Five minutes with… newsreader Michael Buerk on Royal Recipes

BBC/GETTY

Michael Buerk will present a new show on the BCC, Royal Recipes

What happens in Royal Recipes?

I had two extraordinary glamorous top chefs cooking old royal recipes, while I pranced around trying to inject a few facts about kings and queens, gurning orgasmically at all the food they create.

What was it like working with Paul Ainsworth and Anna Haugh?

I was a bit worried about it. Chefs can be a bit up themselves, they are the ones with the sharp knifes.

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What got you excited about the series?

I had two extraordinary glamorous top chefs cooking old royal recipes, while I pranced around trying to inject a few facts about kings and queens

Michael Buerk

Everybody loves cooking and the Royal Family and this mixes the two. I got incredibly well-fed and paid and we filmed it at the beautiful Audley End, a stately home that Charles II owned.

Which king do you identify with most?

I am greedy so Edward VII. His nickname was Tum Tum. How he managed to seduce all those ladies on the crimson banquet after eating seven or eight meals a day, I don’t know.

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The newsreader will take the watchers through the history of royal cooking

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What was your favourite dish?

I am not a pudding person so I like the wonderful fi shy starters and the glorious confected meat dishes.

Are you the head chef at home?

I am the opposite, I am the number one customer.

BBC

He will appear alongside Anna Haugh and Paul Ainsworth

Did you cook any of the recipes?

I brought them home and put them rather obviously in front of my wife and kept wandering round with a dog-like look. I am still waiting for the results.

You interview people with royal connections. Who was your favourite?

Every year the Queen goes for tea with the Women’s Institute, of which she is president. I met the lady who runs the Sandringham one and she told me the Queen sits there for two hours in the meeting eating her cake and partaking like a normal member. I loved that.

GETTY

The show will air on BBC One

What have you learnt?

A lot of traditions which are part of our everyday lives are likely to have been invented by royalty, such as afternoon tea, curry – which Queen Victoria popularised – or the coronation chicken. It’s the social history that gets my juices going.

Anything else exciting coming up?

The next thing I am doing is rather more serious on Dispatches. A Renaissance man I am.

Royal Recipes starts tomorrow at 3.45pm on BBC One

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