FOOD & DRINK

TASTES GONE BY AND THE FLAVOURS OF TODAY

TV Dinners

Kevin Geddes flicks through the world of TV tie-in cookbooks

Today, it can be tricky to avoid cookbooks that are connected to a television series. Pop into any high street bookshop and you will be confronted with an array of titles, calling at you to watch and cook-along. Or more likely, watch the series and then plonk the book on your shelf and watch something else, despite all your best intentions to cook, and live, like Nigella.

Look back a few decades, however, and there is another sub-set of the TV tie-in book which rarely seems to make it past the publishing desks these days – cookbooks connected to television series that aren’t really, or at least aren’t predominantly, about cooking. Maybe they did feature some food, or some people eating, or maybe even both. Often one of the main characters in the programmes was at least fictionally a cook, so publishers thought: “Great, let’s do a cookbook!” And we lapped them up…