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An august bunch they were and the most venerable of them said to me afterwards: “You did it wrongly. You stirred anti-clock-wise. You should always stir clockwise. I was taught that.”

“But why?” I asked. “What happens if you stir anti-clockwise?”

“It curdles.”

If this new series of mine — 13 lessons called “The Grammar of Cookery” — succeeds in releasing the craft of cooking from the bonds of voodoo, mumbo-jumbo, witchcraft and black magic, it will not have been in vain.

In cooking, things happen for the physical reasons that make them happen — and it is those reasons that I am analysing in “The Grammar of Cookery”. That is why we are using such things as microscopes, integral calculus, parabolic graphs and slide rules.

At the same time I hope that no one will get the idea that in order to be a cook you need to be a mathematician or a colloid chemist, nor that in order to make mayonnaise you need a microscope.

No, the whole idea is to show how and why things happen in cookery. It is all basic bed-rock stuff. I wanted it that way and Executive Producer Lloyd Shirley wanted it that way too. A welcome change for me. In the past I have had to fight off attempts to wish on me every conceivable gimmick — practically dancing girls and gypsy violins.

This series will contain no new recipes. To begin with there are no really new recipes. It has all been done before. The Book of Ecclesiastes is right. Actually I think that there are far too many recipes already. Cooking skill is what matters.

Yes cooking skill. And that means love of good food. What becomes of cooking skill when you have the deep-freeze and instant-everything? Isn’t it killed?

Well, has the theatre been killed by television, musicianship by gramophone records, painting by colour printing? Not so as you would notice!

I am not the best cook in the world, not by a long chalk. There are many far better practitioners than me (including you, for all I know). I am just the chap who decided to find out what makes cooking tick and to try and pass on that knowledge.

It is one thing to work out the rules — the “Grammar.” But behind the rules, in every art, there lies the active genius that mocks at rules.

If you are a great cook, madam, you are a singer of songs, a poet, an actress, a painter, a pianist. You are Callas, you are Cilia Black, Vanessa Redgrave, Laura Knight, all rolled into one. And the world is at your feet.

Or it should be.

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Or seeing Henry sheathing his steel after a decisive ploy at Agincourt.

“English cooking,” said Philip Harben, bristling and bustling as he lovingly laid his carving knife away, “is the best in the world. The only problem is convincing the English that it is.”

The tone quite obviously brooked no argument upon the subject. Mr. Harben had no time to spare for anyone who didn’t believe as passionately in English cooking as he did.

He amplified the point in short, sharp bursts of information as he buzzed around his kitchen, cleaning up after the elaborate meal he had just prepared.

“With French cooking, you can get away with so much. It’s complex. But if you stick by the book, you’re pretty safe.

“English cooking has classical simplicity. It calls for perfection of basic materials. And that means that everything you cook must be absolutely right.”

On Sunday afternoon Philip Harben will show us how to improve our cooking in another infectiously enthusiastic edition of ABC’s “The Grammar Of Cookery.”

It’s a crusade that began in the Twenties over the stove of his parents’ home in London.

His mother was Mary Jerrold, a well-known actress. “But she taught me nothing about cooking. I’m afraid,” he said. “She was an abominable cook.

“I remember she used to think she could make bread. It was dreadful. So all that I ever learned about cooking I found out for myself by trial and error.”

The errors?

“I prefer not to remember them,” said Philip.

After leaving school he worked as assistant stage-manager in the theatre, as a cameraman and assistant director in a film studio, and as a commercial photographer. But the call of the kitchen became increasingly irresistible. So in 1938 he took up catering professionally.

Since then he has established himself as one of the country’s most popular television cookery experts. He has made several films.

He has published a number of books on the subject. And he now owns his own industrial catering firm.

But although cooking has proved to be a profitable commercial enterprise, he will always regard the preparation of good food as an art form.

“The French have one great advantage over us in this field.” said Philip. “As a nation they are passionately interested in cooking. And many English people still seem rather to despise it.

“When I go into a restaurant I react to the food I get. If I don’t like it, I say so. If I do like it I send the chef my compliments and invite him to have a glass of wine with me.

“It pays dividends.

“Standards of English restaurants are rising rapidly nowadays. And the standards of French restaurants are falling slightly.

“The day isn’t so far off when Frenchmen will be coming over here and going into ecstasies about the marvellous restaurant they have just discovered in Ashton-under-Lyne.”

Mr. Harben was struck by an afterthought.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I know two marvellous restaurants in Ashton-under-Lyne, already.”

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How was ABC to respond, in such a way as to make its presence felt? How to find a way not to be overwhelmed by the Granada or ATV identity?

The answer was to be as different as possible from their opposite numbers. With Granada being Northern, dour and serious, ABC always felt lighter, with a more cosmopolitan touch. Against ATV in the Midlands, itself a lighter station, ABC went in the opposite direction, and became more heavyweight, emphasising its Adult Education and Sunday Arts programmes in extensive trailers.

This odd dichotomy of identity worked well in both cases, though seemed slightly more successful in the North. The Midland output suffered from sharing studios with ATV, and having to work hard to look different. In the North, separate studios seemed to facilitate a quite different weekend ‘feel’ to the station. This policy was successful with advertisers and ABC was always fully booked, and its rate card was more expensive than the Granada or ATV equivalents.

How did this affect the viewer?

As an ABC viewer in the early sixties, I was always impressed by the ‘balanced weekend package’ that ABC worked to provide. There was something for everyone – arts, variety, music, nostalgia, drama, ABPC’s films, children’s programmes, news and adult education, not to mention those weekend staples of sport, religion, and the Avengers.

Specialist programming abounded in the daytime slots, weekend programming generally starting before lunchtime, while weekday programmes started at teatime. Typically, in the early sixties daytimes, ABC had cookery, music, gardening, farming, and a highbrow cultural programme early on Sundays, with a magazine programme at teatime. These quality programmes balanced the more glitzy evening fare of films, drama and variety.

The weekday programming, hemmed in as it was between fixed points like news, Coronation Street and regional programming, was hard to vary and became predictable. With ABC at weekends, there was always something different, something special, or something unexpected. It could be “Teach Yourself Russian” from Tyne Tees on Saturday lunchtimes, “The Grammar of Cookery” on Sunday mornings or a joint production of “The Struggle for Peace”, with America’s Westinghouse for US education stations, on Sunday afternoons.

ABC offered a package of delights that made the weekend distinctive, and the weekdays with Granada or ATV predictable.

With a team of regular and friendly ‘in vision’ announcers, known on air as ‘station hosts’, and led by John Benson, John Edmunds, David Hamilton and Sheila Kennedy, ABC were never patronising, and always interesting. The contrast with the weekday companies was stark and very evident.

ABC succeeded in presenting a station personality that was quite unique in the television of the fifties and sixties.

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