Can someone explain Fanny Craddock to me?

[Gruffalowings]

Was she popular?
did people rate her recipes?

She seems to lack any warmth and to be very bossy.

Was that just the style in the 70s? Did it mean you were efficient?

Nobody had presumably cooked on television before the 1970s, so it must have been quite the novelty. There was no blueprint, so Fanny could do whatever she pleased. Delia was much more helpful and this style ultimately usurped Fanny Cradock.

I watched all Fanny’s Christmas shows a few years ago <boak>

I don't know. She comes across as unpleasant. I saw a video of her making a mincemeat Omelette recently. Christmas mincemeat. I guess Jimmy Savile was popular too then and he's far worse.

She reminds me of my home ec teachers at school.

Fanny Cradock started on the telly in 1955. That's very nearly a century ago.
She was totally irrelevant and unrepresentative of modern life way before she came off the air in 1975.
Totally unrelatable to today.

What made you ask the question?

She wasn’t a nice person but my great grandmother really rated her cooking. Great grandma was head cook at Marks and Spencer’s.

She lost her job after she made one contestant cry.

Her prickly character was her undoing in the end. There is no doubt though, that she gave good, clear instructions that would have given confidence to a lot of newly weds at that time. I used to like watching repeats of her cooking show.

@DontMowMyMeadow The answer to why I am interested is that I was watching Martha yesterday, and thought how very similar she was to Fanny.

But she also looks like a pantomime villain!

I don't know how popular she was but everyone wanted donuts like Fanny's.

We watched her shows last Christmas on the BBC with horror, I couldn’t quite see the appeal either, everything she cooks looks revolting, she seems quite unhygienic and she looks like a reconstituted corpse but without the redeeming qualities of the undead.

A bit harsh, bear in mind she was on the telly yonks ago. I would never dream of wanting to cook anything that I saw her make, but the programs that I have watched were from 50 years ago.

I only ever saw her once but she was dyeing hard-boiled eggs blue to give the table a touch of class.
And being horrible to a very enthusiastic amateur cook who'd won a contest of some sort.

I saw this one 😝she sprinkled half a ton of icing sugar on it i remember .
I watch the odd one at Christmas on the Cooking channel as she's so bossy its funny, she is awful to her assistant, i also notice how grubby her cooking equipment is ,tatty old tupperware and saucepans.
Well worth watching for a laugh and her eyebrows are amazing !

I have one of her books! Inherited from my mother who learned to make the delicious chocolate eclairs from Fanny!

She was a total bitch who died penniless and lonely, but she was ground breaking in the 1950s 'end of rationing, let's treat ourselves to a telly...' sort of way.

Her Christmas series is compulsory viewing every Christmas is my house.

Saw her topless on a beach in Cannes in the late 1970s.; wearing a turban and berating Johnny ( her husband) Utterly surreal.

"May all your doughnuts turn out like Fanny's"

(Johnny Craddock quote)

And say what you any about her personality but you watch the shows and she does the whole thing in one take. That is a skill for sure.

He wasn’t her husband, they were unmarried!

I saw this clip! It looked fantastically horrible 😂

Here are the Christmas episodes. I watch them every year. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p05jvnwl

Her recipes were published as a weekly series with special binders. My mum still has them and uses them. They run into several volumes. Apparently everyone used to rush to the newsagents each week!

My Mum saw her in Sainsbury’s in the 80s, shouting at assistants and being rude to her husband. Frightful woman.

She was "of her time" - so is dated. So is Delia.

😱😂