Cookin'

I've always loved cooking. In fact my first website in the late 1990s (Geocities, anyone?) was given over to recipes that were floating my boat at the time. And it was around that time I wrote a piece for Delicious magazine that combined food & drink, and music. Always a heady mix.

It was also a period when I immersed myself in Saturday morning TV cookery shows. I couldn't get enough of 'em. Having been brought up on The Galloping Gourmet, Floyd and Delia there was, thanks to Oliver, Rhodes et al, a new gang in town. I even invested in all the spin-off books that came out on their coattails not least everything that the enchanting Rachel Allen lent her name to. Add to those all the pre-loved tomes I was snapping up in secondhand bookshops and I'd amassed quite the culinary library - including Len Deighton's fabulous Action Cook Book from 1965. God bless you, Len.

An extract from the foreword: Four hectic years ago Len Deighton began his cookstrips in the London Observer and serious cooking enthusiasts seized upon them without being sure that this was the same man who spoke over Soviet radio, talked with Hollywood lawyers and wrote the sort of spy thrillers that had to be submitted to the War Office before publication. It is.

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Before I sign off, I can't not mention my favourite cookery show theme. It comes from an era when cookery programmes were very proper, very correct. And, for the most part, very dull. Farmhouse Kitchen, made by Yorkshire Television, was stultifyingly dull. It first aired in 1971 and was presented by Dorothy Sleightholme. Suffice it to say she was no Fanny Craddock. But the show's 40 second musical ident was something else altogether. I came to know it from the Loungecore revolution of the mid 90s. Maybe you did too...

Reg Wale - Fruity Flutes

Reg Wale (1906-1998)

Dorothy Sleightholme (1915-1983)

Len Deighton (1929-2026)

Wearing aftershave ironically - file under 'First World problems'

In the mid 90s, when Loungecore had its day in the sun, I didn't need poking with a pointed stick to make me clean out my parents' record collection. Or pay silly money for lounge compilations (back when CDs were still selling for an eye watering RRP of £16.99) full of Tony Hatch*, Alyn Ainsworth and the Harry Roche Constellation: I sort of loved this stuff anyway. So when clubs like Blow Up and Fabric were having Lounge nights and hipsters (not the hipsters we know today) were crate digging for the easiest of easy listening long-players, I didn't have to listen to this stuff ironically anymore. I could just listen to it.


But how does it work with men's fragrances - I'm talking 1970s aftershaves here? I remember writing that when I was seventeen I thought Blue Stratos was the last word in men's toiletries. At a time when men's grooming comprised soap on a rope and low budget splash-ons - Brut, Denim, Hai Karate, Old Spice, Tabac et al - it was only Blue Stratos that warranted repeat usage. Once you took away the aroma of stale fags and beer from most pubs back in the seventies and early eighties, the only smell left in the room (apart from BO) would have been a couple of wide boys at the bar who'd spent all their disposable income drowning themselves in Brut 33.

So I recently spotted online that you can still buy Blue Stratos. Whether or not it went away and has now come back, or just never went away in the fist place is anyone's guess. Anyway, I had to investigate: would it come in the same distinctive blue bottle? Yes it does. Would I still get that same frisson when I unscrewed the top? Er, no, not really. And, more importantly, would it still smell the same, a smell that would take me back to a time and place? Mmm, sort of. (Or would it smell like an industrial household cleaning product?). And, even if it did smell the same, would I be able to wear it? And by that, I of course mean would I be able to wear it for real, or would it just be an ironic gesture gently reminding me that a much younger version of me would wear this scent in the feint hope of pulling fair maidens who, like me, knew no better? I'll get back to you on that one.

Hardly a ringing endorsement - the jury are still holed up in their hotel, they could be there quite a while yet. Without going into a laboured review of Blue Stratos 2.0 and banging on about floral top notes & musky base notes, the bottom line is that it's 'quite pleasant, actually.' And no, it doesn't smell like an industrial household cleaning product. Not on me, anyway...

* I make no apologies for digging out this Longecore classic again. Tony Hatch can do no wrong in my book.

The Tony Hatch Orchestra: Soul Coaxing