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Flamboyant TV chef Keith Floyd dies aged 65
The cook died at his partner’s house in Devon after having been diagnosed with bowel cancer earlier this year
Bon viveur Keith Floyd, the flamboyant television chef known for his enthusiastic if shambolic presenting style, trademark bow ties and ubiquitous glass of red wine, has died of a heart attack at 65. Floyd, who was diagnosed with bowel cancer in June, died at his partner's Dorset home yesterday.
He shot to fame in the mid-Eighties with his globetrotting BBC television series Floyd On... which saw him explore international cuisine.
Floyd originally worked as a cub reporter on the Bristol Evening Post before Michael Caine's role as a heroic British lieutenant in the 1964 film Zulu inspired him to go into the Army. He enlisted for the Royal Tank Regiment, where he pestered the mess cook to produce gourmet dinners. After three years he left to pursue a career in the catering industry and eventually opened his first restaurant, Floyd's Bistro in Bristol. He was just 22.
However, after setting up two more establishments he got into financial difficulties. He sold all three restaurants and moved to the south of France, where he started again with another bistro. His lack of business acumen proved his downfall there, too, and he was forced to return to England.
Back in Bristol, he opened yet another restaurant near the city’s BBC studios - simply called 'Restaurant' because he had forfeited the rights to his own name when he sold his first restaurant – and it was now that he made his breakthrough. One of his regulars was the TV producer David Pritchard, who recognised the eccentric patron's potential. In 1984 he gave him his first TV series, Floyd on Fish.
Floyd's rows with his four ex-wives were as legendary as his culinary skills and his lack of business nous. He was declared bankrupt in 1996.
Chef Marco Pierre White said Floyd had "inspired a nation" with his programmes. "He was a natural cook. But his very special talent was he could articulate himself and deliver inspiration with words. He spoke in a way that everybody could understand."
He added: "He was an individual, he was a maverick, he was mercurial, he was magical, he was special, he was rare."
By coincidence, Channel 4 screened a documentary about Floyd last night, which showed him looking frail and using a walking stuck. In Keith on Keith, the actor Keith Allen interviewed him at his French home. As he drank wine and chainsmoked, Floyd slated modern TV chefs as "a bunch of arseholes. Gordon Ramsay is on a celebrity zig-zag, they’ve all been seduced by TV." ·
