Chef’s recipe for TV fame
QUESTION What is the story of Philip Harben, Britain’s first celebrity TV chef?
PhiliP harben had all the attributes of a celebrity chef: a distinctive style, guest appearances on panel shows and a series of popular cookbooks. he played a major role in shaping the nation’s eating habits and tastes in the 1940s and 1950s.
however, he was not the first TV chef. French restaurateur, novelist and boulevardier Marcel boulestin gave suave cooking demonstrations while wearing a suit and tie in 1930s bbC shows Cook’s night Out, bee For boulestin and blind Man’s buffet.
Philip harben was born in Fulham, South-West london, in 1906. he came from a theatrical family: his mother, Mary Jerrold, and his father, hubert harben, were well-known actors, as was his sister, Joan harben, who played Miss Mona lott in bbC radio show it’s That Man again or iTMa.
harben was taught to cook by his parents, but had no formal training. after working as a stage manager and photographer, he became chef/manager of the isobar restaurant in the isokon building in london’s hampstead.
in 1940, he joined the raF, but an eye injury meant he was redeployed to the army Catering Corps.
he approached the bbC in 1942 with the goal of getting on TV. When asked what he could do, apparently he answered: ‘i can cook a little.’
he did some cooking-related radio features before becoming the face of the bbC TV show Cookery in June 1946.
rotund, neatly bearded and rarely seen out of his trademark black-and-white striped apron, he rustled up high- end meals on a ration budget. These ranged from old favourites such as corned beef hash to fancier lobster vol-au-vents.
Cookery ran until 1951, followed by Cookery lesson, which he co-presented with renowned radio cook and food writer Marguerite Patten, and What’s Cooking.
harben drew on his theatre skills to keep up a constant patter as he demonstrated difficult culinary processes.
‘he stands almost alone, a precision instrument of self-expression,’ remarked awed journalist reginald Pound. harben pioneered frozen foods in an era when many british homes didn’t have a fridge, let alone a freezer.
his most famous culinary introduction came in 1953 when he cooked frozen nephrops’ tails, which were usually discarded by fishermen. The previously unheard of scampi soon became a firm british favourite.
his books, including The Grammar Of Cookery, The Way i Cook and Cooking With harben, are full of strong views. On tea making: ‘The pot to the kettle, not the kettle to the pot’; oyster shucking: ‘an operation requiring no little skill and physical strength’; cheese: ‘a food of the very greatest nutritional significance.’
he appeared on TV’s What’s My line? and The benny hill Show, was a guest on Desert island Discs and made personal appearances up and down the country.
his bbC salary was supplemented by the sale of his trademarked harbenware pans with a non- stick coating, still available today. he died in 1970, aged 63.
Sarah Westwood, Birmingham.
QUESTION Is there a name for the use of symbols (such as #$@&%*!) in place of swear words?
The use of typography to censor words was introduced in the 17th century to avoid breaking obscenity laws. These were originally hyphens.
an early example comes from James Smith’s 1651 mock poem The loves Of hero and leander: ‘He tooke him to a trusty rock, And stript him to the ebon nock. And being naked look’t like Mars, With purple scab upon his A---.’ eliminative dashes for blasphemy, as in d--n for damn, can be found as early as 1710 in Tatler magazine.
Multiple textual symbols, including asterisks, appeared in 1960s comic strips. The rather bland term used for this is symbolic substitution.
a number of more colourful terms have been proposed, but are yet to appear in dictionaries: obscenicons, profanitypes and maledicta.
in the 1960s, american cartoonist Mort Walker came up the term grawlix/ grawlixes and a series of symbols as an artist’s shorthand.
The lexicon Of Comicana includes: ‘emanata: lines drawn around the head to indicate shock or surprise’; ‘agitrons: wiggly lines around a shaking object or character’; and ‘lucaflect: a shiny spot on a surface of something, depicted as a four-paned window shape.’
Terry Walsh, Crewe, Cheshire.
QUESTION How many species of early human were there?
nine human species walked the earth 300,000 years ago.
The best known are the neanderthals ( Homo neanderthalensis), stocky hunters who lived on europe’s steppes. They had larger brains than their forebears and their physical features — a barrelshaped chest and shorter limbs — suggest they were adapted for the cold.
The related Denisovans, discovered in 2010, inhabited asia, while the more primitive Homo erectus, the first human species with a flat face, prominent nose and sparse body hair, ranged from the iberian peninsula to Java. Homo heidelbergensis in africa may have been a sub species of Homo erectus.
Several dwarf species survived alongside them: the partly tree-dwelling Homo naledi in South africa and the cavedwelling Homo luzonensis in the Philippines, Homo floresiensis aka The hobbit in indonesia and the red Deer Cave people in China.
by 10,000 years ago, these eight species were gone. This may have been due to environmental factors, but the timing of their disappearance suggests they were out- competed by Homo sapiens, a species evolving between 260,000 and 350,000 years ago in Southern africa.
Owen Lear, Chelmsford, Essex. IS THERE a question to which you want to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question here? Write to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT; or email charles.legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection is published, but we’re unable to enter into individual correspondence.
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