How could we not include Nigella? That honeyed voice. Her unabashed habit of eating food straight out of the fridge. How she butters her toast. That iconic pronunciation of ‘microwave’. If the dictionary came with illustrations, you would see Nigella Lawson’s photo under the entry for ‘fabulous’. No diet-induced guilt or calorie counting for this goddess – food is pleasure, food is love and food is whatever the hell you want it to be on that particular day. In this new and joyless world of protein-maxxing and starvation-inducing weight-loss jabs, we need more Nigellas to get out there and show us that the real beauty of being alive is to savour every moment, and every single delicious bite.

Known as the ‘godfather of Italian cooking’, Carluccio was also the godfather that everyone wished was their own. You just wanted to give him a great big hug, and then let him cook you dinner. This beloved bear of a man – large in stature but larger in life – made the world fall in love with Italian food all over again. You could listen to that voice of his for hours, and his enthusiasm for even the smallest ingredient was truly infectious. I mean, seriously – who else could make broad beans interesting? Whether you’re old enough to remember Antonio Carluccio’s Italian Feasts, or were swept along by Carluccio and fellow chef Gennaro Contaldo as they travelled through Italy on Two Greedy Italians, you’ll no doubt still recall his philosophy: ‘minimum of fuss, maximum of flavour’. There’s truly no better way to cook.

There are apparently those among us who may find Jamie Oliver slightly annoying. The way he talks. His 15-minute recipes that take 30. And seriously – does anyone really need that many children? What is he doing – planning for the apocalypse? But before I get started on the issue of naming your daughter ‘Daisy Boo’, let’s talk about the positives. Oliver has enjoyed a very long and successful TV and cookbook career, which started back in 1999 and is still going strong. So obviously he’s doing something right.

Still making TV magic after all these years, Stein is currently airing on our screens with his latest series, Rick Stein’s Australia. The delightfully self-effacing, slightly bumbling British chef continues to charm viewers and win new fans, even in the face of today’s tedious TikTokers who put biscuits in yoghurt and call it ‘cheesecake’. The secret to his success lies in something that’s sorely lacking in today’s food media – genuine, old-school authenticity. Stein is always himself. And he happens to be very good at it. Who cares if it’s naff to be passionate about langoustines? This guy sure doesn’t. And if you watch his TV shows, he can make you passionate about them, too. Rick, if you’re reading this, I’ve never had a langoustine. Please fly me to Cornwall and cook me one?

Let’s get this out of the way right up front. No, it’s not okay to call people ‘fat’. And it’s not okay to call women ‘ladies’. But hey, this was the ’90s – the era of heroin chic and hypercolour T-shirts. Clearly we didn’t know what we were doing. But at a time when supermodels were making women everywhere feel about as adequate as a dyspnoeic pug in a greyhound race, the Two Fat Ladies (AKA Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright) made us feel like everything was okay. It was okay to love food and love your friends and love yourself. And ride a motorbike while you were at it. These women were trailblazers in the body-positivity movement, and they made great TV, too. Haven’t seen the show yet? You can still watch it on YouTube. Bring on the lard and clotted cream, and let’s ride.

It is, however, still okay to call people ‘hairy’, especially in these days of excessive beardage. Honestly. Even I’m thinking about growing one. Basically stealing the whole food and motorbike idea from the Two Fat Ladies, hirsute chefs and bikers Dave Myers and Si King based their TV show on riding around to different places, cooking food from those places, and bantering a lot. It wasn’t groundbreaking in its format, but how many cooking shows really are? The important thing was, these guys were likeable, they were relatable and they knew good food. So successful was their partnership, the pair graced TV screens for 20 years, until Myers passed away in 2024.

My first introduction to Ina Garten was quite late in the day. During the Covid lockdowns to be precise. I came across her making an iso-inspired Cosmopolitan cocktail. And instantly fell in love. Garten has been on the air since the early noughties, and built a dedicated fanbase due to her sage cooking advice and her uncanny ability to make everything seem ridiculously easy. She’s warm, she’s effusive and she makes you feel like you could just pop over to her house for afternoon tea and she’d be like, “Sure, come on in! Martha and Snoop are already here.” She also radiates such a calm, grounded vibe, you’d be convinced that even in the face of Armageddon, she’d be there in her pristine kitchen, making shortbread.

Let us journey back to a halcyon time when ‘wellness’ was not a thing, and wine flowed like the tears of benevolent angels. Watching Keith Floyd getting slowly sozzled on TV marked perhaps one of the most enjoyable eras of food broadcasting. But somehow, despite all the delightfully British on-screen chaos, it wasn’t just marvellously entertaining, it was also a first-rate cooking show. Producer and director David Pritchard was behind the camera on Floyd’s early television series in the 1980s; Pritchard later went on to work with Rick Stein, so there was definitely magic in the mix. Despite having a reputation as being hopelessly disorganised and terrible with money, Floyd managed to rack up 19 TV series and 25 cookbooks, as well as numerous eponymous restaurants, before his death in 2009. So whatever he was drinking, it clearly worked wonders.

Long before the internet gave us bite-sized recipe reels, Ian Parmenter was mastering the art of the five-minute meal on national television. This star of the ABC’s Consuming Passions throughout the ’90s was known for his magnificent moustache, excellent taste in wine and signature sign-off phrase, “bon appétit”. Somehow managing to squeeze in fancy but achievable recipes in the minutes leading up to 7pm news, Parmenter wasn’t a professionally trained chef; he was an ABC television producer who just happened to love good food and great wine. It was that easy to land a sweet gig on the telly back then, kids. It didn’t matter what you looked like, you just had to have a consuming passion for the subject at hand. And Parmenter certainly did. A long-time resident of Margaret River, after the show wrapped, he went on to become a tireless advocate for the region’s food and wine.

He of the bedroom eyes, huh? This was the TV chef that got Australia’s housewives all in a tizzy. The heartbreaker of 1990s food broadcasting, Jansz originally studied to be a pharmacist, but soon discovered he’d have far better success with onscreen chemistry. This was the heyday of ‘infotainment’ programming, and as host of the ’90s TV show What’s Cooking, Jansz was an early pioneer of the paddock-to-plate philosophy, encouraging viewers to eat seasonally, buy locally and grow their own food. His laid-back cooking style won him many fans (and admirers), and he went on to be the food presenter on Burke’s Backyard, led by the now disgraced Don Burke.

This woman basically had the job that every Australian foodie wanted. You just randomly turn up at people’s houses, they feed you awesome food, and all you have to do is eat some of it in front of the camera and try not to spill it down the front of your fabulous top. I could totally do all that. Except the last bit. But credit must be given where credit is due, O’Meara and her team created some of the most compelling food content ever seen on Aussie TV. Food Safari was not just incredibly interesting, endlessly appetising and eternally watchable, it also celebrated our country’s incredibly rich and diverse multicultural make-up in a way that always left you wanting more. O’Meara didn’t just show us what was bubbling away in the kitchens of our suburbs – she invited us to pull up a chair, grab a fork and feel like we were part of one big, delicious extended family.

Speaking of people whose job you always wanted, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall made everyone suddenly long for a simpler, quieter life in the English countryside, where you talked about parsnips and went wassailing with the locals. Obviously a scholar of the Rick Stein Charm School For Bumbling British TV Presenters, Fearnley-Whittingstall absolutely nailed the bumbling posh Brit bumbling his way towards a more self-sufficient life in the wilds of Dorset. River Cottage was infinitely watchable stuff, and after a few episodes you started feeling convinced that you too could totally run off to the country, grow your own vegetables and catch eels with road kill. As long as there was wifi.

Even if you didn’t like cooking shows, you liked The Cook and the Chef. That’s the magic of Maggie Beer. Although kudos must go to Simon Bryant for never being outshone by our shining national treasure, and also for introducing us to his doberman, Iggy. This was a show that really embraced the joy of cooking – there was no stress, no time limits, no shouting, no judges. It was just two people who loved food, creating amazing dishes while also making great TV. You almost didn’t realise you were learning something along the way. Watching was an excuse to indulge in all your favourite pastimes: food, cooking and imagining what it would be like if Maggie Beer was your grandma.

For most Australians of a certain age, Peter Russell-Clarke will always be fondly remembered for his 1980s cooking program Come and Get It. These five-minute shows featured on the ABC for nine years, with Russell-Clarke sharing recipes and cooking techniques, and educating viewers about produce, food production and food history. The chef became renowned for his catchphrases like ‘G’day’, ‘See ya later’ and the classic, ‘Where’s the cheese?’, which came from his television advertisements for the Australian Dairy Corporation. But true Peter Russell-Clarke fans love him best for his epic blooper reels. That man never met an F-bomb he didn’t like, that’s for sure. And boy did he know how to deploy them. May he rest in eternal peace.

If Antonio Carluccio was the godfather we all wished we had, Iain ‘Huey’ Hewitson was the jovial uncle we all wish we could bring to Christmas lunch. To cook, yes, but also to just be really lovely and shame all your other awful relatives into behaving themselves. So beloved is this jolly old soul who graced our TV screens in the 1990s, when his daughter Charlotte talked him into making a video for TikTok in 2024, it went bonkers, with Hewitson clocking up tens of thousands of followers within hours. Thanks to her, Huey is once again gracing our screens, albeit our phone screens. And thankfully, he’s still wearing suspenders. Because a Huey without suspenders would be like a meat pie without tomato sauce. It just fundamentally defies the laws of nature.