Legendary French chef Raymond Blanc returns to our screens for yet another cooking show and, despite ill health, he shows few signs of slowing down.
Raymond Blanc is such a hyperkinetic figure - dashing impetuously here and there, flitting about his kitchen at the Manoir aux Quat' Saisons for the TV cameras, prodding and encouraging his sous-chefs - it's hard to imagine him sitting still for long, let alone lying down during an interview. But
to be fair, he had recently broken his leg. In five places.
"Eet was seven in zer morning," he recalls with a cringe, "at home [in Oxfordshire] I was saying goodbye to Natalia, my partner, and I took four steps back and fell down zer stairs. I land on the floor like zees [he demonstrates] and I have created a spiralic fracture at zer tibia and three fractures on the fibula. Because I am a ver' creative man."
Even when recreating his physical wreckage, Blanc keeps up his accustomed level of puckish humour. And he really does talk like that, all zer time, despite having lived in England for 35 years. You suspect that it may be completely put-on and that, if he wanted to, Blanc could speak like a BBC newsreader.
His career to date includes a quarter-century of running the two-Michelin-star Manoir, almost 10 years of Maison Blanc patisseries, umpteen television series, most recently Raymond Blanc's Kitchen Secrets, umpteen books (especially his autobiography, A Taste of My Life, 2008) and a reputation as a non-bullying mentor of young chefs and honorary English, all-round bon oeuf.
"I was in hospital for two-and-a-half weeks," he said "and there was a period when I lay, confused, institutionalised, full of drugs, and wondered - why? I'd pulled a muscle three months earlier. Why? My life was happy, everything was going so well - then this happens, twice. Then I remembered that, years ago when I was 42, I had two mini-strokes induced by stress and overwork and spent one month lying on one side.
"I realised I'd been going too fast, taking on too many things. I had to learn to delegate more, take on fewer tasks. My team will soon see a different Raymond Blanc."
But it's hard to imagine Blanc slowing down for a second, or having less than a dozen projects buzzing in his head simultaneously.
At present, though supine, he's masterminding the creation of an orchard at Le Manoir, and a brand of spring water, L'Eau Manoir.
How he loves the Manoir, where his taste is stamped on every curtain pelmet and cushion. How he loves showing off the wallpaper designs and hotel decor. "What I'm trying to create here is an environment truly conducive to joy," he says proudly. "It's about a lot of little things piled on each other. I've passed on to many people the philosophy, of elegance rather than luxury, intelligence rather than cleverness."
I asked him about the moment on Kitchen Secrets when he was filmed at a duck shoot, failing to blast a single flapping mallard out of the sky. Was it, I asked, true that he was a rubbish shot, or did he not wish to harm his reputation as le charmant Raymond with the lovely smile?
"No, no, no," he cried. "I'm a hunter-gatherer for God's sake! I cannot be something else. The British are so squeamish about such things, so hypocritical about food. It's time we changed that. The whole food chain system has taken us away from the actual food. We're not prepared to know where it comes from."
He remembers his idyllic childhood in a village near Besancon, capital of Franche-Comte in eastern France, where "the first thing I was told was it was my job to kill the chickens". After living in England for 35 years, Blanc still cannot get over his friends' love of their pet rabbits and hens. He thinks it's about time British people were more responsible about the food they consume.
"To British people, the only values food possesses are cheapness, convenience, shelf life and never mind what's in the stuff, provided it looks right."
Whew. Blanc in full rant is an impressive sight. But even while delivering these tirades he remains tremendously courteous. In the 10 years that have passed since he was last seen cooking on TV, he's been at his flagship restaurant, tirelessly training up chefs to Michelin-star level in 23 of them. It's quite a record. Did he wish he'd expanded into bigger restaurants, as Gordon Ramsay and Alain Ducasse did, and opened in Paris and New York?
Does he hell. "The last thing I wanted to do was build an empire. Empires, by their nature, are about greed, expansionism and they're always going to fall, eventually. And I was never interested in going to Paris or New York. Believe me, I could've opened there any time, but I said no. I wanted to stay in Britain. I feel comfortable here. I know my guests well, my children were born and schooled here, my friends are here, it's my heart."
Blanc is, he says, a craftsman by nature. He became an entrepreneur by accident, and has become a brand by a similar caprice of fate. "I was totally self-taught," he recalls. "I never held a frying pan in my life before I took up one in a pub called the Quatre Saisons in Oxford. It changed my life." Three months later, he and his wife, Jenny, "saved our money, mortgaged the house and bought this little corridor between a ladies' underwear shop and an Oxfam shop. It was awful. We had nothing. We owed money to 18 people ..."
Didn't he have some kind of mentor at the start? His best guide was a cookbook called Cooking in 10 Minutes, by Edouard de Pomiane, a professor at the Sorbonne.
As we parted company, I asked him what he liked about British culture? He considered. "First, your ability to laugh about yourselves, which the French don't have. Second, the British sense of humour. It's comfortable. Third, I love your ability to recognise your mistakes, The French don't know how to do this. We always have to be the best. Fourth, you argue much more rationally. We argue with passion, and when you do that, you're bound to make mistakes. Most of all, you listen while other people speak, and in France you cannot, which creates problems because in the political world, the cultural world, the family world, everyone speaks at the same time. It's a complete cacophony. The British listen better, so there's a fair chance for everyone to pass on their views."
Did he feel very English now? He looked at me with very French, je m'en fou incredulity. "Non, definitely not, no way, no way."
But surely, after 35 years? "When I first came to England, I thought the French were a universal race who should rule the world. Living in a multicultural society has allowed me to be a better Frenchman, to keep my French tradition and enrich it with other cultures. So maybe I can say I'm 100 per cent French and 20 per cent British. The 20 per cent is important. It means I'm not the arrogant little bastard Frenchman who thinks he knows everything."
* Raymond Blanc's new cooking show is on Sky's Food Channel, Mondays 7.30pm.
- INDEPENDENT
