On Monday, January 9, 2017 at 2:26:48 PM UTC-8, Travis McGee wrote:
> A Slower Pace for TVs "Galloping Gourmet
>
> By KIRK JOHNSONJAN. 9, 2017
>
> MOUNT VERNON, Wash. €” He injected extra fat into already well-marbled
> roasts, with a grin and an ever-present glass of wine. He laughed
> uproariously at his own jokes, and told Americans that cooking at home
> did not have to be particularly sophisticated or difficult (Julia Child,
> the only other major TV chef of his era, had pretty much staked out that
> turf anyway) to be wild, and wildly fun.
>
> But always, Graham Kerr leapt. Decades before Emeril Lagasse shouted
> €œBam!€� in administering a pinch of cayenne or garlic, Mr. Kerr defined
> the television cook as a man of energy and constant motion €” €œThe
> Galloping Gourmet,€� as his shows title put it.
>
> Starting in 1969, in front of a live audience (another pioneering step,
> long before the Food Network arrived) Mr. Kerr lassoed America into the
> 1970s with the novel concept that watching someone cook was, first and
> foremost, entertaining.
>
> He was hunky and British and funny, and in that heyday of the sexual
> revolution, he could titillate audiences with a one-liner about
> circumcision while peeling a cucumber. The media christened him €œthe
> high priest of hedonism.€�
>
> His trademark gesture of cheerful abandon came in the first few minutes
> of every show, when he sprinted into the audience, armed with a glass of
> wine, then ran back and leapt over two dining-table chairs and onto his
> set without spilling a drop of the wine (thanks to plastic wrap across
> the top). He invariably ended by slumping into his chair with a little,
> €œWhew!€�
>
> Today, at 82, Mr. Kerr is more measured. His leaping days are over, but
> he still speed walks every morning from his house here, an hour north of
> Seattle, where he lives with his daughter Tessa and her husband.
>
> He still cooks, too, but will not make himself a hamburger because he
> believes that two ounces is plenty of meat for a meal and, he said, €œyou
> cant make a decent two-ounce hamburger.€�
>
> Finding that place of moderation, though, was hard. In the 1970s, Mr.
> Kerr lurched from indulgence to asceticism and a denunciation of excess,
> including his own. Only gradually and with age, he said, did he find his
> way to a middle ground that allows for some prepared foods, cooked with
> minimal fat or fuss.
>
> €œWouldnt one love to think that one always has wound up with the middle
> way, and is now leading a perfectly balanced life?€� he said, laughing
> and looking out over the Skagit River valley, which he fell in love with
> years ago because he could see water and mountains and farms all from
> one perch. €œBut I had much distance to go,€� he added quietly.
>
> There is little doubt, fans and cultural historians say, that Mr. Kerr
> helped define a certain corner-turning moment in America. He wasnt the
> first male chef on television: James Beard got there in 1946. The run of
> €œThe Galloping Gourmet€� was also relatively brief; CBS canceled the show
> in 1971 after a car crash in which Mr. Kerr and his wife, Treena, were
> badly injured, requiring a long recovery.
>
> But in a time of profound anxiety and change €” the struggles over civil
> rights and the Vietnam War were raging as he sprinted onto his set €” Mr.
> Kerrs upbeat message resonated. Even when he flubbed some kitchen
> maneuver, and perhaps especially when he flubbed, he reassured his
> audience that it was going to be all right in the end.
>
> €œIt was more than hedonism, more like just joy,€� said Kathleen Collins,
> the author of the book €œWatching What We Eat: The Evolution of
> Television Cooking Shows.€� €œHe didnt seem to worry at all about either
> the nutritional content, or the whole gestalt of drinking in the
> kitchen. It was all just about creating a kind of fun atmosphere.€�
>
> As a serious cook, Mr. Kerr was on shakier ground. A former White House
> chef publicly disparaged him, and the New York Times television critic
> Jack Gould wrote that Mr. Kerr mixed €œthe informality of the Automat
> with food brought over from the Four Seasons.€�
>
> But for many fans, his mark was indelible.
>
> Bill Fountain, now a high school teacher in Dallas, was barely 5 when
> Mr. Kerr began galloping. Mr. Fountain said his mother was ill in those
> years and his father was working two jobs, gone most of the time. Mr.
> Kerr made cooking seem like something a boy could do.
>
> €œHe made a huge impression on me,€� Mr. Fountain, 52, said in a telephone
> interview. €œI really love cooking, and I think that passion and that joy
> of cooking came from Graham.€�
>
> Mr. Fountain, who produces a fiction podcast with a narrator who solves
> mysteries involving food, still regularly cooks Mr. Kerrs jambalaya.
>
> €œThere was this beautiful human quality to him,€� Mr. Fountain said,
> something he also saw in Ms. Child. €œHe dropped stuff, made mistakes,
> spilled the oil, but he would always make it O.K., and to this day, I
> think, how wonderful a thing to instill.€�
>
> Mr. Kerr grew up in the kitchen, the son of hoteliers in southern
> England, but he was an adult before he first made the connection between
> cooking and entertainment. He was working as a catering adviser to the
> Royal New Zealand Air Force in 1960, when he suddenly had to fill in for
> an officer who was to conduct a cooking demonstration. Making an omelet,
> he also made his audience laugh. A TV cooking show in New Zealand, and
> then Australia, soon followed.
>
> In his half-hour €œGalloping Gourmet€� segments, taped in Canada and
> broadcast in the United States between weekday soap operas (and seen in
> most British Commonwealth countries as well), the focus was on meat and
> a lot of it, often as not larded with cream. Vegetables were mere garnish..
>
> The pace was frenetic, and not just on the set. In a kind of travelogue
> that linked food and foreign cultures €” a precursor to Anthony
> Bourdains globe-trotting food programs €” Mr. Kerr went around the world
> 28 times by his count, stopping to master specific dishes that he could
> then teach his audience.

I used to love watching him. He was an entertainer as well. I remember one segment where he made eggs benedict but instead of canadian bacon or ham he used a filet mignon.

Of course he let some audience members taste it and swoon..... LOL

He lives a few miles South of me. For a while, a few years ago, he was a chef/consultant for Haggen Foods (a local upscale grocer) and did original recipes for their deli salads and soups.