Fanny, the dame who didn’t give a damn . . .

What a masterstroke from the BBC to bring back Fanny Cradock.

Many of her vintage cooking programmes are now available on iPlayer, soon to be followed by classic shows from golden oldies including Delia Smith and Keith Floyd.

God, Fanny! What a monster. Way back when, she was the reigning culinary queen in the age of deference, an autocratic gourmandette whose self-imposed mission was to teach the lower orders how to cook and introduce the awful peasants to the finer things in life. Such as? Such as Madame Fleurette’s Flan ( plums and chocolate) and French Yorkshire Pudding, which she said was basically a gougere and had been stolen from the French in the first place.

In Fanny’s world, foodstuffs were forever being made into jellies and pressed into moulds. She put brandy in her fritter batter, used trex in her gingerbread and made ‘special Creole dishes’ by adding orange juice to a stew or hotpot.

‘I would sooner put a baby in the fridge than an egg,’ she would cry, while sweeping around the studio in her Balenciaga dresses.

I’ve always felt connected to Fanny. Like me, she once wrote for the Daily telegraph. and like me, she was once that newspaper’s restaurant critic.

In 1949, she and Johnnie wrote a column called Bon Viveur, where they trundled around country and Continent writing reviews of restaurants and hotels.

Just over 50 years later, I would do the same thing myself, with my own Johnnie in tow. We had our share of filthy meals, but Fanny concentrated only on the positive and advised diners never to eat at restaurants ‘hemmed in by cars’.

She was bossy, superior and a crashing snob — and, like most snobs, she was a self-made construct. her real name was Phyllis and, instead of growing up in a French chateau, as she claimed, she was born and bred in Leytonstone, East London, and once sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door.

Off stage, she consulted ouija boards, knocked back amphetamines and fed poor Johnnie nothing but sardines. Viewers always assumed they were married but the couple didn’t tie the knot until 1977, by which time she had been booted off television for being too condescending and downright horrible to the guests on her show.

She was awful — and so was her Cheese a la Zizi — but I loved her, including her wonky lipstick and flying-crow eyebrows.

today’s manicured celebrity chefs are always so needy, so desperate for the audience to love them and their latest buttery creations.

Fanny was a dame who didn’t give a damn — and that’s almost as refreshing as one of her ghastly powdered ginger cocktails.

It was a privilege to walk a mile or two in Fanny’s shoes, even though I don’t share her fondess for green cheese (add food colouring), pink milk (ditto) and angelica decoration. Still, cheers my dear! Welcome back.