I'm Giles Coren, I'm a writer and a restaurant critic.
I'm being joined by comedian, maestro and well-known salad fancier, Sue Perkins,
on an extraordinary journey through the dining habits of the last 2,000 years.
We'll be medically tested, dress the part and be forced to trough our way
through the breakfasts and banquets of Britain's culinary past.
This week, we'll be stepping back to the 1950s, an era where we started on rations
and ended by never having had it so good.
Oh, dear. Is this the right house? I don't know.
I'm not absolutely certain!
'We'll be having the boss round to dinner...'
I looked really girlie when I did that!
'...pigging out on Britain's first pizza...'
Now, that is groovy.
'...and quaffing cocktails on the motorway.'
Ooh that's marvellous, what's that? Gin, vermouth and Camp Coffee.
# I know I'd go from rags to riches... #
The '50s was a decade of two halves.
The early years under Prime Ministers Attlee and Churchill
were mired in austerity and rationing.
But the end of the decade brought prosperity,
leading Harold Macmillan to remark that we'd never had it so good.
This week, I'll be living the middle class life
of a sales manager at one of Britain's new car companies.
At home, Sue will surrender all the hard-won freedoms
that women enjoyed during World War II to become the perfect 1950s' housewife.
But before we head back to austerity Britain,
we opt for a '50s style check up with GP Roger Henderson.
Hi, good to see you. Nice to see you, Dr Roger. Hi. How are you?
'His methods would have been common practice in Britain half a century ago.'
Dr Roger gives us some idea of what to expect of the '50s, healthwise.
All of a sudden the brakes start to come off and we get introductions
of American foods, processed foods, tinned foods, ready-made food.
The amount of fat and sugar you eat starts to creep up
and it's not too fanciful to say that the obesity epidemic
that we're now in the middle of, that was when the doors started to open.
Bit by bit, our calorie intake went up.
The other thing when you walked out, certainly in London in the '50s,
you stand a good chance of dying from smog.
Clean air outside now but, in the early '50s,
smog would kill 4,000 people and there were occasions in London
where you could not see your hand in front of your face, it was so thick.
So lots of fat people wheezing, blundering around like this.
Like a children's party game in the dark?
You're expecting us to become wheezy bloaters?
You may have put a pound or two on, depending on how much manual work you did.
To be honest I'm looking forward to going back to rationing.
When we were rationed for our World War II efforts,
I was dreading it and, in the end, I quite liked it.
It makes you strong. Morally, Sue and I are gonna end up on a far higher plane.
Well, I think you'll be standing, I'll be on the floor scrubbing,
so I'll be on a lower plane actually.
Our house in south-east London is one of thousands
that were built in the late '40s to replace those bombed during the war.
That pencil moustache is a dangerous cross between Errol Flynn and Oswald Mosley.
This three-up, two-down is typical of the period with all mod cons,
including an indoor bathroom and central heating.
Helping us out with the cooking is Mary Berry,
TV chef and cookery writer who learned her trade back in the '50s.
Morning, Mary. Morning, Sue. Lovely to see you. Hello, Giles.
This all looks familiar. To those of us who've lived through the 1940s?
It's like one big breakfast and then six days
of sitting and twiddling your thumbs with nothing to eat.
Ah, but in 1954 it's getting better.
And under here, the...
There we are. Now that...
Does that look a bit better? Are you a bit happier about that?
Yeah, but it's a mixture of happiness and depression.
The chocolate and the vegetables excite me,
but then... Well, this is great. Sliced bread. The best thing since.
Mother's Pride, it was the first, and they were very excited by it. And tea bags.
Huh, hallelujah. That was thought to be very exciting.
A sort of perforated gym slip wrapping a bit of leaf tea.
Finally you're going to make your tea taste faintly of laundry!
This must have been exciting, to go straight from austerity to Tony the Tiger.
'Sugar coated cereals, like Frosties which launched in 1954,
were part of a 400% increase in sugar consumption during the decade.'
Also, because we can buy frozen and canned,
the seasons, people forgot the seasons.
This started then?
That was started then, you know, that you always used to buy...
the asparagus in May and June. And fish fingers in October, November,
that's when you eat them. Any other time it's ridiculous.
You've gone from this in the war, to this butter mountain here.
There's gonna be consequences. They must have eaten a lot of beef suet,
because there was the suet crisis in '56. Just leave a space round that.
And if you want to send flowers for that joke, you could do so to Giles Coren...
But before we can get our hands on all this colourful convenience food,
we're going to have to suffer some slimmer pickings.
To kickstart our austerity drive, Mary's reanimated some stale bread
under the grill and made us a thrifty breakfast
from canned salmon which was much more readily available than fresh fish.
And another one for Sue, I wonder what she's gonna think of this.
Right, here it comes. Ooh, wow. Ambrose Heath's fish breakfast...
'It's served through the hatch -
a coveted feature in '50s homes lacking domestic staff.'
A litter tray. Parsley though, that's not so austere.
I love the garnish as well. Well, it cheers it up.
Yeah, 'cause without the garnish - aquatic porridge.
Do you want some tea? Yes.
These are the leaves from last week. Fine. I've rinsed them through.
I can see from reading the leaves at the bottom
we're in for another terrible breakfast.
Come on, be brave. What is it?
Are you gonna tell us what's in it or do we have to guess? Have a guess.
No, from the look on your... Sardines? No, it's salmon.
Salmon, but it's been really well seasoned with some cayenne pepper.
Oh. A dash of tarragon vinegar. A bit more pepper would be good.
Yeah. Bit of spice.
But remember, it is the hottest of the peppers, so just take a pinch.
It looks like something you've dredged from the bottom of an aquarium.
But it tastes nice. Good.
Do you want some more pepper?
Now remember that is pretty hot, be careful.
No, it's fine. Waste not, want not.
No, no, you're too slow, you can't hit it.
So I guess by the time you come home from work,
I should have picked the fish out of my teeth.
Or someone should have done it for you.
Don't forget this, there's some leftover salmon in there.
And my porn mag? Haven't been invented yet. Enjoy selling cars.
Enjoy working, enjoy freedom, enjoy liberation,
enjoy not cleaning, enjoy being a man and having fun!
I'm gonna go inside now, goodbye.
The average working man either walked to work or took public transport,
barely 10% of households owned a motor car in the early '50s.
The vast majority of cars produced in the UK
were exported to pay for Britain's 1 billion wartime debt.
I'm doing my bit for Britain's export market, working at Bristol Cars.
I've been slowly creeping up the corporate ladder
since the company was founded in 1946,
concentrating my efforts on motivating the workforce.
Unfortunately, they just want to drink tea.
# When the clock strikes four Everything stops for tea... #
Tea breaks were common to all British industry in the 1950s,
when workers downed tools daily, both morning and afternoon, for 15 minutes.
In the eyes of many managers, this disruption affected productivity
and I'm certainly not going to tolerate it.
After calling a board meeting to discuss this age-old problem,
I come up with a radical plan.
In fact, any attempt to ban tea breaks in the '50s led to all-out tea strikes,
usually until management caved in.
Seen this, boys? What's this about?
CHANTING: We want tea, we want tea...
I think I handled that rather well. I wonder what Sue's up to.
I'm scrubbing the house from top to bottom.
In 1951, just one in five women went out to work.
For her indoors, the '50s was a real chore.
Women up and down the country were united
by scrubbing, cleaning and cooking from dawn till dusk.
The average housewife worked a 75-hour week,
not including work she did at weekends.
Before labour-saving devices and gym membership,
women kept fit on a diet of hard work.
The thing is you sort of scrub, clean, brush for ten hours
then your husband comes in, opens the door,
there's a huge, great gust of smog and soot, he's got filthy shoes.
Within 15 seconds, he's brought in a tidal wave of cack and you're like,
"Darling, hello, lovely to see you, excuse me,"
back on the hands and knees again. Scrape, scrape, scrape!
The '50s saw great advances in labour-saving electrical appliances.
Such an array of dazzling devices led the Consumers Association
to launch Which? magazine in 1957 to help people choose.
But until I can get my hands on any, I'd best get on with Giles's dinner.
This is horse meat. The Government were desperate to find new sources of meat
because we just didn't have enough. Thankfully, the 3.15 at Aintree...
Is this the first time you've cooked horse? What do you feel about it?
It just looks like venison to me, terribly, terribly lean.
There's not an ounce of fat on it.
People get a bit squeamish about horse, don't they?
We didn't have a lot of ponies in Croydon,
so it's not something that I personally have a problem with.
With little spending power and a hungry population to feed,
the Government even resorted to importing whale meat and reindeer.
Of course we will be cooking with... Oh, no!
An animal's died, you can't put that around it!
Well, that's what we've got.
There's no respect for death. I can't believe margarine's gone in there.
You see the funny smoke that you get. It's awful.
That's because of the water in the margarine.
Giles likes his so that it's still possible
to race in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, that's how rare...
The cabbage has been cooking for a jolly old time. Let's smell it.
That is a belch from every orifice of Satan, that really is. Oh, it is.
If there was some left like that and a bit of potato left,
fry it up... Bubble and squeak.
Now, we've got this nice sauce here. Horse-y custard.
Made with the off white flour and a little bit of milk and stock,
I'll put just a little bit on and season.
I do love the skin. I might have to just... Do you?
That's a skin graft you've got there. Get it off, then.
Do you like the skin on custard too? Oh, I love it, love it.
Shall we just get the potatoes on the edge of that?
You need a neutral sauce to offset the blood there.
You've done it nicely rare. He'll love that.
Hello, dear. Hello, dear.
I haven't moved from this spot,
I've just been standing here waiting for your arrival.
Now, listen, I've got terribly bad news about your pony.
Let me tell you about it. What, George?
There we are. Oh, marvellous. That's yours. Oh, good God.
And there's yours.
Thank you very much. Hurrah.
This is delicious, it's horse again, is it?
It's nice and rare. Yeah.
Really good.
Bit of saddle in mine. Mm.
Now, I'm worried the cabbage wasn't cooked for long enough
'cause we started it about seven hours ago.
I could smell it from halfway down the road. Farty mush, isn't it?
Mind you, every household up the street is having the same meal.
You haven't asked me what I've done today.
Well, I've done lots of things, apart from moving the table.
I thought I should try some flower arranging.
I got some dead flowers, we haven't got any alive flowers...
'God, does she ever shut up? James Bond wouldn't put up with this.'
SHE BABBLES ON
Secret agent 007 first appeared in print in Casino Royale in 1953.
An instant bestseller, it provided a touch of glamour
to alleviate Britain's post-war gloom.
I slipped off to meet author and Bond expert Simon Winder who tells me more.
Can I offer you a cigarette?
You'll find that they are already lit. Oh, excellent, thank you.
Given to me by Q.
'Over a martini, shaken obviously, we discuss the influence of the 1950s
on Britain's favourite secret agent.'
He was quite a kind of a hero to all sorts of men
and I guess offered a possibility of escape
from the drudgery of working in a car showroom
and having a frumpy wife back home, cooking horse meat.
It's one of the poignant things about Casino Royale - it's so wishful.
All he has to do is fly to France to this bust-up resort
with its dodgy clientele and that's escape enough.
With currency restrictions, travel restrictions, rationing,
no-one could even visit northern France, really.
And so all he has to do is to go there and order up a cocktail
and the fantasy is up and running.
There's a whole paragraph about him eating an avocado pear.
That's to surprise his foe into a coma by...
Yes, you know he's won at that point.
It's only there because no-one has been able to eat them for 14 years
except of course Fleming himself cos he's in Jamaica.
Growing all over the place. Yeah, great mountains of avocado pears!
So we've got a fairly escapist Bond dinner,
a fairly lush affair, I think we should escape to that.
"The champagne which Bond had ordered on their arrival
stood on a plated wine cooler beside their table.
Vesper busied herself with the delicious home-made liver pate
and helped them both to the French bread
and the thick squares of deep yellow butter set in chips of ice."
This is the meal that Bond and Vesper have
at the end of Casino Royale shortly before she tops herself.
I'm obviously not Vesper. No, I noticed.
There's a lack of verisimilitude.
They have lobster, they have butter with heaps of ice.
An entire street could live off this butter.
Large numbers of scenes in the book
consist of him simply having toast with butter on it.
In the film, which is how most people know it, you don't get that much food.
To spend all that money and just have some handsome man
chomping his way through plates of food isn't...
In the books, which were so redolent of 1950s' values,
probably in some of the books
almost as much time is spent eating as killing people.
James Bond, licensed to nosh. Absolutely.
If you're not eating that claw... Oh, please help yourself.
I could tell that he was a Russian agent when he didn't finish his lobster claws.
Seeing as she's worked so hard in the house,
I've decided to treat Sue to a day out, so we've come to London's South Bank
to visit the Festival of Britain.
The festival, opened by King George VI, was a real tonic for the nation,
lifting people out of their post-war misery
by heralding a bright and exciting future.
In short, it gave them an excuse to step out and have some fun.
Of the acres of pavilions,
restaurants and exhibition spaces, only the Festival Hall remains.
One of the most celebrated meals of the year took place here.
As 20-year-old Betty Dark arrived at the festival,
she was stopped and snapped by the paparazzi.
Feted as the one millionth visitor, Betty,
along with her fiance, was treated to a slap-up feed.
We're heading upstairs to relive that lavish meal
with historian Juliet Gardner and Fred Peskitt
who visited the festival many times as a boy.
Can you imagine being in the queue and being the one millionth and one person?
You'd just hate Betty!
Just thankful it's not horse.
We had horse meat last night and it's probably more tender.
But what actually was the festival?
It was a national celebration.
It wasn't confined to the South Bank exhibition,
there were travelling exhibitions up and down the country
and every town, village and city
had its own festival committee and its own celebrations.
I just thought it was here. It must have been absolutely packed here.
Could you move? Was it rammed with festival-goers?
Yes, it was, I remember it pretty packed myself.
In fact some photographs I took on the South Bank, you could hardly move.
Eight million people came to visit the festival site in London.
For a bit of fun, people went to the Pleasure Gardens at Battersea Park,
but the real showpiece was the South Bank site,
dominated by the Skylon and a huge Dome of Discovery.
Millennium Dome is the work of Peter Mandelson.
This was the work of his grandfather.
He was the biggest sponsor. So dome based madness runs in the family.
And the big Skylon, the huge 300 foot...
Like a great illuminated cigar, piercing the gloom.
That's what people said. It was held up by wires and pulleys and things,
but people talked about it as having no visible means of support,
which was a bit of a metaphor for Britain.
Betty's extravagant meal was finished off
with strawberries and ice cream and sherry.
Nowadays, festivals you think of tents with different types of food.
What did you actually get?
It was the very first time when I came here that I actually saw a hot dog stall.
In 1951, it was a hot dog stall.
Fish and chips. That was a treat, wasn't it, fish and chips?
Presumably Betty, by this point, was so spannered she could barely walk
and was hoping there were no more paparazzi on the way out
to catch her as she retched over her own breasts.
'After some souvenir shopping...'
My own monogrammed Festival Of Britain pants, mmm,
racy, sexy, is your blood rising? Is it? Is it?
Sexier than your usual stuff.
'...we decide to finish our grand day off with a show.'
Agatha Christie's Mousetrap has just opened at the Ambassador's.
I'm worried I'm gonna be the millionth visitor to this theatre!
'One critic has suggested it has a fair chance of success.
'57 years later, I think we can safely say he was right.
'As usual it's a real pea souper outside.'
Smoggy as ever. Yes, Mr Churchill's obviously been tonight.
'Smog, a noxious mixture of fog and smoke, plagued London well into the '50s
until the Clean Air Act demanded smokeless fuels
and relocated power stations outside the city.'
Oh! Is this the right house? I don't know.
I'm not absolutely certain we haven't come in next door.
Hello? Hello. Mrs Atkins! I think we're home.
Do you know what? I need a cigarette to clear my lungs, come on.
'And for those long nights in, radio was still the number one home entertainment.'
THEME MUSIC FROM THE ARCHERS I wonder what's going to happen
with the lesbian love triangle.
The Archers, Britain's longest running radio play, began in 1951.
'Today in Ambridge, there's one principle
'topic of conversation among the leading personalities of the village...'
'Before the rise of television, it played to a peak audience of 20 million.'
Come on, have a little snuggle.
PHONE RINGS Hello, yes, put me through to the television shop, please.
'It's Coronation Day. King George VI is dead
and his daughter Elizabeth is about to ascend the throne.'
I want one. It says here 35 shillings a month.
'The BBC have special permission to televise the ceremony
and I don't want to miss a second.'
Yes, send it round soon.
'Meanwhile, Sue's in the kitchen getting ready for a special competition.'
For the month of the Coronation, butter and sugar rations were doubled
and, with eggs freely available, the country went cake bake crazy.
Cake competitions became incredibly popular.
So to celebrate, we're having our very own cake bake off.
# If I knew you were coming
# I'd have baked a cake Baked a cake, baked a cake
# If I knew you were coming... #
Careful with that. Mind! Mind how you go.
I was going to move this piece of old junk, radio, finished.
Televisions in mahogany cabinets killed the radio star.
Look, this is a delightful sponge. That has all the ping and spring
of a Jayne Mansfield hooter, I'm delighted with it.
Now to decorate - classic sponge.
Little bit of jam, get it right to the edges. Good dollop of cream.
Just as I start to add some colour, our first guest arrives.
Anthea Turner. Hello. Who would have thought it? Lovely to see you.
'The BBC's Perfect Housewife presenter
should provide me with some stiff competition.'
Hello. Hello. I'm on a baking high! Happy Queenie day.
'Next is Claude Askill, the local WI champion cake baker.
Then it's Mary Berry, the queen of cakes herself.'
Let's have a look at your sponge. Oh! How's yours? I'm dying to see it.
Mine's about a quarter... it's incredibly dense, about a millimetre high.
'Marguerite Patten, Britain's first TV chef,
has kindly agreed to come and judge the cake competition.'
It's too exciting, I'm more excited than I can possibly say!
OK, cakes, please. Can we have the cakes, the first cake? Hello.
We'll put this one on this cake stand.
And Mary's on this cake stand.
On that one? Yes, that's right, don't mind fingers, it's the 1950s.
Mine's sort of in bits, so it comes in a tin. You pre-sliced it?
SUE COUGHS AND SPLUTTERS
Ah! Quite disgusting '50s housewife.
Spit on her cake... Yeah, there we go.
We've got Sue's lovely cake, we've got Anthea's rustic cake, very moist.
We've got Mary's Victoria sponge and we have Claude's chocolate cake.
I have tested chocolate cakes from Land's End to John O'Groats...
Oh, God, it's Claude.
...and most of them have been rotten.
That's one of the best chocolate cakes I have ever, ever tasted.
Madam, you are crowned. Oh, she's won, that was it.
Marvellous. She's absolutely won.
And here we are. Do you want to do the crowning?
'As the rest of the street turns up to freeload,
it's time for some serious eating.'
Hello. Hello. It's the queen! Hello, you little tiger.
Most flatulent dogs in Britain, corgis, lovely to have one in there.
I declare this calorific buffet open. Go on, help yourselves.
This very English menu was devised by Marguerite Patten
for her own Coronation buffet served in 1953.
No foreign muck here.
Marguerite, we've got some coronation chicken here.
Did you have a role in the creation of that?
No, that was Constance Spry and, funnily enough,
we didn't know much about it in Coronation year.
It took several years before we all...oh!
I should imagine it took that long to digest from the looks of it.
As everyone tucks into party food,
the BBC's very own perfect housewife gives Sue some domestic advice.
The lovely thing about the '50s ladies is they were houseproud.
Well... There's nothing wrong with being a little bit houseproud.
There is if... They had a nice clean step and door. But no personality!
Listen, you are a woman who advocates the ironing of pillowcases.
This is alien to me. Yes, yes.
But why would you want to? Why wouldn't you?!
I'm just cooking and cleaning, it's awful. But what about your man?
Do you look after him? Look at the state of him. Do you keep him clean?
Did you iron this? Have you heard of starch?
I put it under the mattress and sleep on it at night.
Marguerite, I'm so sorry, we were having a massive row OVER you.
Would you be very kind?
I want a small portion of coronation chicken plus a fork on my plate.
Time for telly.
By the time of the Coronation, some two million homes owned a TV set,
but the audience actually swelled to a whopping 20 million,
swamping radio audiences for the first time.
You would think they'd be in colour.
All the money we spend on them, you'd think they could be in colour.
Crown's on. Now she sits there for seven hours while he talks in Latin.
She's got the sceptre, the orb, the hat, the necklace...
It's not about the trinkets. Oh, it's not some long Latin...
It's about the history of majesty.
She's got the jewellery, now she's off - that's not how it was.
To the Queen and all who pay for her. The Queen. Gladly. Gladly.
The Coronation had done wonders for British morale
and barely a week later, another chance to raise it further presented itself.
After 19 years of failure, England finally had a cricket team
capable of winning back the Ashes.
I'm at Lords with cricket writer Simon Briggs and Ollie Hutton,
grandson of the legendary England captain Len Hutton,
to re-live the welcome luncheon laid on for the Australians.
Well, here's to the impending test series. Cheers.
Maybe we'll finally win the Ashes.
The rather pretentious menu consisted entirely of French dishes.
Cricket is the only sport that is built around food.
At Lords, the catering was famous
and county cricketers looked forward to their trip to play Middlesex
and, eventually, the chef had to be told to tone it down,
fewer school puddings, less stodge, fewer potatoes
because the Middlesex players were getting so fat.
The age of the fat cricketer, since Shane Ward, it's sort of over.
The end of Inzamam and Shane Ward, do they still have them?
It's a sport where all shapes and sizes can be effective, it's not like football,
where you've gotta be svelte and be able to run like a deer.
Did people go to watch these very boring matches in 1953?
The grounds were absolutely heaving.
It was a national sport.
Football now has taken a massive lead in terms of popularity,
but cricket really was the thing in '53.
So poulet bonne maman is what they ate, chicken with basil.
Probably basil was very scary to the Australians,
they're used to just eating basically potatoes
and beer and a bit of kangaroo, and the actual idea of herbs...
would have terrified them
and we're kind of showing off the bounty of almost end of rationing Britain.
Very hard to say what's in here.
Tinned fruit, frozen absolutely solid, wrapped in custard and ice cream.
Maybe literally a bomb. It's so tantalising - I can see a grape.
As if...as if preserved in the Neolithic pack ice.
Once upon a time, they had fruit in this land.
Yeah, I won't be finishing this.
This was served to commemorate Edmund Hillary's ascent of Everest.
When asked why they'd eaten this thing, they just said because it's there.
And these are palmiers.
They're easier to make than they look.
Take puff pastry, lots of sugar, roll it all up, slice it thinly,
lay them down on the thing, puff and up they come.
I thought for years that you had to coil it all up.
Mmm, exceptionally sweet. You have not been happy with a single course!
Right, we've had our lunch, you've got a free lunch,
much as the Australians did in 1953,
are you ready to help England regain the Ashes? I am. Let's go. Let's go.
I think that could be the Ashes.
Actually, I wouldn't really do that, would I?
Well done, well done.
That was fantastic. My patriotism already bumped up by the Coronation,
by selling great British cars and eating terrible English food, to win the Ashes,
I absolutely got the sense of that mid-decade boost that they got.
The 1950s was the decade of the dinner party.
With rationing a thing of the past, improvements in the quality
and availability of ingredients led to a new sophistication in the kitchen.
With Giles's boss coming to dinner tonight,
I'm going to try something adventurous.
Thankfully, Mary's here with an exciting new cookbook.
Elizabeth David wrote Mediterranean Cooking after her travels in the 1950s.
This is the total change of having exciting things to do.
I mean, gazpacho - absolutely wonderful.
When Elizabeth David first brought this over, everybody thought cold soup?
We'd only had hot soups.
No cooking at all for gazpacho.
Spring onions and a little bit of garlic chopped.
We hadn't been using garlic for years and here it is.
And then green peppers. Not red peppers...
Communism! I won't have anything red in the house.
Then we put some egg in here, and we've got some nice fresh thyme.
And I'll just pull the leaves over.
Elizabeth David's quite enterprising for a 1950s' cook.
Whole sheep with Turkish stuffing. Sun-dried tomatoes
for people that had never seen the sun or a tomato.
It's quite aspirational, giddy stuff.
But she was a great traveller and she lived with ordinary families
and learned the peasant cooking.
Elizabeth David was the Jamie Oliver of her time.
Really? Everybody followed her, took her books to bed.
Elizabeth David's cookery books were best sellers
and helped drag British cookery out of World War II.
Mary's suggested cassoulet for the main course.
I just hope Giles's boss likes foreign food.
With it bubbling on the hob, I nip into the garden
for the latest in table decoration from Constance Spry, florist to the Queen.
She was a properly brilliant person.
She brought out a book with a rather odd title.
I presume it was in response to people saying,
"Constance, how'd you do the flowers?"
And she's gone, Here's How To Do The Flowers.
For anyone who's ever received a bunch of flowers
with a great cabbage or a cauliflower in the middle,
that's the sort of thing that Constance Spry was into.
So she would just grab a leek, there you go, grab some broccoli.
She basically said you could be a millionaire for a few pence,
this was her thing,
that you could ransack bombed-out sites and skips and graveyards
and you could find something to make your home look pretty.
In the despair of post-war Britain, that must have been a very beautiful thing.
# When you walk in the garden In the Garden of Eden
# With a beautiful woman And you know how you care
# And a voice in the garden The garden of Eden... #
While Sue's downstairs cooking, I'm going to groom myself.
It's fairly primitive in the '50s.
No deodorant yet for men, so just talc. Late '50s they got...
Mum invented the roll-on but that was really for women.
Men didn't smell or if they did, it was good, it was a good smell.
I had a bath last month, so there's no real problems there.
And then I'm told that I put a little bit of this...eau de cologne,
which is ooh...sharp.
Why you put the two under there I don't know, I've made a kind of pate.
Gotta get my hair just right cos, as I see from those sit-coms,
if anything goes wrong, I could lose my job.
If the wife says, "That employee of yours, did you see that tufty bit?"
And they'd just drop me for someone with slicker hair.
Hello.
Tony Turnbull is my real boss at The Times,
so I'm on best behaviour for him and his wife Amanda.
Ah, so right, one Babycham.
'Babycham was launched in 1953. The alcopop of its day,
'this bubbly little number was marketed specifically at women.'
I have no idea what Babycham is to be honest, but...
A very sweet sparking perry, isn't it? Mmm.
Is it? Perry? Pear cider? I think so. Right, cocktails. A Bronx.
At this stage, are you quite impressed with what you're seeing?
I'm very impressed. Is promotion...?
I want to see what comes out of the kitchen before... It'll be my wife.
I would probably have practised...
I would probably have had seven or eight of them to relax
if this were a Terry And June episode. Exactly.
Sorry I'm late, I've been boiling a pig. Oh, ah.
Don't say crude vulgar things... What, boiling a pig?
Mr Turnbull and his lovely wife Amanda.
Try not to embarrass me. I haven't been out for six years.
Once I've got absolutely steamed on pure alcohol cocktails,
I like to play a variety of sexually inappropriate and louche party games.
Is this where I have to leave? No, you watch and you can play a part.
I've been reading 1950s' manuals on party games.
And this is my favourite and I'd like to play this if you're up for it.
Whose lap am I on?
That one.
Sounds like someone with asthma.
Come on, drink it up, drink it up. Yeah, more games.
This is called bursting balloons.
The game involves blowing a balloon until it bursts.
Oh, I looked really, really girlie when I did that, didn't I?
'Well, that seems to have loosened things up.'
'My party book also recommends rather bizarre cocktail savouries.'
Is that Weetabix? It is, with parsley butter
and a bit of fish and some aspic. Go on, tuck in.
Or liver sausage and piped butter.
Low calorie healthy option. Yes. A lot of fibre there.
Are you sure you've got this right? How are you feeling about that?
Oh, God. Really bad. Yeah, really bad, isn't it?
One of the worst things I think I've ever tasted.
Don't peak too early cos the worst thing you've ever tasted is yet to come.
'Oh, dear, Sue had better pull something decent out of the kitchen,
or my promotion's history.'
'With home dining so popular in the '50s,
hostess trolleys were all the rage, if a little temperamental.'
It builds up such a head of friction on this carpet.
Right, I'm just parking the mother ship.
This is gazpacho.
Not very much of a soupy texture,
but there's a bit of olive oil in there, which we got from Boots.
Boots? Yes, they only sell it in Boots. Is it a medicinal...?
Moisturises the skin and scalp,
but it also makes a fantastic dressing I've discovered.
I thought it was for clearing out your ears. Well, I did that before.
And re-used it? Waste not, want not.
Terrible faux pas I'm using my...
No, you were right, I'm using my fork cos I'm drunk full of Bronxes.
Sort of...
Well, I think the silence covers all the bases, really.
Can I to propose a toast to my boss?
Hurrah for him and long may he be the most powerful man in motoring.
You're too kind, you're too kind. I do admire your flower arrangement.
Thank you, what I've done is I've followed all the books
and brought a little bit of the outside in.
'Just about got away with that.
But Sue's cassoulet had better be spot on, or I'm for the high jump.'
Right... Um... Sorry, it's a little bit...
It does look... So what are these beans? ...pretty contemporary. Haricot.
Mmm, a lot of pork belly.
There's a real, real whiff of the hutch about it, isn't there?
Yeah. Surely the next party game is to identify the different bits.
Can anyone do that? Ooh, yes, absolutely.
I've got a little sausage. OK. Oh, no, that's duck.
Or was it horse? Hang on, to do this properly, we should be blindfolded.
So what is in here? What have we got? There is...
belly pork, there's slow roasted duck, there's Toulouse sausage.
There's pig's trotter. This is very good actually.
This looks very 1950s to me. Yes, it does.
Your flower arrangements are looking more enticing now, actually.
Yes, could you pass me a stick? Little stick of celery?
Courgette? You can have the weed.
Oh, I'd be worried about your promotion now.
I've gotta eat it if the boss hands it to me.
'After coffee and cheese, our guests are ready to hit the road.
'I think that went rather well.'
She loves an eggnog, my wife.
I've decided to take Elizabeth David to bed with me this evening.
It is like gastronomic pornography,
particularly if you consider the time in which it's being read.
It's an arid food landscape and she comes along
and shines light on the cheerlessness of the British plate.
You know, you've gone from horse meat and whale meat
suddenly to aubergine and saffron and pasta.
The '50s were overshadowed by the threat of nuclear war.
After Britain joined the hydrogen bomb club in 1957,
CND was formed and organised a large demonstration in Trafalgar Square.
Sue's gone along to do her bit for world peace.
War!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing. What?
Say it again? Well, I will! War!
The demonstration was followed by a 50-mile march to the nuclear weapons
research centre at Aldermaston, attracting 8,000 foot-sore protestors.
How much further is it?
Where's Aldermaston? What?
Berkshire?! I've gotta walk to Berkshire? Are you mad?
Berkshire, Berkshire?! What, outside London?
But I thought we were just going down the...
Ban the bomb, ban the bomb.
Unfit women in the twilight of their 30s against the bomb.
'Having worked up an appetite, I stopped for some '50s-style sandwiches.'
Well, I've got a dazzling array of sandwiches.
We've got banana and chutney - it's an evergreen.
What's not to love about a big stinking carbohydrate-y slop?
Then I've got not just cucumber but cucumber and parsley. Nice.
And then I've got yeasty carrots
which have leaked like a dodgy reactor over the spongey bread.
There's something about the combination of yeast
and banana in the wrapper as well, which...
really has all the allure of an excitable kindergarten toilet.
Do you know what? I think I'll pass.
Taxi!
What do we want? Fish fingers.
When do we want them?
Four minutes.
'Having been out all day, I want something quick and easy to cook.'
You're going straight for the freezer? Oh, look! Fish fingers!
'Fridge freezers and frozen foods
were major players in the '50s social revolution,
helping bring to an end the daily shop, and seasonal fruit and veg.'
Look, who's been cooking for the best part of 500 years
and who's not been in the kitchen?
But now they've invented convenience food, which conveniently I could do.
'Fish fingers first went on sale in 1955,
though they were almost called frozen cod pieces.'
This is how we do it in CND.
Ironically, that's the only nuclear proof thing that we own.
Oh, yeah(!) Well done you - burning fingers(!)
That's how they're meant to be. Carbonised fish fingers?
Fresh as the moment when the pod went pop, I'd say. Look.
Do you think they're edible yet?
I don't think they were edible from the moment you put them in the grill pan.
Oh, oh. Hot.
You know all this convenience food we've got?
Well, unfortunately, we haven't got any convenience cutlery
or a convenience chair,
so can you kneel down and eat it? OK. Oh, but you're eating it!
Mmm. I hope the Russians don't invade
and bring an end to our sophisticated civilisation.
If they do, they're just gonna see my massive petticoated ass.
Let me have some.
What's for pudding? Right, my favourite, very convenient.
Brick and berries. There you go, there's your brick.
Aren't you meant to defrost those?
You won't be able to...
It would have been more convenient, but I like to see them as mini lollies.
Quite cold.
It is quite cold. Quite sour as well.
Kills the filling with...
How dare you.
'In 1953, the publication of a second Kinsey report
on female sexuality caused a sensation.
Its explicit content was matched, graphically at least,
by the launch in the same year of Playboy magazine.'
Well, goodnight, then. Goodnight.
# One, two, three o'clock Four o'clock rock
# Five, six, seven o'clock Eight o'clock rock
# Nine, ten, eleven o'clock Twelve o'clock rock... #
The late '50s saw the emergence of the teenager.
Tired of stuffy old traditional Britain, young people wanted
something different and children's hour gave way to rock'n'roll.
Until now cool teens had looked to Europe for style.
The first Gaggia machine hit London in 1952
and 500 coffee bars had sprung up by the end of the decade.
Hip young kids drank espresso.
There you are. Grazie. Prego.
And chomped through endless slices of Italian rarebit...
Pizza. Thank you. Grazie.
...now more commonly known as pizza.
Now, that is groovy. Look at that.
Although they made up just 10% of the population, teenagers were responsible
for a quarter of all sales of clothes, cigarettes, records and cosmetics.
The greatest influence on the young people of Britain
came from America and glamorous Hollywood movies.
For years, the poverty stricken British had been bailed out by US money.
Now cool kids couldn't get enough of American culture - fashions, hair styles,
rock'n'roll, even ten pin bowling reached these shores by the end of the decade.
But as Bruce Welch of the Shadows remembers, the big hit was American food.
This must take you back, this surely screams the 1950s.
This is the 1950s in the Hollywood movies.
Not in Newcastle. Is that why you came down to London?
Yeah. And it took me about ten years before I could afford one.
You had to become a pop star first!
It did, yeah. We started in October '58 and Cliff was enormous.
Well, that's what I've heard.
So we were touring all the time and, during '59,
we decided it would be a cool idea to have a flat in the West End.
Where? In Marylebone High Street.
Cool. Cool. Oh, very cool.
Four bedrooms, three bathrooms, £4 a week each.
And over the road,
there was a new Wimpy bar.
Now, I can't tell you how exciting a Wimpy bar was in 1959.
Hamburger, hot dogs? Hamburger, hot dogs...
And did you go everywhere on your own big red London bus? No.
Once we made a little bit of money, we needed wheels.
Hank had a Vespa. Yes!
And I had a Lambretta 250.
That's cool. Super cool, scooter.
What colour? Blue and white.
And I had a white crash helmet, looked like a right dick.
And we would drive into Soho from our luxury apartment in Marylebone,
down Berwick Street and all the other coffee bars and stuff
and see our old mates. It was great fun.
# Gee whizz, it's you... #
The American influence on British music was huge.
Cliff Richard and the Shadows were massive
and their dancing was copied by teenagers everywhere.
Right, and...
one, two, three, four. You've got it, he's got it.
One, two, three, four, see? Oh, yes. You've got it.
What happens now? Nothing. You go into a trance.
After a week, we get paid. So this is dancing? That's it.
This is what they call dancing, yeah.
All this time I've not wanted to do it because it looks so difficult.
Look, he's away.
Jazz hands. See he's got it, he's just got it now, he's away.
It's time for a holiday and who needs abroad?
By the end of the decade, 1 in 3 households owned a car
and with the opening of Britain's first motorways
people were liberated to travel the length and breadth of the country.
There's no speed limit yet
and my Morris Minor can do 0 to 50 in a staggering 30 seconds.
Halfway there, we stop for a bite to eat.
Motoring picnics were all the rage with new car owners.
# It's just tea for two And two for tea... #
There's no reason why one shouldn't be civilised,
despite the fact we're on a lay-by.
Do you want tea?
Oh, no, I think we should start with a cocktail, don't you? Marvellous.
Ooh, that's marvellous, what's that?
Gin, vermouth and Camp Coffee. It's good, isn't it?
It's lucky there's no rules against drinking and driving in... No.
'The breathalyser was not introduced until 1967.'
More? Oh, good on you! Cheers.
We've got a couple of chocolate bars.
The Picnic was introduced in the same year as the motorway
and very nearly called the Cadbury's Motorway.
Mmm, that is exquisite.
'Accidents and the law aside, as far as I'm concerned,
there's only one real drawback to drinking and driving.
When the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan,
said most of us had never had it so good, he wasn't lying.
We had near full employment, wages had doubled in ten years,
and every worker qualified for a statutory two week holiday.
As a result, Britain saw a boom in holiday camps
like Mill Rythe on Hayling Island.'
I'm enjoying my holiday so far.
Ah!
Huh. You booked the room then?
Yes, I asked for the matchbox suite and we got it.
Having settled into our chalet,
we take full advantage of all the activities on offer.
After all the hardships of the early '50s, it's great to let our hair down.
That's really good.
For our last meal of the week, we join the masses in the dining room
and find ourselves alongside social historian Dominic Sandbrook
and Shirley Lewis and Sylvia Endacot
who, between them, worked in Butlins holiday camps for 47 years.
We are following an original 1959 holiday camp menu
starting with cream of mushroom soup.
So you both went to holiday camps? We worked. Yeah.
Worked in them? But not as long ago as the '50s though presumably?
From '58. So what did you do in '58?
I was a little nursery nurse. Were you?
And we had a dining room and we used to have to cook and feed 200 under twos.
God. All in high chairs in long rows, 80 to 100 high chairs. How awful!
Three cooked meals a day. That's hard work, prepping all that?
On two sittings... What were the parents doing while you did that?
They were having to go into the dining room and have their own meal.
They couldn't take the kids in with them? No. Under twos weren't allowed in there.
Cos they might turn their nose up at the cuisine the adults were having?
What did the grown-up campers eat?
Monday night it could be chicken,
Tuesday night it'd be roast pork or lamb or whatever,
but it was on a seven day cycle.
The centres would be open for 10 weeks, 20 weeks or 40 weeks.
If you come back later in the season, it's still the same meal.
It's a formula - a thick soup, then a hearty meat dish
with some veg on the side and a big English pudding.
But that's what you get in any restaurant in the '50s, any restaurant or hotel.
Three cooked meals a day.
So look at the lunches, the lunches are massive.
So Saturday is relatively light, veal ham and egg pie...
That's intake day, people were arriving on a Saturday.
On Sunday, you get a roast topside of beef.
On Monday, grilled pork chop. On Tuesday, roast topside of beef again.
And then Saturday, "Your booking ends after breakfast Exclamation mark.
Sorry. Exclamation mark."
Get out, go away! "But we do hope to see you again soon!" Raus!
Yes, raus. There is an element of the... Camp.
After the war, a lot of the senior officers who were running
these military establishments then went on to run the holiday camps.
So, basically, it's jolly barracks.
They've transformed the barracks into a centre of enforced fun,
which is my favourite kind of fun, actually.
It's all part of that kind of collective entertainment thing.
People used to go with everybody on their street.
It's all about doing things in a group.
You can't go to a holiday camp and be an individual
and be a maverick and not do any of the activities.
You've got to join in, you've got to have
a sense of fun and laugh at the ugliest baby competition or...
That was me, a slightly painful moment, this.
And remember while you're eating this, you've never had it so good.
It's lovely.
Great steak. The food on the holiday centres wasn't bad.
The presentation sometimes wasn't good.
But I've got to say the food reminds me of boarding school.
Yeah, it is school food.
And afterwards, I'm going to be forced to do exercise against my will.
The '50s is the first time there's a mass leisure industry
for the majority of working class people.
They can go away, they can have the pleasure
of being cooked for and cleaned for. I have that every day.
Well, I think it's a brilliant thing, I do. For women, it is a huge thing.
A woman's work is never done at home.
But I would feel too much empathy with people serving me
because they have to go home and do their own housework.
But then they go on holiday.
Full up after all this '50s feasting, we make our excuses and leave.
After a long and eventful week, it's time to turn in.
The '50s is a transitory time between '40s war, depression, rationing, hardship,
and the '60s, which is all about the self and freedom of expression and madness.
And in that decade, you have
that incredible sea change from one to the other.
And there's ten years of seismic social shifts and dreadful food.
I ate quite well.
Yes, but men always eat well through any period of history.
I've drunk champagne with almost every meal.
We had champagne at the Coronation, seconds later it was Bond time.
I had champagne then, I had lots of lobster,
I had champagne at the holiday camp.
I had champagne when I played cricket. Mmm.
I won the Ashes, I won the Cold War,
I defeated Drax and Blofeld, I drank an awful lot of Bollinger.
And I cleaned a toilet.
Goodnight, campers.
The '50s over, it's back to Dr Roger for our medical evaluation.
How are you? Very well, thanks.
We bet, Sue, that you'd lose a couple of pounds,
and we bet that you would put on a couple of pounds.
OK, so the moment of truth.
And you have lost a couple of pounds.
Brilliant. I'm going to stay in the 1950s forever.
I'll be miserable, but I'll be quite thin.
The moment of truth, and he's put on 3lb.
Result. What do you know?
What a surprise. Red meat, booze, cakes.
Next week, Sue and I will be heading back to the French revolution
where we'll be gorging ourselves on the banquets
of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette,
only to discover that the revolution changed French food forever.
I think we'll do Millennium...
I actually had a slight joke then, but, yeah.
See, I don't make the mistake of talking...
Ah, my spirit guide...
You all right?
I'm all right. That's usually me that does that. Oh.