Mary Berry

by A. S. Dagnell

  Mary was, understandably, dismissive of the campaign and backed her beloved stove with her usual loyalty. ‘People who haven’t got Agas are probably leading the campaign. But it’s not just cooking: it’s warmth and comfort and somewhere to dry the tea towels. The Aga is a way of life.’

  Perhaps on a more serious note, environmental concerns were being raised about the appliance itself. Campaigners have pointed out the cooker’s lack of energy efficiency, and the facts are hard to argue with. According to Aga’s own figures, a four-oven model gets through either 13 gallons of diesel oil, 15 gallons of kerosene, 24.5 therms of gas or 270kwh of electricity per week. Edinburgh University geoscientist Dr Dave Reay, who wrote the book Climate Change Begins At Home, said in a Daily Telegraph article: ‘It’s an energy hog. A normal oven gets through just 10kwh of electricity a week and produces 4kg of carbon dioxide (CO2), whereas a four-door Aga gets through 270kwh and produces 108kg of CO2. So it’s more than 25 times more polluting in terms of CO2. That said, it does give extra space heating, but as this is localised – so probably not in the places it’s really needed – the savings on heating fuel are not massive.’

  In short, the smallest two-oven gas Aga, when being used in the simplest way for cooking, rather than water heating or central heating, uses as much gas in one week as a standard gas oven or hob would do during the course of nine months.

  Before he became Prime Minister, David Cameron was involved in his own Aga saga. It was revealed that he had one at his constituency home in Chipping Norton, Oxford – and the environmentalists were up in arms, cheered on by the media. However, his spokeswoman was quick to point out that it wasn’t through his choosing that he had come to own one, saying: ‘He didn’t actually choose it himself, he inherited it from the previous occupants. He also says that his Aga is turned off most of the time, so in fact it isn’t too bad for the environment.’ Cameron’s critics maintained that this was not possible – the whole point of an Aga is that it stays switched on the whole time.

  Cameron’s cause wasn’t helped by Dominic Loehnis, a long-standing friend of the Tory leader, when he told the Daily Telegraph in October 2005: ‘The smell of the Cameron household is of bacon in the Aga.’

  But the Aga company has gone to great lengths to put a positive spin on all the negative PR. Aga says that one of the cooker’s great eco-virtues is the fact that the stove is made from recycled cast iron. Laura James, editor of Aga magazine, said: ‘It’s the original recycled product. Up to 70 per cent of each oven is recycled material. You might have to buy two or three conventional cookers in the course of your lifetime, but you will only ever need to buy one Aga.’

  Aga did, however, come up with a ‘biofuel-enabled’ model, perhaps in an attempt to improve their environmental credentials. Rather than using fossil fuels with finite supplies such as oil and diesel, the company said that the new models used material ‘derived from recently living organisms or their metabolic by-products, such as cow manure’. The only snag was that, at the time of production, the biofuel wasn’t available – and so the new cookers, which were significantly more expensive, costing up to £7,425, still had to run on oil and diesel.

  But while the Aga’s lack of energy efficiency has become a sizeable story over recent years, some owners have come out fighting. They insist that the Aga helps to create a far more energy-efficient home, owing to the fact that Aga doesn’t simply cook, but can replace radiators and central heating systems. It can be used to dry clothes, instead of a tumble dryer. It is not simply an oven or a hob, and so, they say, it should not be compared to one when it comes to energy consumption. Writing a blog entitled ‘In defence of the Aga’ on the Guardian website, one fan wrote: ‘The main argument against the Aga is that it’s environmentally unsound, and this is often tied to it being representative of a smug middle-class lifestyle … Buying an Aga changed my life. Because the oven is on all the time, I cook more from scratch, so we eat better, and our cold Victorian flat is a healthier and more pleasant environment. To paraphrase Princess Diana, there are three of us in this family: myself, my daughter and the cream, black and chrome piece of heavyweight design that provides the heart and hearth of our home.’

  For her part, Mary didn’t like the sound of the eco-friendly model of the Aga. ‘I’m going to wait until I hear good reports of it,’ she said. ‘Besides, there are always ways in which people can use their conventional Agas more wisely and economically – like not leaving the tops open and letting the heat out.’ Neither is Mary particularly fussed when it comes to the ‘green’ issues surrounding her beloved stove. On the issue of the Aga having a poor environmental footprint more generally, Mary wasn’t convinced it was a reason not to use the stove. ‘I like to be green on other things and do what I can, but I’m not so concerned about the Aga,’ Mary said to the Guardian.

  Aside from the controversies, business doesn’t appear to be booming as much as it once was, and Aga’s profits have dropped in recent years. In January 2012, the Daily Mail reported that the company had experienced a 3 per cent dip in annual revenues, claiming that performance was as good as could be expected given tough market conditions. Revenues were down to £251 million after a particularly tough end to 2011. The paper said that, despite the drop, the firm still anticipated decent profits when it delivered its full year results, as by focusing on markets such as the US and France, it was in a good position to weather the global economic downturn, so had a positive outlook for 2012 and beyond.

  But whether or not the Aga remains as in fashion as it once was, Mary’s loyalty to the product and its brand has remained unwavering. Like a trusted friend, she refuses to abandon it. She was chosen as the official face of Aga and in January 2012 opened a new Aga store in Ringwood, Hampshire, as part of her role. At the grand opening, town crier and Aga demonstrator Diane Van Bueren cooked Mary Berry recipes all day for guests to taste. Meanwhile, Mary cut the ribbon and opened the shop before chatting to guests and signing copies of her new book, Family Sunday Lunches. Her Aga cookbooks continue to sell and, it seems, there is no end in sight for Mary’s winning relationship with her stove.

  CHAPTER 7

  FROM BAKING TO BROADCASTING

  By the late 1970s, Mary had positioned herself as a formidable cookery writer. The Hamlyn All Colour Cook Book had become a best-seller and she had released a handful of other titles which were also flying off the shelves. Mary was being spoken about as the next big thing in cooking. And as the buzz surrounding her and her work grew, TV producers started to notice her too. Constantly on the lookout for the next cook to appear on their shows, they started to compete to try to sign her up for their programmes. The first that came calling was the ITV show Afternoon Plus – a teatime chat show fronted by Judith Chalmers OBE. Judith, then in her forties, was breaking through as a major TV presenter. She had already presented the ballroom dancing competition programme Come Dancing for the BBC from 1961 to 1965. This was a huge primetime hit that would later be reinvented with a celebrity twist as Strictly Come Dancing nearly forty years later. She had also become a star on the radio, presenting two major BBC radio shows, Family Favourites and Woman’s Hour. Judith would later become best known for presenting the holiday getaway show Wish You Were Here…? during the 1980s on ITV. The programme saw her jetting around the globe to seek out the best deals on vacations. Judith herself was often featured in the papers for her habit of wearing bikinis as she fronted the hit show. But for the time being she had broken through to the popular daytime market, and was already getting good ratings with her new show.

  Afternoon Plus had a magazine format that mixed interviews with lifestyle segments including gardening, fashion tips – and cookery. Thames Television, who produced the show, have often been seen as having changed the face of daytime TV with the programme, by bringing what one commentator called ‘the art of intelligent interviewing to a wide and growing audience’. Afternoon Plus was seen by some as a smarter alternative to the BBC’s more accessible Pebble M
ill at One, which was nevertheless hugely popular with the target audience of housewives, students and those recovering from illness in bed at home, and would often get viewing figures of 6 million – a huge coup for a lunchtime show. But Afternoon Plus came out punching, determined to be a viable rival. Impressively, the show managed to secure a string of A-list stars to appear on the studio sofa, including actresses Sophia Loren and Helen Mirren, as well as the hugely successful soul diva Nina Simone.

  But now the people behind Afternoon Plus wanted a regular guest to appear on the show to discuss cookery. If they were to capture the housewives’ market, it was vital that a segment be dedicated to the kitchen. And Mary seemed like the perfect solution. She was to share her culinary secrets – her dos and don’ts for the kitchen – and respond to viewer questions about recipes on a regular basis. So, when Mary was approached by the show’s producers, she accepted. But it wasn’t without trepidation. For Mary, the prospect of appearing on television was a daunting one. Having worked as a cook all her life, she knew her way around the kitchen, but not the TV studio. While she could write endlessly about cooking in the comfort of her own home, performing in front of a TV audience of millions was another matter entirely.

  Luckily, Judith became a good friend and showed her the ropes. Any nerves Mary might have had quickly disappeared, as Judith provided a friendly face among the hive of activity that was the TV studio. ‘In the early days of my career, my first cooking programmes were with Judith Chalmers,’ Mary told the Scotsman. ‘She really helped me to enjoy the whole experience, and showed me how to smile naturally on television.’ Mary was such a hit that she ended up appearing on the show regularly for no fewer than seven series. And Afternoon Plus would prove to be the start of a glittering TV career for Mary, as she went on to front her own shows before landing her coveted judging role on GBBO.

  However, Mary says that Judith had one piece of advice that she has carried with her through all the other TV programmes she has since been a part of. ‘When I started doing television on Judith Chalmers’s show Afternoon Plus, she told me to forget about the audience and imagine I was talking to one person who was doing the ironing,’ Mary said in an interview with the Daily Mail. ‘That was one of the best pieces of advice I was ever given.’

  Bizarrely enough, it was the same advice that her boss at the PR firm Bensons had given her when she was concerned about writing recipes for the first time for Housewife magazine … just to approach it as if she was having a chat. The technique worked wonders on screen, just as it had in print. It was this conversational style that made Mary a hit with the viewers and secured her even more TV work.

  Clips from Mary on the show were recently uploaded from the Thames Television archive onto video streaming website YouTube. Looking at them today gives a glimpse into how cookery on daytime TV shows has since evolved, yet in other ways it has very much stayed the same. Under the title ‘Cooking retro style’, Mary is seen alongside Judith cooking a stuffed shoulder of lamb and then later a pâté. Her easygoing, conversational style is plain to see as she wears a multicoloured patchwork shirt and flowing, ankle-length black dress. She talks openly to viewers about her own life, peppering her segments with anecdotes from Watercroft. In one clip she speaks about how she is growing parsley in her garden, what she and her family had for Sunday lunch and the fact that her children are ‘conkering’ – playing with horse chestnuts threaded with string – causing her to run out of string for cooking in her home kitchen.

  Mary’s asides, like: ‘It’s a real sticky job today, isn’t it Judy?’ keep the tone of the segment lighthearted and enjoyable. Yet it’s easy to see that the segment is a lot more formal than cookery shows are these days, as well as being far slower paced. Whereas today measurements of ingredients and the precise technical procedures for making dishes are often swept aside in favour of personality-driven, quick-to-cook recipes (with the nitty-gritty available on the programme’s website or in the tie-in book), back then Mary went through each stage of cooking the dish methodically and slowly, lingering over every element of the recipe in order to encourage as many people as possible to give it a go themselves at home.

  But the segment’s set, of a kitchen against the backdrop of a domestic environment with fine china lined up on wooden shelving, is similar to what we would expect to see today, with the presenter – in this case Judith – standing alongside as Mary carries out the recipe.

  Mary’s appearances underline the somewhat seismic changes that have occurred in TV cookery, which have been noted by critics and commentators over the intervening years. ‘Berry comes from a calmer age of television cookery, where the food, not the personality of the presenter, was what counted,’ the feature writer Elfreda Pownall noted in Stella magazine, before adding: ‘And helping people to cook better at home was the aim.’

  When Mary first started in TV, cookery shows were, in essence, about bringing cookbooks to life. But by the turn of the twenty-first century, cookery writing had changed. No longer was it just about the step-by-step guides to cooking, but more in-depth questions were being asked by the consumer. Was the produce organic? How could you impress at a dinner party? Was the dish low in fat? Did it have a low GI? What ingredients could you substitute if some weren’t available?

  ‘Cooking shows have taught us, changed us and changed with us,’ wrote author Kathleen Collins in her book Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows. ‘At the beginning of the twenty-first century, they have evolved to satisfy our yearning for quality, affordable, environmentally and health conscious, easy to prepare yet sophisticated food. And while many viewers may not have the time to execute the lessons nor the money to afford the high-end ingredients or appliances used by cooking-show hosts, these shows prevail because everyone eats, knows something about food, and can relate to the endeavour.’

  The cultural and social importance of cookery shows should not be underestimated. They have helped transform cookery from a drudge, a necessity and a chore for housewives around the world into a creative, exciting and enjoyable activity. Writing in the New York Times, Michael Pollan elaborated on this as he discussed the 2009 Hollywood film starring Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia. The film chronicles the early career of Julia Child, one of the first popular American TV chefs. Pollan argues that Child set about bringing this sea change in the world’s view of cooking as she started out in TV in the 1960s, at almost exactly the same time as Mary was beginning her own broadcasting career. Pollan said: ‘That learning to cook could lead an American woman to success of any kind would have seemed utterly implausible in 1949; that it is so thoroughly plausible 60 years later owes everything to Julia Child’s legacy … chefs have been welcomed into the repertory company of American celebrity and cooking has become a broadly appealing mise en scène in which success stories can plausibly be set and played out.’ Citing the Food Network and a hit show on that channel called The Next Food Network Star, he said it was amazing that we live in a culture where thousands of 20- and 30-somethings compete eagerly to become recognised for their culinary prowess.

  When Mary began her TV career in the late 1960s, it would have been almost impossible to imagine that, years later, there would be a whole TV channel dedicated to cookery shows. The Food Network launched in the US in 1993, before coming to the UK and Ireland as a satellite channel in 2009. It screens wall-to-wall cookery shows of all descriptions – reality programmes, documentaries and step-by-step classes for any skill level, from novices to masterchefs.

  The popularity of the Food Network is such that it’s now available in almost 100 million American homes and often gets ratings above and beyond any of the more so-called serious news channels. Food was suddenly seen as something that could delight, rather than just something you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It had the power to entertain both on screen and on the viewer’s plate. ‘Cooking shows also benefit from the fact that food itself is – by definition – attractive to the hu
mans who eat it,’ wrote Pollan. Techniques such as food styling, where a whole host of tricks is deployed to make dishes look appetising in front of the camera, appeal to our physiological and psychological responses to seeing food. So a slow-motion cascade of glistening red cherries or a tongue of flame lapping at a slab of meat on the grill catches our eye. ‘Food shows are the campfires in the deep cable forest,’ said Pollan, ‘drawing us like hungry wanderers to their flames.’

  In recent years, the number of people holding dinner parties in the UK has shot up. Retail analysts Conlumino carried out a survey which showed that 30 per cent of respondents said they’d thrown a dinner party in the six months leading up to May 2012 – a 12 per cent increase on the previous year. The rise of TV cookery is said to be a major contributing factor to this statistic. The process of holding dinner parties has become so popular that TV cookery shows have started to reflect this. Perhaps inspired by the likes of Jamie, Delia or Mary, Channel 4’s Come Dine With Me sees groups of four or five strangers living near each other in some part of the UK treating each other to dinner parties, with the attendees giving each other scores out of 10. The contestant who emerges at the end of the week with the highest score takes home a cash prize of £1,000. The show became a cult hit thanks to its winning combination of reality, fly-on-the-wall-style TV coupled with cookery. It’s clear that, over the years, cookery shows have evolved to meet viewers’ interests and, indeed, tastes.

  With the changing landscape of cookery shows, programmes have had to be revamped and reinvented to stay on trend. But not everyone has appreciated these changes. BBC2 – the channel that would later screen Mary on the Great British Bake Off – would do just that with its long-running hit MasterChef. While it helped to completely rejuvenate the show’s ratings, which had always been stable, it did not go down so well with the former host, Loyd Grossman, who spoke openly about his dislike of some of the changes. Grossman, who presented the show for 10 years, quit in 2000 after he was told the show would be moved from its usual Sunday afternoon slot on BBC1 to a Tuesday night on BBC2 in an attempt to capture a wider audience. Grossman said at the time: ‘The programme is a dumb thing and I don’t want to be involved.’ Celebrity chef Gary Rhodes, who had much success behind him as a cookery book writer and TV presenter, was brought in as Grossman’s replacement, but only for one series. Four years later, the show was given a completely new lease of life with former grocer Gregg Wallace and restaurateur John Torode taking the reins. It is once again a big hit, but Grossman was still dissatisfied. He objected to what he felt was the presenters’ ‘aggressive’ on-screen style and poked fun at Wallace’s catchphrase: ‘Cooking doesn’t get tougher than this.’ Grossman added: ‘It’s like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.’