MOST household accidents occur in the kitchen.

It is an environment where mishaps, mistakes and misadventures start and end.

But to stay away from trouble in the kitchen, so we can be the perfect host or hostess, we need a leader.

The military Madame of the culinary catering corp is Fanny Cradock. She leads from the front, leads from the side, well Fanny just leads.

Where she leads us from the archive section of the BBC I player is back to a time when glamour came at a price (7/6) and the price of glamour usually meant continental glamour.

Here we are back in 1970 and being entertained with Fanny Cradock invites you to a cheese and wine party.

Little did she know the Beastie Boys would fight for that right just over a decade later in 1986. Maybe she was their inspiration, then again maybe not.

This is not just a party, far from it, this is a’ Fanny Cradock party’. And with a little help from Johnnie (her husband) who would appear in the second programme telling us what wines would go with this food. We only have one programme to enjoy so miss out on Johnnie and his wine selection.

The programme was in black and white so I cannot tell you how the food look as it lacked colour and looked grey.

The colour was provided by Fanny who painted a picture with her words and phrases.

Such treats were: “This is a French Omelette which is in fact baked.” And “It comes out of the oven looking like a hard cheese, cuts like a gateaux and I think it is absolutely super.”

Whatever she was making and there were three dishes was simply unimportant, all that I know was when people watched in 1970 they were dazzled.

True I was watching it in 2018 but I tried to think what it would have been like seeing the programme for the first time in 1970.

What Fanny Cradock was dishing out was ‘something continental’.

The continental meant not British and therefore not what people were used to eating.

This was ‘foreign food’ which they only saw on holiday (if they went on holiday) and not necessarily what they would eat as it was outside of their comfort zone.

These days there is a glut of continental food in the supermarket so we are used to this type of food.

But if you go on the continent and get cold meat, cheese and bread served up for your breakfast when you wanted something completely different then that is the type of culture shock this type of programme would have given you in 1970.

What Fanny was offering us was the idea of continental living and continental cooking.

We were being told and shown how we could move our hosting skills up a notch or two and to be ‘the talk of the avenue’.

This was not merely entertainment it was aspirational television.

Watching Fanny Cradock now it is a novelty to us as the presentation skills and presentation of the programme is different to what we are used to today.

There would be no difference watching Nigella Lawson or any cook on television now and watching their show in forty years’ time.

It would look as dated and far removed from the time it was made and the time it was being watched.

Television cooking programmes have a sell by date. They should be watched on the day of broadcast or within two years.

What we have here was a television programme which had gone off as our taste buds and viewing tastes had moved on.

But the real question is how far? Today’s nouvelle cuisine is tomorrow’s rustic cooking.

Oh the swings and roundabout of the kitchen carousel.