TV A chance meeting with a TV producer in Keith Floyd’s Bristol bistro in

TV A chance meeting with a TV producer in Keith Floyd’s Bristol bistro in 1984 led to ‘Floyd on Fish’, and a further 18 eponymous series, which have been sold to over 40 countries around the globe. Floyd claimed to have been blacklisted by the BBC after appearing drunk on the ‘Daily Politics’ show last month – he blamed the incident on a 12-hour wait in a restaurant before filming.BOOKS Floyd has published over 22 books and has two in the pipeline on China and Thailand, where he is opening a restaurant, in Phuket, later this year.OTHER Floyd was convicted for drink-driving earlier this year after crashing his car while three and a half times over the limit, losing a lucrative deal to advertise champagne for Tesco as a result. He later indulged his itches for both cooking and travel by styling himself television’s travelling chef. Keith FloydMaster of the liquid lunch, Keith Floyd, 61, tried out his first recipes in the officers mess – he joined the army after watching Zulu as a youth. His other shows include ‘Ainsley’s Meals in Minutes’ and ‘Can’t Cook Won’t Cook’, and he “broke” America in 2000 with ‘The Ainsley Harriott Show’, before hosting the US version of ‘Ready Steady Cook’. He’s also made appearances on ‘Holiday’ and ‘The National Lottery Live’.JOURNALISM The ‘Daily Mirror’ runs one of Harriott’s recipes every Saturday.BOOKS His television series have been backed up by ten solo books, including the ‘2004 Olympic Cookbook’, ‘Barbeque Bible’ and ‘The Big Cook Out’. OTHER Harriot’s popularity with housewives won him the lucrative Fairy Liquid contract but the latest ad, showing him kissing an oven, was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority on the grounds it might encourage children to embrace steaming ovens at home He’s also the voice of Covonia cough mixture.

Ainsley HarriottMeals-on-wheels, Ainsley Harriott serves up his TV dinners with unwavering enthusiasm and a Colgate smile. His media career started out on BBC Radio 5 in the early 1990s with ‘More Nosh, Less Dosh’, and he’s focused on simple, speedy and affordable recipes ever since. TV Harriott, 48, has presented 14 series of BBC2’s afternoon show ‘Ready Steady Cook’ since 1994, a format which gave several chefs their first TV break and is a perennial favourite with penny-scraping students. He admits that his hectic filming schedule leaves him little time with wife Tana, ‘Grazia’ magazine’s food columnist, and their four children. Forthcoming projects include a third series of ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ and a new show, ‘The F Word’, an “entertaining food show”, with food-based interviews and cooking challenges.BOOKS He managed to hold the expletives while writing his seven books including ‘Passion For Flavour’, ‘A Chef For All Seasons’ and ‘Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Heaven’.OTHER Ramsay combines his television career with managing a chain of restaurants – he has just opened his eighth, Maze, and is opening his first restaurant in Japan this month. His television career started in 1998 with the fly on the wall documentary, “Boiling Point”.

She first plied her trade through words as deputy literary editor of the ‘Sunday Times’, before realising that her fortune lay in her culinary skills. TV Lawson claims her new ITV1 daytime show, in which she multitasks by preparing a meal and interviewing guests at the same time, is “a kind of holiday job”. Some critics have suggested it is a step down from the brand of high-class “food porn” she purveyed in her Channel 4 series ‘Nigella Bites’ and ‘Forever Summer’.JOURNALISM Writes a fortnightly column, “At My Table”, for the ‘New York Times’. Founded The Spectator’s restaurant column, wrote Vogue’s food column for several years and has freelanced for the ‘Evening Standard’, ‘The Observer’ and ‘The Daily Telegraph.BOOKS Lawson’s books have sold more than 3.5m copies world wide.OTHER After her first husband, the journalist and broadcaster John Diamond, died in 2001, Lawson married Charles Saatchi. In 2002, she launched a range of cookware in tasteful cream and duck egg blue.
Gordon RamsayFull of flavour – and other words beginning with F – would any other chef have dared to tell Edwina Currie in ITV1’s reality TV show ‘Hell’s Kitchen’: “One minute you are shagging the prime minister and now you are trying to shag me from behind”? TV Ramsay has an exclusive contract until 2007 with Channel 4, having refused to do a second series of ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ for ITV.

Nigella Lawson A luscious dish, Lawson is the daughter of the former Tory Chancellor Nigel and sister of ex-’Sunday Telegraph’ editor Dominic. She believes the only solution is to change or die.”It feels like ‘Oh my god, we’ll never do it again’. There must be very good reasons for success and there must be very good reasons why we mustn’t do it the same way again.”. The Last King of Scotland, a film about Idi Amin starring Shameless actor James McAvoy and directed by Touching the Void director Kevin Macdonald, has just started filming in Uganda.