Business, Enterprise & Management
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Item Book Review: Reassessing Murder, She Wrote: the Afterlives of a Popular Culture Phenomenon(Taylor & Francis, 2025-09-16) Geddes, KevinItem Book Review: Trailblazing Women of Australian Public Broadcasting, 1945-1975(Informa UK Limited, 2024-12-24) Geddes, KevinItem Above all, garnish and presentation: An evaluation of Fanny Cradock's contribution to home cooking in Britain(Wiley, 2017-08-02) Geddes, KevinThe development of cooking on television, and the associated rise in ‘celebrity chefs’ is often seen as a modern phenomenon involving cooks like Jamie Oliver and Nigella Lawson in Britain. Fanny Cradock (1909–1994) is from time to time credited as a pioneer in television cooking and Britain's ‘first celebrity chef’. However little detail of her career has been documented, despite working as a journalist, radio and television presenter, food demonstrator, writer of fiction, children's books and cookbooks spanning from 1942 until 1986. Cradock was prominent on television between 1955 and 1975, with her final appearance in 1985. Cradock is as often remembered for her colourful character as for the colourful food she presented and her name remains synonymous with elaborate cooking in ball gowns, using copious amounts of food colouring and aspic, and for berating her husband who assisted her on stage, on television, and in print. However, from Cradock's personal archive a far more substantive contribution to home cooking through the development of television cooking and cookbooks, looking at her undocumented ideas and innovations. Additional archive materials and collections of newspaper clippings collected between 1942 and 1982 by Cradock herself shed light on how she was perceived at the time, her role as an entrepreneur and her own ‘brand’ identity. From this documentary evidence, it is argued that Cradock deserves to be much better remembered for her contribution to British food culture.Item Common Market Cookery: Fanny Cradock’s European Fantasy(Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2018-02-01) Geddes, KevinFanny Cradock remains best known for her ball-gowns, brows and her berating of assistants, but she also had a lifelong ambition, threaded through her work. She wanted to bring the gastronomic landscape of Europe to the housewives of Britain. From her early days as a young, ambitious, jobbing newspaper feature writer, food activist and campaigner, to her rise as a television celebrity extraordinaire, she championed the style, the feel and the food of the Continent. This essay looks at Craddock's career and asks, was Fanny as ‘ProEU’ as she seemed, or would Brexit be more up her boulevard?Item For the Housewife? From ‘The Singing Cook’ to ‘Common-Sense Cookery’: The First (Disrupted) Twenty Years of Television Cooking Programmes in Britain (1936-1955)(Dublin Gastronomy Symposium, 2020-05-26) Geddes, KevinTelevision cooking programmes are ubiquitous on the established institutions’ television channels, dedicated food channels and online. They have become a popular focus for research in recent years, this research often exploring their impact on audiences, societies and cultures. Much of this research examines programmes produced and broadcast during and following the 1990s. These programmes are often readily available to view as they have been stored and archived by the broadcasting institutions themselves, or recorded at home by audiences and subsequently shared on platforms such as YouTube.Item Scottish Food Practices: Household food practices and the use of dietary information(University of Hertfordshire, 2020-08-18) Wills, Wendy; Vaghi, Francesca; Geddes, Kevin; Hamilton, LauraThis report presents findings from The Scottish Food Practices study, designed to investigate what and how households across Scotland use dietary information (if at all) when cooking/eating at home, shopping for food and eating outside the home.The study aims to inform the work of Food Standards Scotland (FSS) as they develop new dietary guidance that is accessible and suitable for different population groups in Scotland. The study explores the extent to which dietary information was available, and how it was perceived and taken into account by households when cooking, eating and purchasing food, both in and outside of the home.The study adopted an in-depth qualitative approach with ten households, including those on low incomes, families with younger and older children, single-person households and older adults. Participants were recruited via networks of third sector and food advocacy organisations, as well as via NHS and FSS contacts. Fieldwork with participating households took place between January and March 2020; it ended earlier than planned, due to the social distancing restrictions put in place to control the COVID-19 outbreak.The research design comprised of three visits with each household.1. A semi-structured interview was carried out with the key participant (and other household members if they wished), followed by a photographic ‘kitchen tour’. Participants were asked about their typical patterns of cooking/eating at home, food shopping, and eating outside the home, with particular reference to dietary information.2. A video-recorded food shopping trip was conducted with the household member who was primarily responsible for food shopping in each household.3. An observation took place with one or more household members when ‘eating out of home’.Across households, participants reported having a good general understanding of dietary information. Nonetheless, this knowledge seemed to be inconsistently or rarely applied by households when purchasing food, or when eating in and out of the home. This was a consequence of participants’ apparent misunderstanding of some of the information available to them, contradictions in guidance as perceived by participants, and participants’ reliance on knowledge gained through their own lives or experiences (experiential knowledge). Price was the key deciding factor informing participants’ food purchasing decisions, except in cases where health conditions and/or special dietary requirements made it essential to pay closer attention to dietary information on food packaging.The research provides some pointers for FSS regarding the development of dietary guidance in terms of clarity of information required by consumers. This relates to addressing the interpretation of traffic light labelling and the incorporation of guidance into a healthy diet for those living with/shopping for specific health conditions, allergies, intolerances or preferences. Using price and ‘value for money’ could be a way to leverage healthier food choices in Scotland. Experiential, ‘common sense’ knowledge is important to households therefore an understanding and awareness of this, including among health care professionals, is important when considering the acceptability and efficacy of dietary guidance or information. COVID-19 has impacted on many aspects of food and eating for people in Scotland, perhaps especially so for those whose income, health or vulnerability has been affected in some way. Finding ways to support households to manage their physical and mental health and dietary preferences/needs, despite these ongoing challenges, therefore continues to be important.Item Book Review: Television history, the Peabody archive, and cultural memory(Taylor and Francis Group, 2020-12-28) Geddes, KevinItem A Conceit of Coney: Philip Harben and Britain's First Television Food History Programme(Prospect Books, 2021-07) Geddes, KevinItem “The man in the kitchen”. Boulestin and Harben: Representation, gender, celebrity, and business in the early development of television cooking programmes in Britain(Routledge, 2022-02-14) Geddes, Kevin; Tominc, AnaThis chapter focuses specifically on two television cooking presenters from the early days of broadcasting in Britain, Marcel Boulestin (who featured in television broadcasts before World War II) and Philip Harben (who featured in television broadcasts after World War II), both of whom played a significant role in the establishment and development of television cooking programmes in Britain. By reviewing archival materials and primary sources, this chapter will examine the initial 20 years of broadcast television cooking programmes in Britain, looking in particular at these two male presenters who dominated television cooking programmes before and after the war, respectively.