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?

5 second rule anywhere but MN

lubricating the dry bird

😂😂😂😂

I heard a different version which was May all your donuts have holes like Fanny's !!!

I loved the film, so ta for that. Even though Fanny was portrayed as a bit of a menace, I still liked her. She was also reminding me of a friend who is very good at delegating bossing me about .

I particularly enjoyed the pronunciation of Keeen-ya.

Absolutely agree, her show would have been seen as an inconvenience and incredibly unimportant on the filming schedule, she was literally given a couple of cookers and one counter, would have had to bring all her own supplies in. These shows were just seen as filler that would go out to a few housewives and I know many of the male crew would not appreciate being spoken back to by an old woman, I imagine they have greatly exaggerated the bossy side to her, when she was just trying to get everything together for her program.

We cant look at these shows through a modern viewfinder, most will be comparing it to modern lifestyle shows like nigella and Jamie, big budget, music over everything, luxurious close ups, cooking shows back then and up to the 90s were instructional not all sexed up.

Also it’s been mentioned a couple of times about her apparent lack of hygiene. Her set would have had a bucket of water to clean her hands with, there was not the time or facilities for here to wash her hands on screen like a surgeon scrubbing in, and the housewives watching at home, well some of them would write in and complain about this awful lack of hygiene, yep there were shit stirrers among the population even back then, you will
see her say things like ‘I promise I’ve scrubbed and scrubbed my hands’ because there would have been stern letters from a Mrs Evans of Huddersfield. But the hygiene didn’t matter, it was all for demonstration. Anyway, my nan used to make bread pudding with a fag hanging out her mouth 😂

Delia's books are reliable.

I remember whenever Delia used something slightly unusual, there'd be a run on the supermarkets the next day.
This was about 1990, the unusual item would be something like lemongrass.

Ha ha! My mum did too! Everything had the magical addition of fag ash!! 😆

I remember her talking about Fanny and I.recall her saying she had an assistant who used to walk past in the background staring at the camera in a weird way! Was that Fanny or another cookery show?

Yes my nan always had the longest bit of ash hanging off the fag, it was difficult to understand why it never seemed to drop off, probably did in our dinner!

Actually same with my mum while cooking a fry up 😂. Yes Fanny had many different assistants who used to wander about in the background and hand her various things or bring the finished product.

As a woman it can't have been easy, working in a very male dominated sphere, I imagine she had to be tough to survive. She was very much of her time, no nonsense stiff upper lip approach to her shows. She reminds me of my primary school teachers, perish the thought my primary school teachers would show any sort of kindness.

By the 70s her career was in decline. There were lots of better cookery shows than hers and I remember we all thought she was a joke long before the behaviour that ended her career

Cranberries was the one I remember.

I meant food hygiene. Didn't think I'd have to specify.🙄

Thanks for posting this. I always considered her to be a bit batty but never realised she had such a colourful life. Not sure she was such a nice person.

Well, yes I get what you meant. But I still don't understand why you think food hygiene standards were bad in the 50's, 60's or 70's. There were dirty people, fanatically clean people and some people somewhere in between - just as there is now. In fact instances of food poisoning were far lower than they are now and food establishments were inspected far more regularly (unlike today). Can you give me an example of why you think food hygiene was particularly poor? As I said, Fanny Craddock's standards (or lack thereof) were mocked at the time of her fame so surely that tells you it was not considered the norm for most viewers.

She was a strange character. We would pretend to be her in the playground at primary school- bossing her husband around 😬

76 years isn't a century.

I remember those blue eggs! Apparently a lot of it was about cooking for the husband's boss. Of course the wife wasn't 'working' in those days.

GLORY BE!

A whole evening of Fanny tonight on bbc4

Those Christmas episodes of Fanny are absolutely amazing, her daughter Sarah is her assistant. At one point she scrapes out and throws away the insides of mini eclairs that she made 6 months ago and froze.

I remember Delia causing an unprecedented demand for liquid glucose that she used in her chocolate torte recipe in the 80s.

I think she was addicted to amphetamines which she used as a slimming aid. These made her more than a little insane. She is fascinating to read about. I used to love a Twitter account back in the day which was called Festive Fanny and featured some of her more mad recipes.

I used to love a bit of Fanny and Johnny!
Back in the day I often made her Christmas mincemeat shoe buckles, and her choux pastry swans were regularly made for birthday teas.

Nobody could scatter icing sugar from a sieve with as much artistry as Fanny!

Fanny provides great entertainment which is what a tv show should be really.

I must have been 5 or 6 when she was on and was entertained. Just fascinated me and one of first things that made me interested in cooking.

Thinking also about Julia Child trying to break into US tv as dramatised in Julia with Sarah Lancashire. I daresay there were lots of similarities.