A bucolic interlude in SA

David Pauline visits Cape Town and the Western Cape

I must ask you, first, to put aside for the moment any preconceptions you may have of South Africa – leastwise the Western Cape region.

If you’re looking to find poverty, you will surely find it in some of the townships around Cape Town. If you’re expecting to look out of your hotel window and see herds of Wildebeest galloping across the plain, you’ll be disappointed. (The serious game reserves are way up north.) And if you’re concerned about unfettered lawlessness, with a mugger lurking on every street corner, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

And from here on in it just gets better and better.



There’s only one place to start. We’ve all seen the pictures, but nothing could quite prepare me for the grandeur of Table Mountain – or the great sweep of the city below me when the cable car reached the top. And out in Table Bay, Robben Island, a brooding reminder of less happy times.



I could have spent a week in Cape Town, but it would have to wait. My destination was the award-winning Pezula Resort Hotel & Spa (www.pezularesorthotel.com) outside Knysna — a 300 mile plus drive east along the N2 and ‘Garden Route’. (Knysna itself — www.knysna.org — has twice been voted South Africa’s favourite holiday destination and is particularly famous for oysters.)

Standing high on the Eastern Head, Pezula is bounded by rugged cliffs, ancient forests and sheltered beaches, with glorious views of the Indian Ocean and Knysna lagoon.

As well as a Championship golf course, the estate is home to the ‘Field of Dreams’ sports facility – and, hidden away in a natural hollow, an absolutely delightful little cricket ground.

The hotel boasts 78 sumptuous suites set in beautifully landscaped gardens. Each has everything you could wish for – right down to deli snacks in a pantry kitchen and a real log fireplace! No detail has been overlooked. Or you can stay at one of two romantic, miniature castles on the nearby secluded and pristine Noetzie Beach. It would be worth getting married just to honeymoon there. Almost!



If you can’t relax at Pezula, you can’t relax anywhere!

But if you really cannot relax, there’s a 24-hour business centre and a gym — and the list of outdoor activities on offer is extensive to say the least. What about archery? Or horse riding? Or mountain biking? And, of course, there’s tennis and a pool. I settled for a fascinating guided walk down through the forest, then canoed the last half-mile along the lazily flowing Noetzie river to the beach. Idyllic.

There are several eating options, by the way. The stylish Zachary’s restaurant was recently named one of the top ten in South Africa — or you could dine down at the beach. (Don’t worry, transport’s provided!)

After the R & R, it’s on the road again. But instead of heading back the way I’d come, I struck north for the stunning Outeniqua Pass and thence west on the ‘Scenic Route’ (as if the ‘Garden Route’ wasn’t scenic enough!) across the Little Karoo on Route 62 towards Montagu – the gateway to The Winelands. And to joy unconfined!

Here I was to discover Mimosa Lodge ‘guesthouse’. Dating back to 1859, the main double-storey building is a national monument. In the tranquil gardens, among more than 200 indigenous Little Karoo plants, you’ll find a swimming pool, a croquet lawn, a boules pitch, seven tastefully furnished modern suites and the secluded Orchard Suite with its own private garden and pool.

Better yet is the multi-award-winning food. No choice, just a set dinner: that night it was Crayfish Tail with Avocado Salsa and Truffle Soured Cream, followed by chilled Butternut Soup infused with Curry and Orange garnished with crispy bacon, Escalopes of Veal on a bed of Swiss Chard with Seasonal Vegetables (from their own gardens) and a Calvados Cream. To round things off, a trio of Mousses – Picasso Fudge, Tiramisu and Chocolate. All exquisite and beautifully presented. The bill? £16. And that included an aperitif! (As I was dining alone, I opted to have a glass of a different wine with each course. That bumped up the price — to £23.)

Forgive me for banging on, but Mimosa Lodge is somewhere rather special. (www.mimosa.co.za)

I could write pages on the wines of the Western Cape. Names like Stellenbosch, Robertson and Worcester are well-known here, but that’s not the half of it: there are no less than 23 wine-growing districts. The quality is rarely less than excellent and there are some truly world-class vintages. The beauty is that a bottle of decent wine can be had for a couple of pounds in a store. Even in a top restaurant like Constantia Uitsig outside Cape Town you’re still only talking around £10, with the really good stuff seldom costing more than £30. (For details of the various Wine Routes go to www.wineroute.co.za)

As an alternative to DIY, what about a guided tour? Wine enthusiast Sue Bevan of North West-based Winter Hill Wines arranges tailor-made itineraries for small groups. Having lived in South Africa for some 25 years, she really knows the country and its wines/winemakers. (suebevan@winterhillwines.com)



Just time left to explore The Waterfront at Cape Town with its incredible array of shops, bars, restaurants and strolling players, then off to the airport.

For me, the Western Cape has everything. The climate is wonderful, the scenery ranges from soft bucolic beauty, through dramatic to absolutely spectacular, the people are genuinely friendly and it’s one of the cleanest, most tidy places I’ve ever seen!

Add to that eating out for about half what we pay here, decent wine for even less, petrol at under 50p a litre and genuinely friendly people, and you begin to see the appeal of this amazing country. I’ve bored my friends rigid since I got back!

FACTS

Getting there:
None of the airlines fly direct to Cape Town from UK regional airports, but there’s plenty of choice from London: I went with Virgin Atlantic. Prices vary greatly from £500-£700, so shop around.

When to go:
Our winter is their summer. Dec-April is best, with August/September for the Spring flowers.

Where to stay:
No need to go to the expense of big hotels. B&Bs in the Western Cape are generally superior to the UK – many have swimming pools! – and even the ‘expensive’ ones cost only about £60 per night for a double room. I stayed at –

Dongola House (Constantia, Cape Town) - www.dongolahouse.com A peaceful suburb, pleasant vistas, comfortable garden suites round a pool and terrific breakfasts. Du Plessis lookalike/soundalike Peter Eckstein as host is a bonus.

Kleinvaterfal Riverside Lodge (nr Franschhoek) - www.kleinvaterfal.co.za Babbling brook, vineyards, citrus groves, superb pool and a mountain backdrop. Idyllic.

Woodlands Guest House (Wilderness) – 082 823 5223 Not as modern as some, but spacious and welcoming. Tiny infinity pool is a nice touch. Wonderful view over the lagoon, but at the price of rather a lot of steps!

Where to eat:
Eating out is inexpensive and, for the most part, quality is high.

Middle-of-the-Road, in no particular order -
Cape Town Fish Market (Almost everywhere!) – www.ctfm.co.za

San Marco (V & A Waterfront, Cape Town)

Pastis (Great Constantia, Cape Town)

The Barn (Riebeek Kasteel)

Wilderness Grill (Wilderness)

Harbour House (Kalk Bay)

At the top end, I can recommend –
Constantia Uitsig (Cape Town) – www.constantia-uitsig.com

Dieu Donne (Franschhoek) – info@dieudonnerestaurant.com

Tokara (Helshoogte, Stellenbosch) – eat@tokararestaurant.co.za

Baia Seafood (Waterfront, Cape Town)

The Winery (Backsberg) – www.backsberg.co.za

And Mimosa you know about already!

What to see:
So much, and so little time. But not to be missed are –

Cape Town Waterfront

Table Mountain

The Cape of Good Hope and Cape Point (Once in the nature reserve, take care not to confuse the two. Cape Point’s the one with the lighthouse!)

Cape Agulhas – The real southernmost point in Africa!

Whale-watching off Hermanus – about 70 miles south-east of Cape Town. Summer’s best and there’s a Whale Festival every September (www.whalefestival.co.za )

The Penguins at Boulders Reserve – south of Simonstown on the Cape peninsula.

The Cape-Dutch towns of Franschhoek, Stellenbosch, Kirstenbosch and Paarl.

Useful addresses:
Robben Island – www.robben-island.org.za

Table Mountain – www.tablemountain.net

Garden Route – www.gardenroute.co.za

Winelands – www.winelands.co.za

National Parks – www.sanparks.org

Cape Town Tourism – www.tourismcapetown.co.za

South African Tourism Office – www.tourismsouthafrica.net or

6 Alt Grove, London SW19 4DZ. Tel: 0870 1550044

Final notes:
Only the very large petrol stations take plastic and then not all.

Don’t pick up hitch-hikers.

Don’t flash your cash or belongings.

Don’t get paranoid!

(Pictures also by David Pauline.)

Diving on the Barrier

It was the shock of the cold of the water that brought me to my senses.



What on earth was I doing out in the Pacific Ocean off Queensland, 30 nautical miles from land, and preparing for a lengthy swim in a high tide!

We’d booked a day cruise to the Great Barrier Reef from Port Douglas, the nearest Aussie town to the Reef. Up in the Tropics, only it wasn’t typical Tropics weather!

Made up of almost 3,000 individual reefs of different sizes and at different distances from the mainland, the GBR extends some 2,300 kms along this east coast of Australia. It is the largest marine park in the world. A must for the inquisitive visitor. Non swimmers can opt to go close to the reef with a different company, Quicksilver, who have a permanent activity platform facility with marine biologists on hand near the Agincourt reef, equipped with an underwater observatory. You stay dry. But for me this simply wasn’t an option and it wouldn’t gain me any bragging rights back home!

We’d chosen to go on the magnificent Aristocat catamaran — because it was seven metres longer than the opposition, which meant greater stability, and the wind was up. It was the only operator licenced to get up close and personal with whales, should they appear.

The adverse weather resulted in only 30 bookings that day instead of the usual 90, which thankfully gave us more space to move about the boat.



However, the first 30 minutes as we traversed the rough waters of the shipping lanes was pretty hair raising stuff and resulted in a few cases of sea sickness and the sound of delph crashing around the kitchen area. We’d be warned earlier to go to the back of the boat if we felt unwell, for obvious reasons in the high wind! Most of us remained glued to our seats and wished for the comfort of a safety belt.

The trip was to take in three reefs. The first was at the Undine, where our boat parked at its designated buoy ... to my consternation, about a hundred feet away from the reef’s edge, so clearly visible because of its calmer, shallow, turquoise waters, and defined by big white breakers on the far side.

I was scared stiff of getting my face in the cold water as we’d be wearing goggles (and flippers), and I’d never tried them before. I’d heard it said that if they didn’t fit right, your eyes could pop out from the pressure. And what if Jaws lurked below?

But determination — and the fact that I’d shelled out around €200 for the day — meant I wasn’t going to be a shrinking violet and stay on board!



The divers went in first. And promptly disappeared from view.

I’d opted for a wet suit and a buoyancy noodle as the swell was not at all to my liking, and nervously I eased my bum off the lower step at the back of the boat, facing the reef. Swimming away from the safety of the boat, to avoid the big waves crashing on my head, I decided to bite the bullet and stick my head into the water.

Wow! It was crystal clear beneath the waves and I could see clear black shapes moving around below, but soon realised these were the divers moving about. There was no sign of Jaws and I was happy to think the graceful divers would make tastier meals should one put in an appearance.

Another very different world soon unfolded as I swam even closer. Such fantastic colours! Bright ochre sand and shoals of colourful small and bigger, fish everywhere. Some inquisitive ones were actually coming up to meet me! The depth at this point was only about 16 feet.



On finally reaching the edge of the reef — where the best corals are to be found — nothing prepares you for the sights below. Beige corals of all sizes and shapes and you could have touched them with your hands or feet as you hovered. However, this was a strict 'no no'.

We’d been well briefed earlier on what to do, and especially what not to do, by the professional crew on board. Top priority was the hand signal to be used in case we needed urgent assistance. Second was not to attempt to touch or remove anything from its place. All too soon we were signalled to return to the boat.

Our second and third swims were at the nearby large Agincourt reef, by which time the wind had gathered pace and progress proved most difficult. On the third one, after swimming furiously for ten minutes I was still a long way short of the reef and didn’t feel too bad when others also found it too difficult to attempt and turned back to the safety and warmth of the boat.

Our marine biologist told us that the entire reef area — the size of Japan — is the largest coral reef in the world. It was the first Australian site to be listed as protected by the World Heritage Trust, to make sure its beauty is there for future generations to enjoy.

The reef is a giant, living organism with thousands of species of fish, coral, molluscs and sponges. It is vulnerable and fragile and the strictly licenced boats must moor at a designated distance from the corals. Hence our long swim.

However, it is humans who can cause the most damage to this environment and should you decide to take home a souvenir from your trip, there are very severe penalties. The reef is also under threat from the huge number of Crown of Thorns starfish which eat live coral, bleaching it white.

At 10,000 years old, the corals we saw are very young compared to the dead corals and plants below them, some of which are 2-18 million years old. You feel very insignificant indeed amongst such ancients.

No one knows how many types of fish inhabit these reefs as some can change colour — and sex — and can even then reproduce, like the orange coloured Clown Fish (made famous by Walt Disney’s Nemo), depending on circumstances. You can also come across turtles, rays and lots of shoals of beautifully coloured fish — bright yellows, oranges and silver blue. Butterfly fish, Parrot and Angel fish move in what is almost like synchronised swimming. Big ones include the Queensland Grouper which seems absolutely huge below water. One big, ugly, ochre coloured brute with black spots hovered close to the back of our boat and I learnt afterwards that the crew feed him on each trip, just so they can tell folk to watch out for him. Luckily, he was harmless.

You’ll also see the odd small ‘harmless’ shark, (I didn’t see one!) rays and of course, turtles. The Reef Cuttlefish is one of the weirdest of all with its huge snout. Sponges abound and it’s weird seeing them here as animals in their natural habitat. Big Sea Slugs move gracefully along the sand, and Sea Urchins are everywhere.

Our expert told us that it is not true that giant clams can trap a dangling foot as you swim over them, as often appears in comics or films. This was quite a relief as I encountered a few during my swims. They can look quite menacing when only a few feet below your toes.

Real nasties are the stinger jelly fish that arrive during the summer season from October-April and swimmers must wear protective suits then when visiting the reefs.

Because of the weather, my experience was a far cry from photographs of blue, calm seas as shown on the reef cruise brochures! But as they say, been there, done that! And who knows, someday I may again. But I’ll make sure it won’t be during the Aussie winter months.

That said, the entire experience was one of the memories of a lifetime!

Trish Whelan.

Musee d'Orsay delights

Everybody knows about the Louvre; probably many also know about the Musee d’Orsay, but it doesn’t have the same international recognition, despite housing key works from some of the most important old and modern masters.

More, it is a wonderful example of how to turn an architectural masterpiece into a repositary for masterpieces of other kinds.



The actual site was formerly where a palace built before the French Revolution housed the functionaries and bosses of the royal Court of Accounts and the State Council. It was destroyed along with the whole block in the ‘Paris Commune’ in 1871.

Thirty years later the Orleans Railroad Company was given the site and built a new railway terminus that is famous for being the first in Paris with electricity. Designed by architect Victor Laloux, it was opened for the 1900 World Fair held in the French capital.

The station included 16 separate tracks, elevators for those using the multi-story building, and an integrated hotel on the grand style for customers who used the rails for long-distance travel on the south-western network.

Victor Laloux’s creation was also exactly what had been required in aesthetic terms, a building to the scale and style that fitted in with the grandeur of the section of Paris where it was located.

Paradoxically, while it was at the leading edge of the electricity revolution when it was built, less than four decades later the Gare d’Orsay lost its place as the main station of the network because the beginning electrification of the French railway system enouraged longer trains, which didn’t fit in the limitations of the platforms of the station’s Great Hall.

The station’s downgraded status as a suburban terminus didn’t even survive much beyond WW II. It was used for a variety of commercial purposes, but none of them properly reflected the scale or grand nature of the premises. Though its use as the set for part of the film of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’, produced by Orson Welles, might have come close.

And the use of the grand Salle des Fetes in the hotel by Charles de Gaulle, to announce his return to political power, was an historic moment.

The hotel itself finally closed its doors in 1973, and plans were mooted to tear the building down and put up a large modern replacement. This plot was thwarted by the intervention of the French national museum authorities, who wanted to locate there a facility dedicated to the art of the second half of the nineteenth century. The matter was also helped by the listing of the building as an historical monument.

In late 1986 it was reopened as the museum that it is today. The development used the Great Hall as the main area, with galleries and terraces on either side and on several levels. The original glass end wall with its magnificent clock remains a centerpiece.

Turning the main rail station hall into a space with the kind of human proportions so different from that needed for large puffing steam locomotives wasn’t easy. But they did it quite briliantly, partly by providing different floor levels under the vast curved roof, as well as installing a coherent stone flooring surface with a matching surface on the walls.

The magnificent ceilings in the Dining Hall and Salle des Fetes were also retained, and provide a sense of splendour that truly recalls a France proud of itself at the height of its colonial state. The Dining Hall is now the museum’s Restaurant, and the Salle is an exhibition area.

With permanent collections of the works of artists like Monet, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Whistler, and Degas, the Musee d’Orsay is a must-visit for anyone seriously interested in the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artistic eras. Other masters whose works are on display include Delacroix, Manet, Renoir, Rodin, Seurat, Sisley, Pissarro, Gauguin, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, and many, many others. In addition, there are many examples of modern artists’ works, a number of them showing homage to the old masters, and therefore in a fitting place to do so.

For this writer, the sculpture works were the most interesting, and displayed as they are in the centre section of the Great Hall, they have the light and the space to be viewed at their best.

It was a technical fault in a plane at Dublin Airport which caused us to miss our connection onwards to Singapore and therefore left a day to kill in Paris that proved to be a singular boon. If you look for it, there’s always another side to down.


Brian Byrne.

On the Road to the Clouds

What kind of will power does it take to decide to eliminate your tribe? To collectively cease to have children, and if one happens to be born that it be thrown from a cliff to its death?

That's part of the tragedy of the Diaguita tribe which lived in what is today northwestern Argentina in the 15th century.



In their city of Quilmes near Cafayete, they resisted the Inca empire which spread from Peru through the Andes, though they later accepted a certain co-existence in return for technologies such as irrigation which the invaders brought. In the Inca decline, the Spanish invaders became their next enemy, and for 130 years they fought against subjugation, eventually being defeated.

As the history goes, the Diaguitans then decided on a form of collective deliberate extinction, by vowing not to have any more children. I recently stood on the outcrop above the ruins of their city from where it is said they killed any babies which happened to be born despite their extinction effort.

In the end, the population of the city had reduced by two thirds to some 2,000 people. At that point they left Quilmes, one group heading for Cordoba, the other for Buenas Aires, some 1,500 kilometres away. Many hundreds died on the way, and the settlement where the Spanish rulers effectively put them on a 'reservation' was eventually abandoned, as it had become a ghost town.

Today that settlement is also known as Quilmes, but is famous only because Argentina's best-selling beer of the same name comes from there.

Hearing that very strong story made my visit to ancient Quilmes a very thought-provoking one. Looking down over the excavated ruins spread below that outcrop, I could almost feel the sense of hopeless determination amongst a people who had once been the masters of the Calchaqui Valley.

That visit to Quilmes was a side-track to a Land Rover drive up to the highest national road in the Americas passable by car, and then only a few months of the year without using a 4WD vehicle. At some 5,000 metres the Abra del Acay is higher than Mont Blanc.



Our journey was from Cafayete to the provincial capital of Salta, by the long way around. It took us up along the course of the Calchaqui River right to the ice-capped springs on the slopes of the Nevado de Acay which are the river's source.

It was billed as 'The Road to the Clouds'. We didn't have any clouds, though, they aren't due until around the end of the year.

It was an amazing journey not just to see the capability of the Discovery 3 in its element, but to traverse an area where the people today are a mix of many races.



The trip wasn't just a history lesson in conquest, but also in winemaking and the slow development of the wine industry in this part of Argentina. It produces today wines to rival the best in the country, and the world, and we camped on the estate owned by American Donald Hess, which has the officially highest vineyards in the world, at 3,015 metres.



Getting to the Paso Abra del Acay the Land Rover way involved taking the cars offroad much of the time and travelling through the gorges and canyons carved out by the Calchaqui River.

The Terrain Response system inaugurated in Discovery 3 when it was first launched proved to be a big help in negotiating the boulder-strewn riverbed, and along the sandy sections worn out on the river's bends.

Out of the river, the journey was most of the time a very dusty affair, as even when on the main roads of the region we were generally on dirt and rubble surfaces.

These were when the radio systems used while travelling in the short convoys proved their usefulness. The lead vehicle could warn of approaching vehicles or pedestrians which otherwise would have been invisible in the dust. On the narrower sections, sometimes with scary sheer drops on one side, this also provided the opportunity to find a slightly wider stretch of road by which the opposing vehicles could pass.



The views from the Paso, when we finally reached it, were spectacular and worth all the worry. Indeed, at the top we drove offroad on a truly lunar landscape in order to breach the actual 5,000 metres level above the road. That the wind chill and the altitude had us all wrapped up like eskimos under the blazing sun didn't take from the sense of achievement.

Afterwards it was downhill all the way, with an overnight stop at the 3,800 metres mining village of San Antonio de los Cobres. It is famous for being a station on the highest railway in South America, 'The Train to the Clouds', now unfortunately, not in use. From there, we followed the line of much of the track before ending the journey in Salta, the provincial capital.

The Discovery 3 2.7 litre engines were designed to operate efficiently at up to around 3,500 metres and it was interesting to see what effects the thin air and steep gradients caused on the 'Road to the Clouds' odyssey.

There was a noticeable fall-off in power as we climbed to the higher levels. And the turbocharger would spin faster than usual trying to develop enough pressure to do its thing. But though pickup was diminished especially when trying to redevelop momentum after negotiating a slow uphill hairpin, at no stage did the cars let us down.

The biggest danger was actually for us drivers, as once above 3,000 metres we lowlanders were prone to altitude sickness. Symptoms include headaches and nausea, and the problem can lead to hallucinations and erratic judgement and even sudden unconsciousness. We were all on our guard, drinking a lot of water and moving around slowly, and though some members of the group did get sick as we descended from the Abra, fortunately there were no serious instances.

But back home, I'm not thinking about the cars so much. What I can't get out of my mind is the thought of those children thrown from the rocky outcrop over Quilmes.

I'm not judging the Diaguitans for slaughtering their babies. That's something they will have come to terms with themselves hundreds of years ago.

It's just the enormity of their decision of extinction that makes my small travels on this planet seem so relatively insignificant.

Brian Byrne

The Travelling Gourmet

For a man who single handedly turned cooking into entertainment Keith Floyd is remarkably modest about his influence on modern TV food programmes. He has published over 22 books in his career and presented 19 TV series, which are still being televised in 40 countries around the world.

When I mention his incredible inspiration he modestly shrugs it off with the charisma that made his television programmes such captivating watching since he first took cooking out of the studio with Floyd on Fish in 1985. His life changing decision to become a cook came more or less by chance.

“I had this remarkable experience when I was 16 or 17,” he tells me. “I was working as a young cub reporter on a newspaper in Bristol and the editor decided to hire me as his kind of dog’s body — secretary would be too grand a word. And sometimes we had to go to meetings with politicians. I can’t remember who they were I was too young then.

"He took me one day to a then very famous restaurant in Bath called The Hole in the Wall. For the first time in my life, despite the wonderful food we had had at home which was ordinary food, there, suddenly, was French Country Terrines, Partridge Braised in White Wine, Coq au Van and all that kind of stuff. And I thought: Wow, this is amazing!”

This revelation at a time when a quiet revolution was taking place in English kitchens made a deep impression on the 17 year-old. “I eventually decided to become a cook and I got myself a job washing up in a hotel kitchen and started watching what people were doing and stuff like that. Then they promoted me to the veg and while I was preparing the veg I was watching what the grill chef was doing. And I cheated a lot because I would leave that job and go to the next one saying I was a grill chef, because I was watching, because I was interested.

"And I did every kind of job; washing up, waiting, cooking, even in omelette bars, sandwich bars, in pubs, in restaurants. I put myself through an enforced apprenticeship for about four years. And all the time any spare money I had I was spending on cookery books and food.”

Keith Floyd grew up in Somerset and in his new book A Splash and a Dash he fondly remembers the joys of his mother’s cooking especially on a cold Wednesday in winter after a game of rugby.

“Wednesday was particularly special because when I, probably black-eyed, bloodied and bruised, cycled back to Wivelliscombe, I knew that supper would be faggots and peas dished up in a rich, rich gravy. My mother, Wynn, was an amazing cook and except when she was baking her bread (which she continued to do until she was 85), or preparing her Christmas puddings and Christmas cakes in early autumn, she never weighed, measured, calculated, timed or bothered much about oven temperatures at all.

"She was an inspirational cook, but moulded by financial circumstances that were not plentiful, and therefore the cottage garden and a degree of hunter-gathering were essential to her culinary plans.”

A Splash and a Dash is an effort to get away from slavishly following recipes designed to ensure that every item is scientifically calculated to produce a perfect dish each time. Keith wants us to enjoy our cooking and get involved in the whole process again. He has little time for the technical approach laughingly saying, "that’s the curse you see, those rules are invented by people called food editors — very powerful people who should be put down at birth.

"You see it on television programmes, these studio based programmes. There’s some earnest young cook there cooking away, saying ‘I’m doing venison today’ and the blasted presenter of the programme says ‘well what if you haven’t got any venison, what can you use instead?’. And then these food editors say ‘yes but how long does it take in the oven’.

"Well how long is a piece of string? I’ve got two ovens, one in my wife’s house in England which is electric and my other cooker is in my house in France which is gas, and I bet you if we set them at what we thought were identical temperatures and then put a thermometer into each of them there’d be a big difference.

"What I’m saying to people is ‘I think’ it goes into the oven for ‘about’ an hour and a half at ‘probably’ 200 degrees. People must get involved.”

Though his television career began after a chance meeting with a television producer in a Bristol Bistro he has little time for the slavery to marketing that drives much of today’s output.

“You see, as bad as food editors for books, you’ve also got things called producers on television, and they decide what goes on. They think ‘help, it’s Halloween; let’s make the whole cooking programmes around pumpkins’. Bullshit! Let’s just carry on cooking as normal!”

He rarely watches cookery on television these days though when pushed he admits to liking Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.

“My wife watches every cooking programme there is,” he says, “and she did persuade me to watch Hugh, and I think he’s great. Of course I don’t believe him at all, it’s television land, but that doesn’t matter! He is, if you like, doing exactly what my parents did and my grandparents did and he’s full on and very very proper.”

As well as writing A Splash and Dash, a godsend to those wanting to experiment in the kitchen, Keith has also recently published Keith Floyd’s Thai Food which neatly coincided with the opening of his new restaurant in Phuket, Thailand last December.

He is also opening a new cookery theatre this year which is already getting booked up. He will be demonstrating varieties of his culinary world; including French Provincial Cooking; Fish and Shellfish; Back to British; and Mediterranean Cooking. He is taking this cookery theatre very seriously and has done a lot of research on other celebrity cookery schools.

“With a lot of these cookery schools, very seldom are the named chefs actually there. They set them up and put in good cooks who act as teachers. But in my cookery school I will be there for every single lesson. There won’t be that many, but I will be there fully hands-on. I’ll be there from the time they arrive to the time they stagger out the door. I’m not going into this lightly, it’s going to be the best, I can assure you.”

If you would like to attend one of his flamboyant cookery theatre events, which includes an overnight stay at the Linthwaite House Hotel in Cumbria visit www.linthwaite.com/floyd.

A Splash and a Dash is published by Cassell Illustrated, ISBN: 1844034461 and Keith Floyd’s Thai Food is published by HarperCollins ISBN: 0007213492.

Fergus Byrne.