Chain-smoking, hard-drinking, outspoken, politically incorrect, jolly and ever so slightly dotty, Jennifer Paterson was one of our most-loved TV chefs. Jennifer was an unlikely TV food celebrity who claimed she had never had a cookery lesson in her life. She was, though, an enthusiastic cook from the age of four, spending hours hovering in the kitchen concocting what she described as 'little messes' and 'horrible little pies'. Born in London, the daughter of an army officer, she spent the first four years of her life in China before her family returned to live in Rye, East Sussex. She was expelled from her convent boarding school at the age of 15 for being disruptive. She developed her talent for cooking when she later lived abroad, in Berlin, Portugal, Venice, Sicily and Benghazi in Libya, looking after the children of various friends and family. In 1952, she returned to England and worked for various magazines before working behind the scenes for the ITV show Candid Camera and as an assistant stage manager at the Theatre Royal in Windsor. Other jobs included the unlikely role of matron at a girls' boarding school near Reading and housekeeper to a Ugandan diplomat. She was a familiar face on the London party circuit in the 1960s. In 1977, she became the cook for Spectator magazine, cooking for star guests from a tiny kitchen on the top floor, and stayed for 15 years.

• Two Fat Ladies (1996)