“Galloping Gourmet" On British TV

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32385, 26 August 1970, Page 3

“Galloping Gourmet" On British TV

(N.Z.P A. Staff Correspondent) LONDON, August 25. Graha i Kerr, now in London for two weeks to launch the general release of his comic cooking series, “Entertaining with Kerr,” still maintains that his television career is all due to the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation.

“I was a catering officer for the Air Force in Auckland and it was Battle of Britain Day.” he told a group of journalists at the 8.8. C. television centre yesterday. “I was ordered to turn up and cook an omelette on television to celebrate.

“They produced some wonderful plastic daffodils and a live lamb skipping round doing exactly what you’d expect a live lamb to do. How I cooked the omelette I don’t know, but it was the first day of New Zealand’s television and I was told it was the best live show to date.” Since then the broad-shoul-dered, six-foot happy-go-lucky cook has been seen cracking jokes, knocking back wine and blundering through countless recipes on television networks throughout the world. His show appears six times a week in Canada (his home at present) three times a week in New Zealand, and from September 14 once a week in Britain. It has previously been seen only by viewers in London and south-east England.

MANY TRIPS The “Galloping Gourmet” as he is known, has moved over the last 12 years from New Zealand to Australia to Canada. But he and his wife, i who runs the programme, | spend much of their time; touring the world looking for i recipes to take home to Ottawa, where he tapes his | programmes.

“My next tour is of New Orleans, Mexico City and Jamaica," he says. “Someone goes ahead to research on the best restaurants and to collect the menus. I sort out the recipes and build up a repertoire and then, along with an

interpreter, we descend on the restaurant to see the food cooked in the kitchens and film it “When I come to cook 11 the recipes generally don’t work—chefs do measure by mittfuis rather than weight—so I have to make up the ingredients myself. Although ) treat the programme as a parody I treat the recipes very seriously—l usually do five recipe tests every day.” LIGHT APPROACH

Now producing 195 new half-hour shows every year, Graham Kerr attributes half his success to his lighthearted approach to cooking —“Viewers get hung up on

specialists instructing them, 1 think informality is the answer”—and the other half to his easy television manner—“switch a camera on me and 1 immediately become uninhibited.” The food which he cooks on the screen is either taken home for his two children, or given to the television crew or someone in the audience. “However, when we have guests on Saturday night I manage to work out the programmes during the week so we have a three-course dinner cooked in advance," he says.

His favourite dish? Stuffed cabbage cooked in Southern France. “But it’s impossible to say,” he confesses, “when I find a good dish I eat it once,

test it once, rehearse it once, and then'put it on the show. By the time I’ve had it four times, I’m sick of it, and I’ll never cook it again.” When he’s at home he does all the cooking. “My wife Treena is a prize cumulus nimbus cook—everything is overshadowed by a huge pile of potatoes.” “I have muesli (a Swiss cereal dish) for breakfast every day, no lunch, and a reasonable meal in the evening,” says Graham Kerr. “1 have no weight problems but my wife seems to eat nothing but cottage cheese all day long.” BEST COOKS

“Canadian food is pretty blunt,” he says, “and Italian is better than French,” but he conforms to the opinion that the French are the best cooks in the world. “This is because when a French housewife turns out a good meal her husband really appreciates it—if he were English he would only open his mouth to swallow.”

The Galloping Gourmet receives 50 letters a week from the London area, 500 a week from Canada, and 5000 a week from the United States. But he has resolved to give up the series in 1972—he has just started designing kitchen equipment and he plans to write an eight-part cookery book.

“That’s enough to keep anyone busy—at the moment' we have no t' ae to ourselves at all,” he says.