My first thought on Tuesday morning having learnt that Keith Floyd had died, was that he'd watched Keith Meets Keith (Channel 4, 10pm, 14 September) and it had tipped him over the edge.
I should have known better. In typical Floyd style, it was a heart attack following a fitting final meal of Champagne, oysters and partridge that finished him off, not Keith Allen's eerily prescient tribute, not the bowel cancer he'd been fighting nor, incredibly, the booze.
That said, the man who'd artlessly reinvented TV cooking in the 80s only to be superseded by some of the very chefs his programmes had helped launch had been planning to watch the one-hour documentary. I'm kind of glad he didn't.
It would have been a horrible reminder that he was enjoying the postprandial brandy, so to speak, of his life. His mind and tongue were as sharp as ever but he looked 85, not 65, and it was clear to everyone, including I suspect Floyd, that he wasn't well. The last half an hour was particularly hard to watch. During a meal with his estranged daughter Poppy, a confused Floyd punctuated introspective periods of silence with petulant insults and sentimental outbursts, prompting Allen to remark that he reminded him of a Duracell bunny who's batteries had run down.
It was a far cry from the clips we'd seen of him in his heyday, hunkered over a camp stove on the deck of a North Sea trawler, berating Clive the cameraman or slurping from the ever-present glass of wine. Even at the beginning of the programme, the raffish charm and razor-sharp wit were still evident. Witness the brutal put-down of modern TV chefs delivered during one of many booze and cigarette-fuelled discussions with Allen. "Marco [Pierre White] is an extraordinary cook but Gordon [Ramsay] who used to be Marco's pastry chef has gone on a celebrity zigzag, which is why I call them c***s. They've all been pretty much seduced by TV."
There is a dreadful irony in the first truly great TV cook so detesting the medium's impact especially given that he himself had been seduced. But seeing Floyd one last time was a poignant reminder of how fresh and exciting he once made it all look.
I should have known better. In typical Floyd style, it was a heart attack following a fitting final meal of Champagne, oysters and partridge that finished him off, not Keith Allen's eerily prescient tribute, not the bowel cancer he'd been fighting nor, incredibly, the booze.
That said, the man who'd artlessly reinvented TV cooking in the 80s only to be superseded by some of the very chefs his programmes had helped launch had been planning to watch the one-hour documentary. I'm kind of glad he didn't.
It would have been a horrible reminder that he was enjoying the postprandial brandy, so to speak, of his life. His mind and tongue were as sharp as ever but he looked 85, not 65, and it was clear to everyone, including I suspect Floyd, that he wasn't well. The last half an hour was particularly hard to watch. During a meal with his estranged daughter Poppy, a confused Floyd punctuated introspective periods of silence with petulant insults and sentimental outbursts, prompting Allen to remark that he reminded him of a Duracell bunny who's batteries had run down.
It was a far cry from the clips we'd seen of him in his heyday, hunkered over a camp stove on the deck of a North Sea trawler, berating Clive the cameraman or slurping from the ever-present glass of wine. Even at the beginning of the programme, the raffish charm and razor-sharp wit were still evident. Witness the brutal put-down of modern TV chefs delivered during one of many booze and cigarette-fuelled discussions with Allen. "Marco [Pierre White] is an extraordinary cook but Gordon [Ramsay] who used to be Marco's pastry chef has gone on a celebrity zigzag, which is why I call them c***s. They've all been pretty much seduced by TV."
There is a dreadful irony in the first truly great TV cook so detesting the medium's impact especially given that he himself had been seduced. But seeing Floyd one last time was a poignant reminder of how fresh and exciting he once made it all look.
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