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Raise a glass to Keith Floyd
Hi Friends,
As most of you know , Keith Floyd was a bit of a hero of mine ..... Finally I had a ticket to go and see him speak at the Cheltenham Literature
Festival to mark the release of a new auto biography and the old bas**rd went and pegged it before I got my chance!
I
have virtually every book he wrote and have watched almost every
minute of TV he appeared on.
I have all the DVDs available and would buy every show if they ever
released them.
I was almost excited about getting a book signed and having a chance
to meet the old fellow, but they say you should never meet your
heroes so, hey ho.
Iin the case of Mr Floyd I would have been happy if he had been a
miserable rude old git and smelled of stale booze - perfect!
Anyway it's not to be now,
part of me really wanted him to return to TV because for all the
drinking and extras his programmes really were about a passion for
food and flavour that a lay person like myself could actually achieve.
Keith Floyd was a true genius, a unique character that was part
typical English eccentric, part gentleman and very much a rebel and
a rogue.
If you're interested please read this news article about his final
hours as it sums up why he should be loved and celebrated or at least
why I found him so inspirational
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article6835418.ece
I saw his first TV series way back when I had already
discovered drinking and the Stranglers, and I enjoyed
eating good food as my grandparents and Mother were great cooks. Then Keith came on TV with a series that had the Stranglers as the
theme music and advocated the consumption of industrial quantities of
high quality booze whilst using the finest ingredients and recipes
from around the globe to create bl**dy good food. Now that is
the way to lead your life!
I was inspired and perhaps discovered the only things I have ever
been able to do well - DRINK , COOK and EAT. And why not?! .
Am I sad he died or surprised? NO! It has been on the cards
for years because unlike most of us Keith was reckless and single-minded, but he will have done more in his time than any of us ever
will.
So now I want to cook more. I want to demolish a bottle of good
rioja whilst making some veal ravioli or a lamb tagine or roasting
some quail.
Expect to be invited for dinner soon!
Anything you ever ate at my house could not have happened without Keith
Cheers
Mike
I think I first saw Keith Floyd on T.V. whilst watching RPM
(Rectangular Picture Machine), a Bristol based show that was
featuring some live performance by the Stranglers.
Suddenly in between the rock n roll they had a 'cooking sketch' as
Keith would later refer to them.
"Hello Gastronauts" he boomed
whilst pouring a bottle of wine over some meat frying up in a huge
copper pan. At least that's how I remember it. Somehow he
looked cool and so later when I noticed he had a series on the BBC called Floyd on Fish I felt compelled to watch it.
Even the theme music was by the Stranglers! He was enthusiastic,
he drank (a lot), he was amusing and most of all the food just
looked great. Not posh but just good and tasty. It made me want to
eat. It was like everything he cooked was going to be twice as tasty
as one of my mother's Sunday lunches (and that's saying something - Ed) or my grandfather's jugged hare,
or other great meals I had been fed as a child.
I had never been to a
restaurant other than Wimpey but now I wanted to eat what Floyd was
cooking.
Then there was Floyd on France, there was olive oil and lemons,
egg plants and cassoulet, John Dory and gallons of wine. Floyd did
not look like a chef and didn't talk like a chef, (not that I knew back then
what a chef did talk like) but that was because he was a cook. From
that point on I wanted to cook too and drink wine of course and eat
good food. I had no desire to be a chef; it didn't cross my mind. I
just wanted to cook for myself and my friends so I could enjoy
eating .
I followed Floyd's every move as each series progressed around
Europe and then the world. Of course some sensible person got him to
put a book out from every series so I could revise Keith's wisdom.
Lots of current celebrity chefs correctly site Floyd as a television
cooking genius without whom their programmes would not exist. However
although these chefs are lining up to pay tribute I suspect there are
many thousands of ordinary people that were inspired like myself to
embrace Floyd's enthusiasm for food and had their lives enhanced by
embracing some of it.
I know I did, since those days I have used gallons of olive oil,
eaten only the ripest tomatoes, searched out local (not tourist)
eateries in France , Italy , Spain , America , Portugal and anywhere
else I have been lucky enough to end up. All washed down will gallons of wine of course! I learned to love ingredients and markets and the
joy of preparing food. I learned to eat.
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