Deadly fame

AS unbelievable as it sounds, TV cook Keith Floyd made himself seriously ill last year as a result of malnutrition. His recent move into the world of theatre entertainer often led to meals being skipped, although he admits that his love of wine and cigarettes didn't help much either.

His health scare last year, in which a visit to Durham's Gala Theatre was postponed until last weekend, left him virtually blind and walking with a stick before he was treated at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital.

The 63-year-old says: "Believe it or believe it not, for a cook, I was actually suffering from malnutrition. I hadn't realised it, but when you're on the road all the time you don't get away from a theatre until around 12 and the hotel restaurant is shut and sometimes it's difficult to eat."

Floyd now carries emergency supplies of tetra packs meal replacement drinks.

"If I have three of those it's like eating two t-bone steaks," he says.

He was also told to smoke less and drink less which he claims he's doing "with reluctance" particularly as he used drink to wind down and attempt to avoid his bouts of insomnia.

"Before a gig I have difficulty in sleeping so I'm trying to work that out with a more relaxed frame of mind. Now I'm travelling a day ahead to try and relax more," he says.

He claims not to mind discussing his personal life, drinking habits or non-drinking habits and seems never far from controversy. As Floyd recently went on TV and called people he deems the food police 'a bunch of spastics' there's never going to be any prisoners taken during a discussion with him.

"Audiences always ask me about the new chefs. Gordon Ramsay is a fantastically good cook. I can say that about him. Most of my criticism, if I have any, is levelled at the people who make the programmes not the people who perform in them.

{I genuinely feel this, and it will get me no more work on television, but the producers, who are one day doing dry stone walling in Northumberland and then the Horse Of The Year show, seem to be driven to make cooks look rather silly. It is the producers who are at fault. Gordon Ramsay in real life does not swear for example. I've met him a few times and he's the most mild-mannered man you could wish to meet and he's manipulated into this F-word business.

Television is dumbing down right across the board. I'm a keen gardener and when I watch a so-called gardening expert take a plant out of a pot and put it straight into the ground without releasing the roots, who is telling who, what? There are some exceptions, but I don't have too much respect for producers."

The French-based cook has recently opened a luxury restaurant in Phuket, Thailand and runs cookery schools in the Lake District and Spain.

Of his powers of organisation he admits: "I'm a one man band. What you get is me. There are no assistant cooks, no scriptwriters. My whole show at Durham was completely ad-lib and I never know how it's going to go until I see what the audience is like. Some years ago I was persuaded to do a cookery demonstration in front of a paying audience and I'm quite frank, shall we say, and not a titter from the audience. And it wasn't until I'd realised that they bussed in the worthy lades of about eight different town's women's guilds and women's institutes that I knew I'd pitched my act to the wrong audience. I went down like a lead balloon and learnt from that somewhat painfully I have to say."

He walks on stage to no announcement, no music and in complete silence, believing he has three seconds to win people over like a tennis player in a Wimbledon championship. "Your first serve has got to be an ace. If you don't get that you're screwed. Until I've got over those first few seconds I'm an absolute bag of nerves. The clincher is opening a bottle of wine and pouring a glass... good audiences usually go hooray."

Despite the globe-trotting and health concerns he says: "I'm 63 years old but 12 years old at heart and I'm not prepared to join a golf club and pontificate at the bar on the 19th hole. I don't lie on beaches, I enjoy working and people are my life and one of the joys of the theatre shows is that the people who turn up have been watching me on TV since they were six years old. People have grown up with Floyd and the range is from 15 to 90. All you see when filming is the camera, you don't see the people."

Even so he admits he hates being a celebrity and never goes to gala openings. "I'm not in with the 'get-along gang', I lead a very private life. But my celebrity has wrecked marriages and made it difficult to keep up with my friends. If you said 'come to dinner next Tuesday' I wouldn't be able to say yes because I don't know what's happening next Tuesday. I'm not the master of my own destiny. I'm free to turn down work but I'm not free to create it. Everything depends on TV and theatre producers. No complaints here, this is not a whinge, but it's ended up quite lonely. You get friends you don't want and other friends get fed up with autograph hunters interrupting. It's a double-edged sword but, by and large, I love it."

HE'S just finished two small TV series, one called Floyd's Provence about French Food and one with three rugby union internationals to film Floyd on Rugby and Food.

"I think it was Sky (who will be showing the series), I never know who I'm working for. They're due to be shown in September/October. Then I'm doing a food series for the Six Nations championship. Rugby is one of my great loves and all rugby players, despite the fact they bullshit you about having these special diets and things, you scratch a rugby man and the first thing he wants is a good claret and a bloody great plate of coq au vin."