PETER RUSSELL-CLARKE FOREVER A POT STIRRER!
Australia’s original TV chef is still as bold as he always was, but perhaps a little more artistic these days
As a teenage street kid, runaway Peter Russell-clarke survived by scrounging for food scraps outside the ritziest Melbourne restaurants. The way he tells it, that’s where the larrikin TV chef, author and artist first discovered his love for fine food - along with an abiding hatred of waste.
“I was 14 or 15, something like that,” he remembers, grinning wryly. “I’d been left with a stepmother I didn’t think much of, so I jumped out the window and lived on the streets. I’m buggered if I know how long I existed like that, but it was a while. Good times, it made you lose weight!
“I used to go round the back of these stylish places where wealthy people would only eat half a piece of steak and throw the rest away. We waste a lot of food In this country, it’s really shameful. So I complemented the steak by finishing it off for them.
“That’s where I got my love of fine food. I was able to tell after a while why the meal had been thrown out, if the chef had mishandled it, which shouldn’t happen. I got a bit cheeky, you know?”
DEFIANT AS EVER
Situation normal for outspoken – and sometimes controversial – Peter, who hosted the ABC’S popular Come And Get It cooking show for more than 900 episodes in the 1980s.
“I used to critique the food, leave the restaurant a little note if the asparagus or something was overdone. If you’re being paid to cook a bit of fish, it’s a lot easier than digging a hole in the bloody road,” he says.
At 86, the veteran stirrer still takes pot shots at authority, paints up a storm and unrepentantly refuses to be politically correct. Sometimes that gets him into trouble – like his criticism of the “ridiculous” decision to rename Coon cheese – but Peter doesn’t care.
“That Coon thing was a lot of silly bloody nonsense,” bristles its former brand ambassador. “But I deny I’ve got a larrikin streak. I just think everyone else is wrong and I’m right. The world is full of bullsh*t now.
“A few years ago, the ABC suggested I do a new series of Come And Get It, but the producer who called was about nine years old, with 15 university degrees. She said, ‘Television has altered a lot since you were doing it, Mr Russell-clarke. You need to get your audience to cry and laugh in the first five minutes.’
“I told her to stick it and hung up. I do like Masterchef, but I think television should educate as well as entertain. It’s no
good saying you can make toffee and spin it and put it over creme brulee but don’t bother asking me how to do that, because it’s too hard. What I want to know is how to take something in my cupboard and make it better than if I wasn’t watching television.”
MASTER STORYTELLER
Today, Peter’s conversation is peppered with cooking advice – “Dribble some honey and garlic on your carrots before serving, it just lifts them” – and obscure nuggets of knowledge plucked from his voracious reading.
He’s happy to chat about anything and everything from Cleopatra’s linguistic skill to Dreamtime legends. And then there’s his yarn about the much-loathed brussels sprout.
“People should know the history,” he harrumphs. “The King of Brussels gave the King of England a shipload of sprouts, but he thought they were bloody awful. There was nearly a war over it, until the King of Brussels told him how to cook them properly and saved the day.”
Really? “Well, I don’t know if that story’s true or not, but it sounds good,” admits the ex-journalist, political cartoonist and illustrator, eyes twinkling above his beard.
“It’s like art, you know? More interesting if it has a story.
“For instance, a neighbour asked me to paint his dog and I thought that was silly. He already had the bloody dog and that was better than any painting I could do.
“The idea used to be painting as realistically as possible. But as we’ve matured we realise we need more than just the skill of depicting life as it is. The
camera does that better than the artist. What the artist has to do is to create a story around the gum tree or the koala.”
His canvases, which are sold around the world, are a riot of colour – just like the tall tales he spins. Take Peter’s version of meeting Jan, now 88, a former dancer and his devoted wife of 65 years.
“She was having a bath at a hotel when I went into her room by mistake, fell into the bath and consummated our life together,” chuckles the outrageous grandfather-of-three. “No, Jan doesn’t believe that story either! It was a long while ago and the bath was only half-full.”
FRACTURED CHILDHOOD
Peter does tell outrageous porkies, but the truth of his early life is stranger than any make-believe. Born in 1935 to a defrocked Church of England minister and a dress designer, he was only a baby when his philandering father shot through to marry three more times.
The deadbeat dad sent his son to a Catholic boarding school – “to get back at the Anglicans” – but failed to pay the fees. Peter was shunted through a series of well-meaning foster families until finally, he ran away.
It sounds like a tough start in life. “That’s debatable,” he chuckles, relaxing at his peaceful retreat in Tooborac, Victoria. “I think I had a terrific upbringing. I had many parents, but all of them were good people who helped me.”
That fractured childhood made him resilient, speedily rebuilding when the family home burned down in 2012. It also taught him to cherish his own children – son Peter is a senior designer for Apple in the US, while daughter Wendy is a talented dancer, choreographer and singer – and count every blessing.
“I’ve been very lucky,” he reflects, serious for once. “Jan and I are good mates and I think her intelligence has helped me through a lot of times. I’m certainly not a wealthy chap, I’m constantly broke, but I make enough. Money is important but it’s more important to share what you’ve got than to hoard it for yourself.
“I’m at an age when I understand that no matter how hard you try, there’s always someone who hasn’t had to try who’s better than you. There are so many clever people in the world. All we’ve got to do is harness that cleverness, make sure we learn from it and pass that knowledge along, then fade away to black.
MEMORABLE FAREWELL
“Having a gravestone with your name on it is bullsh*t. Who gives a stuff whether you lived or died, really? You don’t need to be read about on a piece of stone. I won’t have a funeral, I’ll probably jump off the West Gate Bridge with a candle up my bottom!”