The blog of doom

This week brought the sad news that Keith Floyd has finally conked out after a lifetime of drinking like a pissed fish and smoking like a laboratory beagle. I have previously written about my affection for the old git, which raises the question of whether this little-read snicket of the interweb has somehow become cursed. I often brush off the heather-flogging gypsies in Covent Garden - perhaps the angel of death has been summoned to use these ramblings as a shopping list? If Jarvis or Luke Haines go next then I'm calling in Doris Stokes.

By all accounts Keith's last TV appearance (which he was settling down to watch when my evil eye polished him off) being interviewed by that rancid bully Keith Allen was almost unwatchable. Obviously on death's door, he raged against the TV chefs that prospered in his wake while he, in his own addled opinion, got shafted. Whilst this is a sad last gasp for someone who made a genuinely significant contribution to British TV, better that be his final appearance than this assault on common sense:

Saturday Kitchen

Saturday Kitchen is on and there's nothing I like to do more to start the weekend than watch Saturday Kitchen.

I love the old cookery show extracts (particularly the Two Fat Ladies, which has not so much dated as turned sepia and started curling out of the TV screen). I love the pig-faced, pseudo-homely pushy alpha male edge that James Martin brings to every conversation with his guests, especially if they are a man of reproductive age. Plainly a terrible bastard. I even love the ridiculous wine expert, who has gradually developed into a cross between Beau Brummell and a gay provincial butcher.

But I love more than all of these any glimpse of Keith Floyd. With his leathery face and reptile glare even the most generous viewer would guess that he's trouble, even before noticing the compulsive wine slurpage. But he also has a brilliantly warm and compelling voice and real old school cad's charm. Apparently his cooking did all sorts of revolutionary things to a nation that viewed garlic and basil as poofy foreign muck. But I'm more interested in the stories of his various bankrupcies, rows and appalling behaviour. Like closing his restaurant halfway through the dinner service after a blazing fight with his wife in front of the entire, appalled dining room. Or his habit of wandering out of the kitchen to recommend an expensive wine, then joining the table of his starstruck customers, quickly knocking back most of the bottle and then being nowhere to be seen when it appears on their bill.

The old soak announced this week that he has cancer - perhaps not an enormous surprise after a lifetime of appalling living. But I hope that isn't the last we see of him.