THE SMALL estuary pub in Tuckenhay was picture postcard idyllic the evening we went there in late summer: weeping willows and dragonflies, a couple of old rowing boats amongst bulrushes. Not many people around save a small chap in a bow tie at the bar. We were enjoying a rare evening away from the kids.
“Try a sausage,” he said pointing to some juicy specimens thickly sliced on a plate as we ordered pints of beer. ’Go…on,’ he urged, “they’re on the house.”
We embarrassedly tried a chunk each with some of the relish, wondering if he was the obligatory local character that you always find on a barstool: a little worse for wear but warm company.
“Yep…they’re good”, they were. He smiled, from a world-worn face and returned to his goblet of red wine while, we keen not to share the rare treat of private moments to ourselves, headed to the river bank.
It was only after that my hubby said, “You know who that was?” “Nope” “Keith Floyd” “Really…oh wow…do you think he minded that we didn’t recognise him?” ‘No, I think he was probably pleased.”
So, like many, I was sad to hear that he had died this week, of all the celebrity cooks he was my favourite: raw and real. The first to demystify the mysteries of television by making the camera swing around to show he was not, in fact, cooking alone on a windswept beach, but was amply aided by his long suffering producer and team.
He was the first to drink and smoke in front of us so that we felt, finally, we were being given a cookery programme by a grown up rather than a primary school teacher. The first to knock things over; to burn them; and the first to really make cooking seem the adventure it could be. He had charm.
Like George Best and Gazza he was that type of drinker we can understand, born of self doubt and intelligence and the need to keep demons at bay: restless, mercurial, vulnerable. We all know them, those characters who seem to find their talent to amuse a burden on their back. Who drink, you suspect, to drown the embarrassment of their own success, fundamentally shy at having the spotlight shone so brightly on them.
Mostly, though, I will remember Floyd for just being funny, for being able to laugh at himself, and to make the medium of ‘man to camera’ appear that he was your mate and the script had long been tossed aside and replaced with natural impromptu wit.
Like when he threw the whole meal he’d cooked overboard from a boat, choking with laughter on camera, saying it was truly awful or, when filming in Spain, driving a shiny sports car down a wild winding road looking like a jaunty Mr. Toad he quipped: “the car you can take anywhere“ and then added with that naughty grin: “a ‘hire’ car”. It still makes me laugh.
