Philip Harben
Philip Hubert Kendal Jerrold Harben (17 October 1906 – 27 April 1970) was an English cook, recognised as the first TV celebrity chef. Biography. Harben was born in Fulham, London, and was educated at Highgate School. His mother, Mary Jerrold, was an actress known for her performance as the murderous Martha Brewster in the first stage production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" as well as many screen roles. His father, Hubert Harben, was a stage actor. His sister, Joan Harben, played Miss Mona Lott in the BBC Radio series "It's That Man Again" (ITMA). He learned to cook  at the side of his parents, and "could scramble eggs and make mayonnaise long before I could read Thucydides or solve a quadratic equation". His first occupation was as a commercial photographer. He was then engaged to run the kitchen of the Isobar restaurant in the Isokon building in Hampstead, London from 1937 to 1940, when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force, but an eye injury put paid to his flying career and he was assigned to the Army Catering Corps. He compered a BBC wireless cookery programme from 1942, then a BBC TV programme, "Cookery", from 1946 to  1951, followed by "Cookery Lesson" (with co-presenter Marguerite Patten) and "What's Cooking" from 1956. His emphasis was always on method and principles rather than recipes, but he could be remarkably dogmatic – "The Pot to the Kettle not the Kettle to the Pot!". Philip Harben can be credited with the first TV "moment" when on live television he cracked an egg that was so bad he had to abandon the recipe while he and the studio crew broke into helpless laughter. He had a regular column in the British "Woman's Own" magazine in the 1950s. In 1958 he  helped found the Harbenware kitchen utensils company which, in 2020, is still operating under the same ownership. He died on 27 April 1970, aged 63, and was buried on the west side of London's Highgate Cemetery.