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Keith Floyd Dead

Maizefarmer

By Maizefarmer
in Thailand News

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bkkjames Star Member

bkkjames

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Keith was a real character.

Always had a chuckle watching his cooking shows - the one's from India were brilliant - sure he was hammered when filming them. Didn't know they used wine in Indian cooking, but Keith always had a bottle on set.

A few year's back when I was in Phuket was out at the big Pub on the end of the island passed Kata with a few friends, some band was playing as we were finishing up dinner. From behind us I hear this loud voice yell "Rock on mother <deleted>..ers!!!" Turned around and sure enough it was Floyd.

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LivinginKata Star Member

LivinginKata

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Arrived at Phuket airport a couple of months ago on holiday and I saw the big advert for his restaurant. Said to the wife, we must go there, unfortunatley no time. I thought his cooking programs were a breath of fresh air.

RIP

PS

Was he ever seen in his Restaurant in Phuket?

Yes, he was present when his theme restaurant at the Phuket Burasari opened about 2 years ago. He was there for the first few months but then had to go back to the UK due to 'exhaustion' ...

RIP Keith ...

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imaneggspurt Gold Member

imaneggspurt

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This is sad news for me, i knew Keith and have had a few good sessions with him when he owned "Floyds Inn " ( sometimes ) in Tuckenhay ,Devon in the 90s, he and i and Nick Waye had some great fun there,. he was always the centre of attraction and would converse with anyone, ,a sad loss, Rest in peace Keith,. :)

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pagallim Platinum Member

pagallim

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This is sad news for me, i knew Keith and have had a few good sessions with him when he owned "Floyds Inn " ( sometimes ) in Tuckenhay ,Devon in the 90s, he and i and Nick Waye had some great fun there,. he was always the centre of attraction and would converse with anyone, ,a sad loss, Rest in peace Keith,. :)

Likewise, I visited 'Floyd's Inn - Sometimes' a few times when I lived in East Devon (one of a few good eating spots in Devon at the time). My memories of him will be of a charming and witty host, full of largesse, and always with a (I think) large vodka and tonic close by. Seriously, he was an inspiration to many people to get involved in cooking for pleasure, and most of all he made it look like fun. Definitely a character, and one who inspired the current generation of TV chefs.

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baht&sold Gold Member

baht&sold

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Ian Wright on Lonely Planet series or Micheal Palin on Around the World series were fashioned after the immortal Floyd, imho.

They all made/make the world smaller, yet tastier, more entertaining and most of all more honest.

Bon appetite Keith, unto the next world and thanks for impacting this one, it was/is delicious.

RIP Floyd, you were and will remain exceptional.

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harleyclarkey Gold Member

harleyclarkey

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great guy...brought a whole new fresh way of cooking/presentation to us. Always the lad with the wine mostly going down his throat rather than into the pot. Good judgement!

He will be missed. I heard he had a restaurant on Phuket and 3 in the UK (not doing well at all). Also married and divorced 4 times. Quite a lad! Good on him.

Bon voyage Keith to the big kitchen in the sky.

RIP

Edited by harleyclarkey
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endure Star Member

endure

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What's slightly bizarre is that there was a programme on TV in the UK last night called ' Keith meets Keith' where Keith Allen (Lily's Dad) went out to Keith Floyd's house in France to have a chat with him. Keith Floyd did look very rough but the wit (and the fould language) was still there :)

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bkkjames Star Member

bkkjames

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Keith Floyd's last words (after champagne and oysters): 'I've not felt this well for ages'

Simon de Bruxelles http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_...icle6835418.ece

Keith Floyd left life in the style in which he had lived it — with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

Despite heart problems and a series of operations for bowel cancer, his last meal was a three-course gourmet feast eaten at the restaurant of a fellow celebrity chef, Mark Hix, at Lyme Regis, Dorset. Lunch was shared with his close friend of 40 years, Celia Martin, and began with a Hix Fix cocktail — a morello cherry soaked in Somerset apple eau de vie topped up with champagne — on the sun terrace.

He followed this up with a glass of white burgundy before moving indoors to the best table in the house, where he enjoyed a plate of oysters and potted Morecambe Bay shrimps.

The pair shared a bottle of Côtes du Rhone red with their main course. Floyd ordered grouse, but the kitchen slipped up and sent him red-legged partridge and bread sauce by mistake. Floyd laughed it off and tucked into the substitute dish with enthusiasm.

Floyd's approach, from the first, has been that food and wine should be enjoyed to the full

“I asked him if he wanted another glass of wine, and he said he would but he mustn’t because he’d been to the doctor that morning and the doctor told him he’d got to lay off the booze,” said Jonathan Jeffrey, the chef in charge of the restaurant. “He was in a good mood and chatting to other diners. He was out with his best friend having lunch.”

The meal at the Hix Oyster and Fish House finished with apple pie and perry jelly, and several cigarettes. Floyd picked up the £120 bill. He asked to see Mr Hix, the proprietor, but when told he was not there he left him an invitation to the launch of his autobiography on October 6.

The couple, who shared homes in Bridport and Avignon in the South of France, were celebrating Mrs Martin’s 65th birthday. They went home for a siesta, looking forward to watching Floyd on television in an interview with Keith Allen. Floyd died in his sleep before the programme started.

Mrs Martin, who says that they had a close but platonic relationship, said: “It was my 65th birthday yesterday and we started off by going to see the specialist to do with his cancer. He had some very good news and he was very optimistic of his chances of beating it. We then went to have a pub lunch in Lyme Regis. He said, ‘I have not felt this well for ages’. He had a very good last day.”

The couple watched University Challenge while waiting for the documentary Keith Meets Keith to begin on Channel 4. Mrs Martin said: “He had already seen the TV programme because they had sent us the DVD. He liked it very much. He thought it was so brilliantly made and so truthful. He said it was an award-winning programme. He lay down on the sofa and I thought he went to sleep. Then suddenly his breathing became erratic.”

Mrs Martin added: “He was feeling so much stronger since he had been in Bridport. We were going out every day, either shopping or to the pub or to play boules on the beach. He was not drinking a lot — he had really given up drinking — but he was smoking too much. I’m still in shock. I feel like he is still here and I cannot get to grips with it. There is still his cigarette ash around the place and his clothes are still in the washing basket. I’m expecting him to get out of bed any minute.”

Mrs Martin met Floyd in Bristol where they worked behind a bar together. Her late husband David and the chef were very good friends.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a fellow television chef who lives nearby in Lyme Regis, paid tribute to Floyd as his inspiration. He said: “Keith was a force of nature, certainly the first TV cook to really grab my attention. I followed his shows addictively as a student and decided I wanted cooking to be a big part of my life, largely because of him.

“He did something fresh and important, which was to take cooking out of the television studio and introduce his audience to food producers, fishermen, farmers . . . so they could see where the best food was coming from.

“He then cooked his ingredients with the love and passion of a gifted amateur, rather than the fussiness of a trained professional — the way he directed his own cameraman, Clive, during his cooking sequences was a stroke of genius.”

The chef Marco Pierre White said: “Keith, in my opinion, was an exceptional human being. He had great qualities. His ability to inspire people to cook just with his words and the way he did things was extraordinary. If you look at TV chefs today they don’t have his magic. It’s a very, very, very sad day for my industry and secondly for a nation ... He was a beautiful man.”

Rick Stein, who made his first television appearance in Floyd on Fish — during which Floyd called him Nick — said: “I first met Keith in the early Eighties. At a time when I was experimenting with Provençal dishes like bouillabaisse and bourride he was a Gauloises-smoking, red wine-drinking hero who had actually owned a restaurant next to the Mediterranean. I never lost that awe of him; he was the first devil-may-care cook on TV who made cooking something that the boys could do too.

“He was marvellous in front of the camera, sometimes arrogant, sometimes wonderfully enthusiastic and at others a mischievous boy laughing at being scolded for his cavalier treatment of some French housewife’s personal recipe.

“But one thing was certain: he cooked like a dream and loved food and wine with a passion.”

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