Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
TV chef who pioneered cooking programmes in New Zealand and Australia, later achieving worldwide success.
On the island
Eight records
No quote for this disc in the transcript.
The Impossible Dream (The Quest)Favourite
No quote for this disc in the transcript.
Wotcher! (Knocked 'Em in the Old Kent Road)
No quote for this disc in the transcript.
Original cast recording of 'Carousel'
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II
No quote for this disc in the transcript.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30What was your training in the hotel business?
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 … 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.
Presenter asks
1:44Did you want to make the Army your career?
Uh yes, I did at one stage, but then all things started to go against me. I [did] something which caused seventeen questions to be asked in the House of Parliament. … 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.
Presenter asks
3:02Had you started writing or lecturing about cooking by the time you were in New Zealand?
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] 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.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
6:43Do you find it helpful to cook in front of a live audience?
Very much so, yes. I'm a terrible ham.
Presenter asks
7:38Does all this professional eating of rich dishes cause you a weight problem?
No, but I found that I was getting a sort of heartache problem back again … it was a sort of heartburn … I think people are overweight when they're a little unhappy. And I really haven't been that unhappy, I'm pleased to say.
Presenter asks
8:02What's all this about — you're off sailing round the world?
We rather like to look at careers as vertical ascendancy … 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. … We then do the sort of VTOL thing and put the jets forward and go across horizontally for a while … 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.
“I was sort of born in a laundry basket instead of the theatrical basket.”
“And Trina was very sick. And we decided that, you know, damn it, this is ridiculous. Uh, let's try and do something human.”
“She said, '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.'”
“I'm a terrible ham.”