Graham Kerr

Graham Kerr0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

I I was born here in London and uh of hotelier parents and I was brought up in the hotel business. My father went off to war obviously and um and we went down to Brighton. Uh came back to the hotel business after the war and I was brought up substantially

Presenter0:24

Behind the scenes. It was sort of borne in a laundry basket instead of the theatrical basket.

Graham Kerr0:30

Do trade.

Presenter0:30

Well, I trained just simply by insisting to my father that I really wanted to be a great hotelier and he accepted me as a plangeur and people who peel carrots and things like this. And so I went through from the bottom up. Plangeur is a high-class name for washer-up. That's right. Thanks so much.

Presenter0:50

And when you had finished your training? When I finished training, of course, then I was called up into the army and as is the army's want, they thought that I'd best be a vehicle mechanic. And so I tried to get commissioned, but the British Army wasn't ready for me. And went back and was a plangeur again. I spent three months bashing pans in a 1500-man kitchen in Devonshire. And that led to me being an instructor at the School of Cookery for two days. And that finished because I didn't agree with what I was asked to teach or told to teach. And then I became a drill and weapon training instructor. And if you really want to go a very odd career. And then finally, a battalion catering advisor in Wales. And then the chief catering advisor to the Army Emergency Reserve as a captain of 22. You didn't want to make the Army your career?

Presenter1:44

Uh yes, I did at one stage, but then all things started to go against me. I I

Presenter1:49

did something which caused seventeen questions to be asked in the House of Parliament.

Presenter1:53

And I was up for a court-martial and all that sort of thing. And it obviously became very clear that military discipline and I didn't exactly gel. So I decided that maybe I should leave. And I left. I didn't leave under a cloud. I left with my £308, which I duly invested in the hotel business with my parents in Tenton, in Kent. That went bankrupt fairly soon. And then I was off paying back our creditors by working as a waiter at the Royal Ascot Hotel. My wife was a barmaid.

Graham Kerr2:11

Right.

Presenter2:26

And we gradually worked our way up to being general manager and managed of the hotel.

Graham Kerr2:30

Rather

Presenter2:31

Yeah, and then we um we were very tired and very dispirited and Trina was very sick.

Presenter2:36

And we decided that, you know, damn it, this is ridiculous. Uh, let's try and do something human. And so we went to New Zealand House and we signed on. I became Chief Catering Advisor to the Royal New Zealand Air Force and off we went in September fifty eight.

Graham Kerr2:51

That was what, all thirteen years ago. And since that time you've spent nearly all your time overseas. Yes, all the time, really.

Graham Kerr2:57

So you were in New Zealand. Had you started writing or or lecturing about cooking at that time?

Graham Kerr3:02

Yeah.

Presenter3:04

Actually, almost immediately I arrived because there was nobody well actually I suppose you could say there were twenty people in New Zealand who were in

Presenter3:12

Physically interested in good food and wine. I became the vice president of the Wine and Food Society quite quickly and started to do a series of radio programmes called Cook's Tour. Very inspired title. And for lovely people, really nice people, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. And they really helped me to start doing this. And then I started lecturing to groups of five ladies at a time at the Parent Teachers Association at Pautako Doko and places like this. Really out in the Buhai, as they call it, miles from anywhere. Used to pay all my own expenses, never used to claim a penny for any of these. Oh, this was pioneering. Oh, yes. 322 public lectures I gave in those days. And television?

Graham Kerr3:31

Yeah.

Graham Kerr3:53

Hanbridge

Presenter4:01

Television, yes. That started in nineteen sixty, sixty one, uh when uh Auckland came on the air. And that was actually the second live show on television in New Zealand. I put live in parentheses, I'm not sure whether it was.

Graham Kerr4:13

They're not

Presenter4:14

And it was quite an experience and as a result of which they asked the Air Force whether they wouldn't mind if they could have a programme called Eggs with Flight Lieutenant Kerr was the first one. And I did it on the end of the newsreader's desk on a flambé lamp with just some drapes behind it. That was my set up and everything else. And

Graham Kerr4:25

And I did it on the

Presenter4:33

It was frightening, really was frightening. But I I did did twelve programmes a year, but they said I couldn't do any more'cause I'd be overexposed.

Graham Kerr4:40

Probably right. And then you began, what, filming these appearances straight away, or did you move on?

Presenter4:46

Oh yes, well what happened then was that the the Air Force career came to an end, five years. I couldn't stand it any longer. I really am not a service type at all. I like the discipline but then I I'm not too well disciplined myself. So we left that and I became a sort of consultant to industry. All the primary produce boards. I had 28 clients, used to charge two guineas an hour and could never understand why I didn't have any money. So I wasn't charging enough, but I had plenty of clients because I was so cheap. And so a gentleman came to me and said,

Presenter5:18

How would you like to go over to Australia and, you know, go on telly?

Presenter5:22

So I said, only for a hundred pounds a show and so he says, Oh, well, I'll try and do it. It's very stiff, you know. I don't think I'll do it Well, he did it all right, and uh for several but a little bit more than that, but I got my hundred pounds, and that's how Australia started.

Graham Kerr5:36

Yeah.

Presenter5:37

And Trina became your producer and director? Yes, actually after the Australian thing got off the ground and and we were in Australia for about three years, and then things started to hit the deck. I wasn't at all successful. Uh people were starting to reject the idea of of renewal of the television show.

Presenter5:55

and the whole thing started to go for a dirty dive.

Presenter5:59

And uh

Presenter6:00

I said to Trina, Well, look, we've got to do something about this let's and she said, Well, why don't you make your own programmes, hire your own television station, uh your own crew, buy your own videotapes, I'll come down, I'll produce them and we'll have a go together.

Presenter6:13

So I said, well, you know what this means, don't you? It's the house goes in and the car and everything else like that. We've had it.

Presenter6:19

And she said, No, we haven't because they've been successful So we went off down there and she produced them and they jolly well were successful and it that led to the Canadian American

Presenter6:29

And worldwide situation we have

Graham Kerr6:30

Oh, yes.

Graham Kerr6:32

The formula for entertaining with care became an opening sequence of you sampling the food in a celebrated restaurant somewhere or hotel, and the second part was you in your own kitchen cooking one of the dishes.

Graham Kerr6:43

Now, when you cook, you work in front of an audience. Do you find that helps? Very much so, yes.

Presenter6:49

Yeah. I'm a terrible ham.

Presenter6:51

Where do you do your filming? Where's your base? Uh in Ottawa, in in Canada. It's very quiet and peaceful and the only other showman there is the Prime Minister. And so therefore we found that uh and we had a sort of tacit agreement. Every time we came in he was out and everything. But then we started to to overlap so.

Graham Kerr7:05

Yeah.

Presenter7:08

Now you've eaten and cooked your way round most countries in the world, surely.

Presenter7:13

Um well not really. I I I think I think we can leave out something like twenty-two countries that we haven't yet visited. How many programmes have you done?

Presenter7:22

Six hundred. Six hundred. Yes, that's in the Galloping Gourmet series and another two hundred odd in the uh the the eggs with entangle eggs which slightly didn't care. That's a lot of screen time. Now all this professional eating of rich dishes, do you have a weight problem with this?

Presenter7:38

No, but I found that I was getting a sort of heartache problem back again. Uh it was a sort of heartburn that I was it it never really got to the stage of making me too overweight. I think people are overweight when they're a little unhappy. And I really haven't been that unhappy, I'm pleased to say. I've had my unhappy periods in which I've gone up twenty pounds, and then I've become happy again and I've lost it.

Graham Kerr7:51

And I've

Graham Kerr8:00

And now you're off sailing round the world.

Presenter8:02

Yeah.

Graham Kerr8:02

What's all this about?

Presenter8:03

Well

Presenter8:05

We rather like to look at careers as vertical ascendancy, if you like, hopefully most of the time. And when it gets to the point of the physical sort of impetus of blasting off into a vertical climb, suddenly the weight of the projectile starts to come back a bit. And when that sort of lessening or heaviness starts to arrive, we feel that we owe it to people who watch us or listen to us or whatever not to have that weightiness there. So we then do the sort of VTOL thing and put the jets forward and go across horizontally for a while, for however long it takes to lose that sogginess so that one can then start the vertical climb again. So we're just going to go horizontal for a while and the best way to go horizontal is in a boat because you can't rush nature and let the wind blow you around and it's very satisfying and quiet. Maybe even Desert Island-ish. Yes, indeed. You're having the boat specially built? Yes. How big?

Graham Kerr9:04

How big

Presenter9:04

But she's um

Presenter9:06

Sounds totally antisocial'cause the only thing I've ever owned before is an eleven foot racing doggy. It's seventy one feet long and it scares the life out of me.

Presenter9:16

And you're taking all the family, you're taking your three children.

Graham Kerr9:18

Yeah.

Presenter9:19

As well, yes.

Graham Kerr9:19

Uh

Presenter9:20

How long is it gonna take? Well, eighteen months minimum, uh, three years maximum.

Graham Kerr9:24

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:24

And is this going to be a complete holiday or are you going to... Well, no, we can't do that, because we're not those sort of people. What we want to do is do something on the horizontal, which is neither going to add to our financial situation or hopefully detract from it. We'd like it to be self-supporting, sabbatical. So we're going to make a film of our family's experience of going horizontal. And a little cooking as well. Oh, yes, I want to cook in a hurricane. Uh-huh. And as inevitably I shall find one, I would like to make it to put it to good use.