Bon Appetit !
THE extraordinary vitality of the extraordinary Cradocks is making the Bon Viveur pro- gramme (on Channel 9) one of the most stimi.lating half-hours around the place—and certainly the first cookery programme that's been entertaining. This week they clearly enjoyed themselves enormously play-acting as i married couple (he Cockney English. she Arnaud French) serving a meal in a Breton bistro. Myself, I always found something SPECTATOR, JUNE 1, 1956 disturbing about Mr. Harben's fuls0 devotion to the food itself; you could-prae cally hear his gastric juices bubbling as ht whirled and wobbled his breathless way in a kind of sacred ballet about the cooker. 'no Cradocks avoid this uncomfortableness bt being less direct, by playing the fool, and bl playing it engagingly enough to create 8 character interest outside the food. This flies' day's meal of herring-roe crofites, sole With a shrimp saute, a salad of crudités, and ti Parmesan cheese soufflé was, moreover,' demonstrated in such a way as even coal understand, and with sufficient grace and chest to convince me that even I could cook it. The BBC had tried to spike their skillets earlier by presenting a spaniel-eyed French' man on Panorama who tried, rather sadly. j0 show me how to cook veal with a mushroollt cream and brandy sauce. This was all food a11d no nonsense; and whereas I could whip i'°,° up a Sole au Bon Viveur in a flash, the veal no, I just didn't get it. The whole question of cooking on televiS10,°1 raises some fascinating imponderables.
we at last start cooking better? And how do °' the commercials for tele-snacks stand up 11 the swashbuckling flourishes of the pros?,15, it cheese-spread, bacon sandwiches and He_tu;; 57 in Peckham or is it the Parmesan soullw„; It would 'be a fascinating subject for a Pie' of research.
Two thoroughly bad programmes are comic off the troubled waves of ARD—Paris Piccadilly and Seconds Out. The first was the tattiest of all t,II! commercial variety shows, an insult to 0' intelligence and taste of viewers, and its dig(/' pearance (as a result of networking difficulties; is heartily to be welcomer:. The basic trottbir with this show was the lack of animal° personality; an aura of continental sex of 111t dreariest kind was substituted; and the acts./4 dreary in themselves—were usually at the of the number two roadshow of Les Nio:t, de Gay Paree. Compare 1., for example, the BBC's Tin Pan Alley which is, bless no great shakes either, but which is warnic, and widened by the splendidly spread°, talents of Mr, Cotton who's also to be sect', in his own Band Show. This wheezing, slibltt.„I'je cynical, avuncular character is assuming of the ragged majesty of Bud Flanagan; th'fic is the same knowing but innocent eye. At''1); same bland, dead-pan look, the same kin scorn about him. Mr. Cotton, because he's II, and unafraid of it. is growing in stature every programme he does. Seconds Out, ARD's other dying feature: was anyway pretty dead. Mr. Owen. Wh work in newspapers I have often adrnir seemed to have got it into his head that Wu), ing and looking cross was an interesting ,vat u to have an argument. His treatment reeetit'he of Mr. Marshall from Singapore was. al least, embarrassing, both for Mr. Marsh is (whose manners were excellent) and for ." audience. Talking this week about autoMati"0 Mr. Owen was rather more controlled; ,„t, crakgily convoluted forehead was loWered1id often in a charge. As a result we almost beudie something interesting; but then, of Course,.
bell went, (St
It would be pleasant to think that the O o bell might be rung after exactly fifteen secc'r'',5. of the new parlour-game played for moroisi, by morons, called Yakity Yak. This Liberace and This Is Your Life as a risc reason for regretting the invention 01
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