Saturday, April 19, 2014

Derek Cooper

Most listeners will remember Derek Cooper, who has died aged 88, for his radio programmes on food and drink.

But for tv viewers, he was an (often uncredited) voice on early programmes in the Granada series, World In Action, and then, from the start, on Tomorrow's World. His authoritative, gravelly style suited both; the accent was London, but with hints of the Western Isles on his mother's side, and Kent on his father's, and probably deepened by an enduring interest in good whisky. 

Cooper (Raynes Park County Grammar School, Portree High School and Wadham College, Oxford) joined Radio Malaya in 1950, after service with the Royal Navy. For a time he and his wife Janet lived in Mount Pleasant, Singapore, and entertained guests like James Michener and Louis MacNeice to dinner - but the station began a re-location to Kuala Lumpur, and, by 1960, Derek was back in the UK looking for work. He produced a series of 15-minute "Roving Reports" for ITN, on topics such as Kenya, Malaysia and the Royal Tour to India and Pakistan of 1961. And he took a few chances to be the narrator as well, deciding that production was not a long-term ambition.

The move to food journalism followed a package as a freelance reporter on Radio 4's Today in 1966 - he talked to foreign visitors to the UK on their response to finding menus stuffed with ersatz versions of their own national dishes, like coq au vin and lasagne, rather than good British staples. It created a buzz, and he soon followed up with an article for The Listener, and a book, The Bad Food Guide, which became a bestseller.

He first mooted the idea of a regular radio show on the food "industry" in the early seventies; there was a pilot, but it was 1979 before The Food Programme was finally commissioned.

  

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