Keith Floyd Tribute by James Martin, Rick Stein, Marco Pierre White, Heston Blumenthal, Gary Rhodes

[Music] tv legend keith floyd was a charismatic bon viver with an irreverent twinkle in his eye over the years he's taken us on a groundbreaking tour of the world's cuisine stopping regularly on route for the obligatory slurp of fine wine and original he's been much imitated but never really bettered [Music] hello dear gastronauts do you realize that for the price of what half a bitter you can have a fishy treat with a bunch of prats i'm sorry spreads he's been a part of the tv landscape for so long it's easy to forget what a revolutionary keith floyd was truly pioneering he was the original rock and roll tv super chef basically i think keith was a rock and roll star he was flamboyant he was energetic he was literally you you got this idea that you never quite knew what was going to happen next i i wish i could have been as spontaneous as keith he was mercurial he just went up and then burst really to make the perfect shellfish cumber you know a fistful of dollars thank you he brought panache and energy and style and fun floyd was really the first tv chef to to drag cooking kicking and screaming out of the studio ginger red peppers garlic chilies you know he was a great british eccentric but he was also very modern at the same time what an achievement i think keith was actually one of the first bad boy tv chefs really because he was irreverent it's easily a terrible thing to do to your family but i always wanted my mother-in-law on one of my programs and it's taken me 25 years to catch her actually he drank on screen please excuse me and this whole show was punctuated by the strangler's peaches [Music] all you had to do was put a camera on him and allow him to be himself so if this takes a little time to cook bear with me because we don't pull things out of the oven that we've you know just happened to have ready like all those other tv programs before keith floyd bounded onto our screens in 1984 cooking on tv was very different it had become a very very staid a very studio-based format i think the cookery program i always put a penny on when i'm cooking you know because i'm inclined to drop things down the front of my dress yes they were all very staged the proof will come when we take the top off weren't it mr barrett yes they were all very like school teachers well hello again and welcome to the cookery course they're all very pompous i'm very unsure in my own mind that there's anything which has contributed more to modern cookery than kitchen form i can't remember when um you know that fearsome woman funny craddick was on i mean i i never enjoyed that i mean i i just didn't see the point of it all that sort of bossiness and that poor hempect husband of hers there was delia of course and i did have a lot of time for delia because she did it very well if you want to make an omelette for one person you need two eggs if it's a very hungry person you could use three but bless her it was more of a sort of course than than actually getting stuck into the wine so much of cookery programs is prepared in advance it's all worked out very carefully in the camera angles of the camera shots and bits that are prepared earlier for this i need to begin with bean sprouts and i think by taking that convention ahead on us to say no we're going to do it real time we're going to stick a camera on it and see if it works he just reinvented it completely born in southampton in the early 40s his family wasn't posh in fact his dad worked for the electricity board but floyd did go to a posh school and then after a brief spell as a local newspaper reporter in bristol he joined the royal tank regiment as a second lieutenant army life wasn't a natural fit for floyd but it did give him a taste of what he really wanted to do be a chef after odd jobing his way around france floyd went on to open his own restaurant in 1966 by which time he was married and a dad he worked morning noon and night i don't think he slept and the pressures must have been enormous because they started with virtually no money and then everything started to grow quite rapidly and at the end we had three restaurants within a very short period of time in his twenties absolutely extraordinary by the end of the decade things were going wrong he sold up and spent a year sailing around the med dabbling in antiques and fine wines of course eventually mooring up in the south of france opening a restaurant in lille floyd returned to blighty in the 80s opening a restaurant in bristol with wife number two in tow it was here that tv producer david pritchard walked into his life his bistro in bristol was lovely i mean it had a distinctive smell it was a sort of mixture of of butter and garlic and coffee and a little hint of gouras i remember going there for the very first time and he he just said what do you do then what do you do for a living and everything i said i'm a tv producer he said they come in my restaurant they say i'll be fabulous on television um they drink my best brandy and i never see them again but pritchard came back and found him a slot on a local youth show before though something we've never done before on rpm that's a cookery lesson not just any old cookery lesson mind you because we asked keith floyd to make a meal for six and so the next day i i drove round to the restaurant with a little contract and i said look cook a meal for six people for less than a pound ahead hello gastronots i didn't suppose you expected to see me on a rock and roll program and there were i mean three huge rabbits the size of whippets there were there was bottles of brandy bottles of chanterelle mushrooms there was all sorts of things going there and he completely disregarded my instructions this food has got to taste like sunshine at the end of the day it hasn't got to taste bland it's got to have punch and love and happiness in it and you won't get that by for instance picking up nine grains of salt and gently putting them in you've got to throw things into the pan you're going to put your heart your guts everything into it it was okay the sequence but afterwards he said i'll remember i was standing outside of of of his restaurant with him after the filming and he said do you know he said he says one day cooks are gonna be as famous as racing car drivers and rock guitarists and he was right i didn't think so at the time but he was right rock and roll was in floyd's dna he knew the stranglers from his bristol restaurant he was a genuine fan and they provided the distinctive soundtracks to his early shows floyd and pritchard's hit series floyd on fish has become a blueprint for today's campaigning super chefs jamie gordon and hugh floyd on fish was really something of a manifesto for for floyd because he was so passionate about the kind of fish that we have in britain in our waters around britain and very frustrated i think by this british sort of anxiety about fish you know none of you will eat these all of these are going to spain to france to italy and they'll be the centerpiece of the most fabulous asset of freedom air and you'll crack open the claws dip it into unctuous yellow mayonnaise and think as they must think what fools the brits are for not taking advantage of the wonderful things we've got around our shores actually although it was fantastically entertaining at one level this was a campaigning series because this was floyd saying look haddock and chips cotton chips fish fingers is that all we're good for i remember it was at a french seaside port and there was a lot of school kids being taught by their teacher and he asked these kids a question voila that's it isn't it i mean what more can you want he's so thrilled but also he's a little bit broken-hearted because you can see that he thinks this is how food culture should be where your children are shown everything and where it's quite normal for school kids to be eating oysters always happy to share the screen with talent floyd featured a young restauranteur unwittingly setting him on the path to become a household name himself feast your eyes on a young rick stein this was the first piece i did with keith i remember it was a roasted sea bass stuffed with some vegetables with a sorrel sauce and a bottle of reasoning i can remember it to this day it's so important to me yeah one of the most important things about floyd on fish is the uh the drinking that goes with it because no good cooking comes without good drinking it was just you know missed your first there was lots of boozing hey welcome to your kitchen well cheers cheers the wine's very nice isn't it in those days one did film and um and drink these days sadly film only we drink later which is slip ups and mistakes were an intrinsic part of the show and celebrated you can roast it nick tells me too so that's what we're going to do with this one he's going to show us how to do it it was the first time i'd ever been on screen with keith um i've met him quite a few times before which looking at again the fact he called me nick i wonder why this is nick's own very special recipe rick here boy rick rick oh i'm terribly sorry well once you've seen one cook you've seen them all you know that little that little dig at me is part of what he was all about really he was mischievous he could be a bit difficult to put it mildly let me call you charles for the rest of the break great now look this is a television program film's very expensive get on with the cookie okay [Music] first of all we were going to eat on the key side and then david said no i we won't put it on the key side we'll we'll put it on that trawler and then he got the trawler owner just fire the old trawler up we went out to sea on it and i always remember thinking we're off to a better life this is such fun thank you very much for joining us for our lunch i hope you'll join us on the next floyd on fish program because believe me my gastronauts this is the way to eat fish [Music] floyd's legacy extends beyond food he was also a broadcasting pioneer whilst filming this series floyd stumbled across the presenting style that would not only define him but change the face of tv fresh fresh fresh from the dorset seaside cleaned presented in their shells don't look at me i'm trying to explain the food this is a food program you halfwit come back i think when the camry made the camera go back down on the scallops um i just think it changed everything because um as he quite rightly said and i mean this is the point he knew what he was saying that you know the food is the star you don't have to move the cameras look for me they know i've got to move to get the food in they'll be so rich and there's a pot that counts heaven's sake everybody in sort of tv so concerned about doing their job properly they missed the damn point of the whole thing which is food i know all of those of you who like me so much will be very disappointed right now that you can't see me i said stay with the pot ah that is a joy to watch you know a real joy to watch because still today you know you often get that situation where it's all on the presenter but it's about the food in the pan oh come to me hold on come back come back look this is very difficult for me i am a cook i present television cookery programs but i'm not a director i do rely on competent staff would you get it right in future please thank you what it did was i think it involved the viewer more julie his his second or or possibly third wife was there when we were filming this scallop sequence and she said afterwards she said oh david please please don't put that in she said it would be you know he looks so arrogant and he looks a bit drunk and he's a bit bossy and i said well you know isn't that the essence of the man [Music] the show was a hit floyd became a star and for the first time it was cool for men not only to watch cooking shows on tv but to cook themselves [Music] this is britain's first and most that's all right doesn't matter he made the bloke at home wanna cook suddenly they had a confidence because they could see this chap you know cooking away and by the way you are allowed a glass to go with it so that always helped yeah it was just blokish it was proper blokey stuff he'd get his hands dirty getting stuck in he'd have a big lug of wine oh we're doing some cooking i'm gonna have a slurp if you're a boy and you like sort of you know being flamboyant and you like drinking a bit and you're like messing around the kitchen you like the what going up like that it's part of your life i pulled the most beautiful bird on the whole island i think keith floyd appealed to men because he was not at all fussy in the kitchen it wasn't about recipes and chopping stuff out and being precise and the kind of stuff that men initially thought was you know a little bit restrictive it was about having fun and being a bit kind of macho about it as well i mean there's a bunch of generals no they're not what are they called admirals standing over there and they're gonna get to eat all of this shortly it never seemed fiddly or silly or twee it was you know it was his personality and he was very much a man's man and i think that's what came through we passed that to the director as well who would not get in the world cup this year i wish this man had been on tv when i was at school because i was a fanatical cook but i didn't tell any of my friends i had to tell them what i'd scored a hat-trick instead and playing game of football when in fact i made a you know a little lamantat or something and all i've got to offer you is either and the choice is yours one of my muscles or a big kiss oh which one you have a big kiss thanks ever so much all was attempting to cook in real time floyd tested the team's creativity to the limit having a poke at tv traditions that is a frying pan stay with that club while i get my act together we do try to do things in real time and live so let's see if i've got the butter melting over there properly of course the trouble is if you say that you're going to cook in real time you know cooking does take time so what are you going to do in the bits in between right that's nearly ready what should we do now well i'm just waiting for that to to evaporate a bit walk out a shot here could i walk out of a shot i remember one he did in jersey where he was cooking of all things a conga eel and and he said she's gonna take her in the house a simmer well now the audience think my goodness maybe we don't have to sit here for an hour watching this thing similar aren't we tedious all of this isn't here i'm stirring away only two more things to go that's where they started to scratch their heads and say well you know um right okay let's uh let's play a piece of music or let's show you i know potter's wheel or the test card or something like that but i'll have to be the director to get me out of this tricky sequence while this simmers away for an hour or so i'm gonna have another glass of milk that was really interesting wasn't it you know how he dreams up these brilliant little interludes i shall never know not sure what i really care anyway so he was telling you that there was a little cheating going on there was the other people just cheat [Music] now this is something where typical floyd you know the cameraman had gone around taking pretty shots of the area and he thinking he was doing a wonderful job and he said well it's all very boring or something i can't remember the exact words he said yeah that's absolutely ridiculous we're here for the food sorry about this but this is a bit where clive tries to win a few prizes for really evocative photography and the director likes to do the travelogy bit they're very keen on all of this right in the door doing because they reckon it was the birthplace of man in fact just a few kilometers down the road there are some caves with prehistoric drawings happily they were shut while we were there filming otherwise we'd be done scrabbling about in the dark looking at little oxes and wood fires and things what was attractive about keith was that he he he couldn't stand convention and he would just undermine things all the time he just he had no truck with it at all so all the things that you know because people like to make television look pretty or you know really nice shots and really beautifully he didn't have any time for that he just thought let's just get on and do it their irreverent comedy had no boundaries in one scene they got their own back on a grumpy chef by broadcasting a scathing commentary of his behavior and i'm going to write a little commentary now but david you're the blinking director what should i i mean how do i deal with this i think you should say what he's what he's actually cutting up at the moment right but you see he's got to start by chopping the onions and by the way this was a very very difficult bit because uh the atmosphere was so tense you could cut the whole thing with a blinking knife actually the director didn't like the cook very much the cook resented the film crew being in there he was very miserable wasn't he he was very unhappy very miserable yeah that's absolutely wonderful if i did rude things about if i didn't like i never stopped talking we shouldn't hurry up a bit i'm sure he was deliberately going slow that day you know the lodging man nearly bopped him you know i know the whole thing about keith was that it was unusual it wasn't what you've seen before and i don't think it's what i've seen since and probably no one will ever do it again because he was unique explain what's in the suit man explain what's in the suit right viewers this is one here's one of us this is what we do when we're not making movies okay it's really good isn't it improvement sunshine and soup now this soup is a remarkable soup okay it's called soup oh pesky stop the coffee when i'm speaking would you he's the lighting man and he hasn't been responsible for the sun we got him here before anyway get all that this is called soup and the essential thing is is lots of fresh vegetables like carrots and beans and jericho beans these little white ones that are slightly pink i don't know where that came from is that all right for you yeah it's quite good okay and board for the very first time in tv history floyd took cooking outside into the real world that meant he was at the mercy of the elements and the locals even in paradise it rains and it doesn't matter on a floyd cooking program when he hit the road it was just great because he was very inclusive and i mean he did some mad stuff yeah i mean he did some magic this stuff i wish you could smell this it is unctuous and delicious the sugar has caramelized around the pieces of meat the coconut milk is reduced and it's ready for the next phase have a quick look at that before i get on with it please paul there's a great scene where he's uh where he's cooking he's cooking with a volleyball match going on and they're obviously clearly really bad with volleyball that's fine is there a ball hitting me that was i think he said well that's the whiskey oh that's the whiskey guard and then it's all like and it's all located off the wall in mud [Laughter] there was no polish to it it was simply this is how it works this is how we do it and i just love that because it was television that you could absolutely 100 percent relate to never ever ever they said work with animals and children this director this ex-director we just fired this morning mike connor's got this brilliant idea of surrounding me with ostriches in a field on an ostrich farm with a load of hostages and what was he cooking ostrich stew there's always a first time for everything one thing that made floyd on telly always a thrill was that that sense of anything could happen it was unplanned it was spontaneous and that of course is is the holy grail of television and those of us who make cooking programs now i mean you know we put it put in an awful lot of time trying to plan these fantastic spontaneous moments and so another cooking sketch ends in total chaos as the birds fight back you got the truth you know what you saw is what really happened i want half an hour a half an hour of their of their generosity of their spirit to get on with what we've come here to do that's all beside me and around there's one hell of a round going on because some mealy mouth water taxi pokemon do not want us to film on this key they want a hundred dollars each for us to walk where any member of the public can walk which is absolutely scandalous and we're here with goodwill with happiness in our hearts to make a program to glorify the food and the attitude of hong kong sadly this one we haven't found it i might have to shout a bit because they're determined to ruin our sequence but we're going ahead anyway one of the things that tv people go on and on about now is this whole idea of jeopardy the the idea that things that are edgy and and and things that all the possibilities of things going wrong keith was doing that 20 years ago today i mean i've been several weeks around this place and as i haven't been drinking but i feel a bit stressed this one i really feel stressed i like a battle i like a challenge but i think i'll drink to our success with their wine cheers to us a quick swig of what you know made the navy famous always self-knowing floyd's on-screen style became synonymous with his regular and healthy sized slurps of wine which lubricated his performance you might be looking at my eyes and saying my god he looks in a terrible mess well the truth is i am in a terrible mess um you know you can't help it france wine really good time here in san marco and i'm afraid we only did it a bit last night [Music] [Applause] do you wanna have a look no not now i just had my tea everybody knows you like the tipple and and you know kind of kind of knock that one you can't on it no it would be just wrong excuse me sorry about that if i have a little he would drink good wine you know he'd have a good reason he would appreciate it or a great moment he'd tell you about it and he'd go this is what i was doing this is what i'm drinking and you know what was great there was an honesty about them never cook with wine that you can't drink i mean if the wine is not good enough to drink which this most certainly is you mustn't cook with it he did that naturally it wasn't it wasn't the question i mean i've seen him cook in his kitchen anyway he had a glass of wine there one of the most essential things is going to be a bottle of good strong red wine because you'll probably need half a bottle to go into the into the dish itself and you're going to need half a bottle to go into yourself to make things really cheerful people made a lot of fun about the sort of size of the wine glasses that you'd be getting through when even when he was cooking but it was a sheer love for food and wine when you look at it you must like it if you don't like it when you see it you will never enjoy it so it's like a woman exactly exactly his next series would perhaps be his greatest the enduring all-time classic floyd on france [Music] there's no question for me floyd on france was the greatest culinary tv show of all time there's no two ways about it i really do stand and i believe that it actually opened up the eyes to the whole of the uk that what simple food can really be all about this is what it's all about down here garlic not those miserable little ungenerous ones you buy in boxes in supermarkets back home but fat violet clothes it was about quality ingredients so that was a brilliant education for us all and it was then how to actually put life into it into the pan seeing the succulents and the joy on his face as he started to relish in all of those flavors i thought this is cooking i want to go and eat out again yes i know i'm posing but it's my show and anyway it's only rock and roll and if you don't get a buzz out of being in this dramatic land then my dear faded gastronaut you must be on the way out you can't help being carried away by the scents and the colors the atmosphere is heady [Music] and now we're going to see what kind of a fool i can possibly make of myself by putting this liquid mixture into here and it's got bound just to separate into a hole oh no it's not look it is hey it's working this is incredible now how do i get the damn thing off the spoon that's what i'm not so sure about mark chef this was warts and all broadcasting where culinary cock-ups provided the comedy including them endeared floyd to the public even more she's one of those ladies who's a bit of a tart a bit precise doesn't like film crews interrupting her work which he takes very seriously so i'm letting them get on with it while i'm just sitting here having a slight glass of wine and later on when she's ready and if she's in a bit of a better mood we'll try and get in and see exactly what she's doing what we're doing here is making what we call a very simple perigord omelette of seps you see wild mushrooms i remember there's one fantastic clip where he was making it was a set omelette using the typical fat of the region with the old dragon peering over my shoulder which is goose fat by the way we put it onto the stove like that and uh he made the omelette just when it was just about to be ready the sepsis folded the overput on the plate that was it the woman told him it was all wrong [Laughter] for anybody that cooks on telly there's always that moment what do you think i'd like her to come to england and cook us a cook a roast beef and yorkshire pudding with my mother standing over a shoulder like that i hated cooking somebody's dish with them watching me do it it is so embarrassing ladies and gentlemen i present omnitive set cooked by madame [Music] the essential difference there is that she cooked hers on both sides but that is the sort of actually if i may say so a peasant way of cooking an omelette because that omelet will be can be served cold and it's tougher and stronger could be carried into the fields he was right what he said about that peasant way of cooking the dish was absolutely right i wouldn't dispute with her whose was the best both had the same good ingredients two different ways okay but that's nothing compared to the the classic scene when he's at that woman's house making people hard play real bass people would not go to this ridiculous detail to prepare what is a perfectly ordinary simple scrambled eggs and tomatoes now you let that simmer away for five or ten minutes or so she says it's no good she didn't even want to taste it she said i know i haven't seen the way you've made it i know i don't want to taste that interest in eating it because the way i cooked it was so off-putting that she knows already it's going to taste absolutely awful the peppers are raw and she said not enough salt he translated it she said not enough pepper he translated in brief it's absolute rubbish and he took it right on the chin and he just said well you know the best i can do you do it and so and and she did look at that rubbish there heavy lumpy nasty british rail style scrambled eggs with a tin of old ratter tweeze stuffed into it where is this with these lovely crunchy slices of jambon the bayonne magic flavors we should go off somewhere together shouldn't we bye-bye genius you turn it all around most people now would say absolutely not don't put that on the air i'm a serious chef i want to be taken very seriously would people do that on tv now probably not quite as openly and easily as uh as as keith did [Music] i did meet with chap who said you know he had a balloon and he said you'll get some fabulous film of keith floyd in my balloon and um i thought oh that sounds lovely because you know the autumnal colors i mean keith wasn't very impressed with this plan of mine he said it was simply a question of mind over matter he didn't mind and i didn't matter but things went wrong we were out of gas and you've got it we crash landed in the road it was a very good crash landing i was told but of course he didn't speak to me for weeks after that andre graf my mad pilot managed to save a little gas of course for what he called essential requirements this is the other tradition [Laughter] by the end of the 80s floyd was a major star the first time i met keith was when he walked into my restaurant harvest on ones with common i was a very young man and then walked keith floyd the man i'd always wanted to meet the man who made great tv shows the man who had a wealth of knowledge when it came to food and gastronomy he walked in just his presence was extraordinary his engaging honesty and skill as a rack on tour meant he was much in demand for chat shows one man who came to my restaurant regularly and always found fault in some way the vinaigrette was a little too oily um the lettuce hadn't been dried and wasn't sticking up the right way i mean but this guy can whistle but he kept coming and one i couldn't stand it any longer it was a few years ago and they used to have these big sort of paper mache cork beer mat i got one and i soaked this beer mat in brandy i dipped it in flour dredged it in beaten milk and egg covered it in golden freshly baked not mr paxo's stuff breadcrumbs soaked it in butter with a mirepoix little mushrooms and shallots and things like that flamed in cognac put a cream sauce over it and he ate it and he said do you know the potatoes were a little hard he even suffered the ultimate celebrity accolade of being impersonated by rory bremner for christmas very simple and delia smith if you're watching cheers this one is ten parts of whiskey there you go five parts of gin swash of vodka dash of rum just to taste and then our old friend here look out watch this very very carefully there's rather delicate there we go let's get the right amount right there sorry and of course this chum here aviation fuel there we go don't forget that by the way right there we go once again floyd came up with a brand new pioneering concept for his next series he went to visit britain's best food producers it's the first time for several hundred years that a soft cream cheese has been made in the british isles or more precisely here in ireland my unceasing search for regional culinary excellence has become almost like the search of the holy grail or as we say in the trade the holy quail he changed the way that we made food programs and he changed the way that the general public thought about food on television he was so popular so successful because he was so brilliant at what he did and so enthusiastic that i do believe that he made the british public more interested in where their food came from more concerned about quality of their ingredients and actually more prepared to accept other food cultures in this series floyd on britain and ireland he discovered another gifted young chef gary rhodes i remember hanging around sort of the staff entrance thinking he's not here yet he's not here hanging around and then we were sort of poking a hedge around the corner to see him arrive to all of a sudden see a volvo estate tone up and i thought that's not keith floyd surely anyway richard watch the man he's the business right what i'm actually going to do is just uh quickly prep this up well i've got this long-standing reputation of talking too much it's going like a train particularly when we're talking about food it has to be tender but not falling off the bone and stringy and you can't allow to undercook it where it's tough and you can't even get it off the bone and all of that takes about three hours and there's one point he just said shell uproads this is my show shut up shut up it takes about three hours you've been bossy enough and he turns to camera and just carries on and puts me in my place and i'm standing there opens me what do i do next does he mean it or not [Music] but it wasn't all star studded he loved to find and celebrate real characters and eccentrics is that all right yes it's lovely and fluffy that's super cool so just about four out of ten but anyway there we are right into there it seems to me that keith plonked himself down in places and not only done with the food but he met local people and he talked to them either he liked them he didn't like them it didn't really matter but they came part of the show and i think that's wonderful because the local people in the area where you're cooking speak volumes about the culture and ethos of the place i've been bossed around pillory to post by this dreadful old dragon and last we're back on the floyd program so we have a little glass of this there's some strange welsh or irish woman he met and he called her a dragon i think but she didn't mind you know because it's all good fun you've made pizzas haven't you i've made pizzas yes not with an expert maker overseeing what i'm doing so i'm bound to roy [Music] oh no jokes about buns in the oven okay from anybody one of the amazing almost contradictions of keith is that he knew so much and he taught so much but he never lost that boyish enthusiasm for discovering more you got the feeling that even when the cameras went home he might well go on somewhere else to find something else exciting to eat and eventually it took him round the world [Music] floyd's tv journey continued over the following years with gastronomic tours of thailand vietnam australia and india king is all very well what about don't worry he is all very well but he needs something in it and the yang is this down here the ginger the garlic and the chilies okay that's the yang that puts the spice into the whole thing later on in his television career he started going further afield and cooking things that were actually way out of people's comfort zones yes you're absolutely right up to me please vlad they are i'm afraid puffins well it seems to me the further keith went around the world the further extreme islands and little places he found the more outrageous he'd become i mean for goodness sake there was one point where he even cooked puffin and we all know puffin is a seriously protected species but there he was on there on a boat with three dead puffins and he was going to cook him were you going vlad back here please i'm talking to you um rather go back home and cook these we thought we'd do them here because get the whole day's work over with he got in such trouble with that i mean the norwegian government were up in arms i think everyone was up in arms but he said listen i may not agree with it but i've got to show you haven't i yeah right actually i have to tell you it's damn nice but his tv success was sadly not reflected in his businesses when he was running very successful restaurants he couldn't deal with the finances well let's be honest i mean keith floyd was not a great restaurateur apparently he filled his restaurant but he didn't know how to make money he he probably drank a lot of the profits you know if we're being honest he would sit he was a very very generous man said give away a lot to his customers he was so generous that he never made any money at all i think that the only thing that really makes me sad about keith and um is that uh he brought so much joy to everyone but the poor man had such a i don't know a difficult personal life and that is a tinge of sadness for me and um he was so happy on television and i wish that he had more of a smile for himself i don't think that the restaurants had a physically bad effect on him i think in the end uh it must have been fame that had a physically bad effect on him he was a cad you know but he did it all with a smile and you know we need people like that we need people that are a bit naughty a bit dangerous a bit arrogant a bit nasty at times but just full of life in his later years he lived in uh in oxfordshire in a town where i live and um we were asked to do a local um festival and uh they said we'll get keith he'll he'll introduce you he'll be your warm-up man i think it's more of a flambe really because uh i arrived and keith had he'd had a few this the the bow tie was sort of swinging around his knee oh hello dear boy right let's work out what we're going to do and i don't think i've ever been introduced quite like like he did it he he started he said ladies and gentlemen i'm keith floyd as you know and i'm a chef um and i'm a um so where do you go from there so i think the audience will remember that for a very long time but i i kind of doubt that keith remembered it the next morning but what will keith floyd be remembered for hail little instrument of vast salvation pilchard i wean the most soul-saving fish on which the catholics in lent are crammed who had they not foresold this lively fish would eat flesh and consequently be damned this is crazy isn't it absolutely stupid most chefs agree that today's cooking shows owe it all to him floyd's legacy was really is you know modern food on television i think he made things possible for all of us um there would be no gordon ramsay no jamie oliver none of the that freshness none of that energy none of that um none of that pizzazz now that showmanship without floyd he was the great original he was the one who broke down the barriers and opened up the doors and made cooking fun floyd came along and he really bashed down the rest of the walls and threw them aside and said hey it's okay to love food to have fun with it to laugh about it to take pleasure in it then along came the rest of the the chefs he had the jamie whether it's nigella rick all of these people and they really have a lot to thank floyd for because they couldn't do what they do so well if he hadn't done it first well if all of us modern day tv chefs are honest i think we owe our living to floyd in many ways he was the man i think that introduced personality you know into cooking on tv just watching those clips i was just just taken with the fact that they haven't dated at all i mean some of them were made over 20 years ago and they're still as fresh as the day they were made and i think that's really because he was speaking from the heart and he was original and i think what he's what he's done for food his lasting legacy is that he's made food like real you know it's not something you retire in the kitchen to do it's part of everyday life for me keith's left a legacy of that enjoyment i've been able to create something out of nothing but above all else to give enjoyment for food um and keith was had that unique ability to create happiness wherever he went if keith cared about how he was remembered and i'm not sure his attitude he did much he'd wanted to remember someone who who changed things who presented food to the british public in a manner no one else had ever done and presented it very successfully and that perhaps the sheer joy of his spirit would be remembered and perhaps help people after his death that would be the best thing he could do to spread some joy and he did spread joy keith wherever you are down there up there cheers and it still tastes pucker it's it's quite fattening but you know who cares cookery shows are now more popular than ever but had it not been for keith floyd's groundbreaking approach maybe we wouldn't be having so much fun in the kitchen duck he was the first rock and roll tv chef and revolutionized the way we think about food in britain today just watching keith's programs made me want to be bold and want to try new things and and there's absolutely no way that i would have ended up doing what i'm doing and certainly in the way that i'm doing it if it wasn't for him keith his life without question was one of the most beautiful jigsaws i've ever seen it had a bit of everything and i'm sure if keith was sitting where i'm sitting today and he was asked if he had any regrets i'm sure he would say no he lived his life beautifully do you know i think i must be one of the luckiest chaps in the whole world i travel it i eat it i drink it i smell it and i touch it [Music] you

Channel: Saturday Kitchen Live

Views: 32,967

Keywords: Saturday Kitchen, Saturday Kitchen Live, Matt Tebbutt, James Martin, Keith Floyd, Rick Stein, Gary Rhodes, Marco Pierre White, Heston Blumenthal, Antony Worrall Thompson, Ken Hom

Id: -lsAgodJ5cM

Length: 43min 27sec (2607 seconds)

Published: Tue May 31 2022