossily aspirational, populist sort of cookery that currently dominates our screens, offering something far darker, grungier and more ‘indie’ instead. The results are always intensely watchable but I doubt many viewers were tempted into their kitchens after the infamous show on interesting ways to cook placenta for six. You know he may have cooked some weird combinations of food but I think it really broadened our taste buds or at the least imagination. 

http://www.rivercottage.net/

6 Rick Stein
For me Rick steins recipes are usually very tasty and simple, he really started the whole get your produce fresh and knows the producer. He engages the viewer with his passion and expertise but also makes us want something we didn’t think we wanted until we saw him making us want it, turning even the eating of eel on his odyssey on a French canal boat I must admit until I say the simple recipe I turned my nose and palette up to eel prior to this show. Perhaps he is one chef where the term location location location is very much a part of his charm, with such a television friendly location being the Cornish doorstep of his home and work, which leads me to believe that he lives, breathes and possibly even sweats fish.  Stein is like a plateful of smoked haddock, poached egg and mashed potatoes, a combination that is both unbeatably satisfying and fun simple yet a great experience and a favourite to many a hearty and healthy eater.

http://www.rickstein.com/

5 Madhur Jaffrey
She may not make love to the camera in order to grab the biggest ratings, but Madhur “Posh Spice” Jaffrey has almost singlehandedly shifted British TV viewers perceptions of Indian cookery by showing us that the national Friday night alcohol fuled snack can become a home cooked thing of beauty and joy. Though not a vegetarian herself she’s easily the finest exponent of imaginative and utterly enticing veggie dishes. Her television presence and delivery is a delight part fun loving girl and part highly authoritative teacher taking you on an exotic trip through a series of ingredients you can practically smell.  I must admit that after seeing her passion and easy explanations and tips I really enjoy mixing up my own cooking and adding a little traditional and western influenced style to my own meals and sure like my next TV chef she isn’t hard on the eye or the ear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhur_Jaffrey

4 Nigella Lawson
The reason the Domestic Goddess doesn’t figure higher up the list is that while I love her easy, down-to-earth cooking style, I’m a bit concerned that I will not be seen as a true fan just a perv.. Though Nigella perpetually reduces male viewers to gibbering drooling messes and lament that they really love her cooking, women tend to feel a little pressured by the ease at which Nigella has with herself and life generally. She is a type of supermum really, as you may agree that after half an hour in front of Nigella Bites many women either emerge suffering varying degrees of plummeting self-esteem or feel totally empowered with self confidence and a hunger for some comfort food.  We enjoy and relate to her self obsessed guilty and utterly feminine pleasure in food (any food, any time), but watching her baking muffins before making the kids breakfast simply turns off many as this is a bit supermom “How can anybody be that perfect”?  She isn’t of course and that’s why we like her so much and there of course is for the boys the corny soft-porn camerawork.

http://www.nigella.com/

3 Keith Floyd
It’s easy to forget, given the current proliferation of telly cooks, but after he first appeared on the small screen in 1985 with “Floyd on Fish”  for the rest of the 80′s Keith Floyd was TV cooking. Twenty bestselling books and 19 TV series later, he may no longer be in fashion and his profile thus not quite so high, but we must remember Keith Floyd was possibly the forerunner to Gordon Ramsay, yes you heard me Mr Floyd had a very memorable series where he dropped the F bomb many times in the kitchen over his staffs,  well lack of devotion or was it stupidity. This really set him apart from the rest and kept a warm place for him with me, you see he is just a mortal after all which makes many of us think hey I can do that. The Floyd on Food/France/Britain and Ireland/Oz/ Spain/Italy/Africa series were enormously influential and sold to over 30 countries you haven’t lived until you hear Floyd over dubbed in African.

http://www.floydonline.co.uk/index.php

2 Jamie Oliver
Say what you like about the Naked Chef but the boy done a lot of good both in the kitchen and outside of it. Just when I was starting to feel jaded and comfortable or even set in my ways in my cooking along comes Jamie the coriander convert to a generation for whom cooking consisted of reheating yesterday’s Lean Cuisine or take away leftovers.  Famously plucked from the kitchens of the River Caf by a smart talent scout, Jamie was a deliciously appetising change from the stodgy fine dining to the home cooked meal for TV. The recipe was to simply add liberal quantities of groovy tunes, whirling camerawork, scooters, mates and cheery cockneyish geezer chat and serve piping hot to a new young hip and traditional safe audience. You know when the first season finished I thought the lovelly jubbly would not last, but I must admit I do like it and sometimes find myself slipping it into conversation. Jamie’s passion does not stop with showing how, he has a social conscience and with the fifteen foundation has changed the lives of many wayward teens and young adults,  and I especially enjoy catching up with his Australian mate Tobby Puttock at the Melbourne fifteen. The work they have done here is just fantastic. Not sure about the attempts to sway school dinners and low income towns but good on him for keeping it real and sticking to his guns.  The next thing well isn’t really foodie but his marriage to the lovely Jools didn’t hurt much, in fact I think it has endeered him with many of us, you got to see the relationship blossom, go through the hard times and come out the other side.  Jamie has given many people the courage to try what would have been deemed the impossible in the kitchen, even I can cook a souffle now (well most of the time).

http://www.jamieoliver.com/

 http://www.fifteen.net

http://www.fifteenfoundation.org.au/

1 Gordon Ramsay

Well I have left the most talked about until last, Mr Gordon Ramsay who some might say is just a foul mouthed lifestyle product of the television celebrity chef world. But I must admit the first time I saw a show with Gordon, I was not really confident that I would enjoy the ongoing language and what appeared to be just plain nastiness within the kitchen.  Then came another series and I started to see the kinder side of Gordon especially when he started to help out people who had got into a restaurant business with just the pure excitement of food and usually no business sense. This is where Gordon holds his own he really helps those people get back on track and the transformation is wonderful. Next Gordon moved into the new style of interactive cooking show, here he would prepare you over a week with the skills to prepare all your equipment and ingredients for a wonderful 3 course meal and on Friday night he cooked the whole thing from start to finish live. This was a great new direction for the celebrity television chef. Of course he has pandered to the market and kept up the Hell’s Kitchen franchise which I am not a fan, but he also has the other program where he takes cooks and gives them a chance to cook for the public. Again this is fraught with danger but usually quite entertaining with Gordon usually upstaged by a celebrity cook.

http://www.gordonramsay.com/

So really Gordon is my number 1 for many reasons and I know that there will be those who won’t agree, but you know that’s why we write these article and we do invite your comments. All in all we are all better for the many years of these shows as they have given many the confidence to try something that would normally be left in the to hard basket. Well that’s my top 10.