Cheesy Peasy cooking with Hudson & Halls

By FRANCES GRANT

The year after television cooks Peter Hudson and David Halls first appeared on our screens, the New Zealand Herald acknowledged their growing celebrity and ran an interview.

The reporter was impressed by their style. At 9.30 am, the duo insisted on brandy in the coffee. The reporter couldn't refuse. Such flamboyant behaviour in Auckland, 1976.

The twosome told the reporter their favourite recipe book was "Good French Cooking by Marie Comtesse Guy de Toulouse — a relation of the artist." Gastronomic fabulousness had come at last to the land of the Edmonds Cook Book.

Peter Hudson and David Halls, who died just over a year apart in 1992 and 93, were ahead of their time in more ways than one. They aimed to glam up New Zealanders' stolid diet, they openly lived together years before homosexual law reform, and — years before Survivor, Popstars or Big Brother — they ached to be stars.

Now, when the telly schedules seem saturated with celebrity chefs, it's hard to recall when telly cooks didn't make personality their chief ingredient.

But back in 1975, the double act seemed revolutionary with their ad-libbed routine of banter, bickering and devil-may-care attitude towards indulgence. "Their ability to combine fun with cooking is a technique they think all cooks should develop," our reporter noted.

"They wanted that celebrity, they were fabulously generous personalities," says Philippa Mossman, producer of a one-and-a-half hour documentary on the pair, screening in Monday's Documentary New Zealand slot on TV One.

The vogue for celebrity telly cooks was the inspiration for the Greenstone Pictures documentary, she says. "We were sitting in the office one day talking about [the Naked Chef] Jamie Oliver and the Two Fat Ladies. Then someone said, 'Of course, we had Hudson & Halls'."

The time was ripe to take another look at the pair — not just at their place in New Zealand television history but at their life stories and the strength of the bond between them which was so evident but never talked about.

Hudson and Halls — A Love Story traces the lives of the two men who came from opposite sides of the globe — Halls from Epping and Hudson from Melbourne — from childhood to the tragedy of Hudson's death from cancer and the suicide of a grief-stricken Halls.

Because the couple were so sociable and had so many good friends, it was not difficult finding people happy to share their memories of them, Mossman says.

There were also close family members of Halls in Britain, including his sister who gave Mossman his personal diary from the last year of his life.

The diary was a breakthrough in understanding the man, she says. "The way it was written gave me the feeling that he had an audience in mind. There were jottings of a personal nature, his grief and career frustrations in immense detail and his longing to join Peter."

Hudson, however, was much more of a mystery. "He had a very intriguing early life which he didn't speak about." The documentary reveals more about him than even his closest friends would know, says Mossman.

The two men met at an Auckland party in 1962 and fell in love, set up house in Parnell and made it the place to be invited to in Auckland. "You never walked out of there thinking, 'Oh well, I've had a good time,'" friend Jan Wein remembers. "You had a fabulous time."

The arrival of new telly channel TV2 in the mid-70s gave the pair of natural performers, then in their early-40s, the opportunity they had been waiting for. They auditioned with a perfect routine and obviously revelled in being in front of the cameras.

Halls ran into a friend after the pair had been offered a contract. He threw his arms open and proclaimed to a streetful of startled Aucklanders: "I'm a star! A star!"

They debuted with a 10-minute slot on the afternoon show Speakeasy. In 1976 they were given their own primetime show and by 1980 they were firmly ensconced on our screens with a "sophisticated, night-time show."

In 1981, a Herald reporter went on set and recorded that the pair whipped up a "steak and kidney roly-poly pudding" which suffered the fate of all the pair's failures — being biffed on the floor.

The celebrity gossip on their 1982 Christmas special covered "why Princess Di's wedding dress was a disappointment and whether the news media is turning the royal family into a soap opera." By now, the fabulous were drinking "watermelon daiquiris, which are alcohol-based fruit drinks."

In a 1983 interview with the Listener, the pair talked openly about their onscreen bickering which was getting more intense. A celebrity guest that year was Miss Universe Lorraine Downes for whom they made "Salad Lorraine."

Kiwi palates may have been getting more sophisticated, but in a 1984 summer barbecue special, they ran into a problem with cricketer Glenn Turner, who didn't want tomato in his burger. "And I don't eat fruit and they wanted a slice of pineapple on top."

By the late 80s, however, TVNZ was convinced the public had tired of Hudson & Halls and dumped the show. The stunned pair retaliated by landing a contract with the BBC.

"Joan Collins look out," was Hudson's comment.

Despite the reaction of the British critics ("Only a nation which is of the gastronomic Third World could do things like that," sniffed one about the food), the show rated well.

But success didn't last. The duo's hopes of greater international glory were dashed by Hudson's ill health and Halls' failing spirits.

Shortly before his death, a lonely Halls wrote in his diary, "Nothing is going to get better for me except that I go to meet Peter in the next life."

The Hudson & Halls' brand of fabulousness was never meant to be a solo act.