Hugh Christopher Edmund Fearnley-Whittingstall (born 14 January 1965) is an English celebrity chef, television personality, journalist, food writer, and campaigner on food and environmental issues.[1][2][failed verification]
Fearnley-Whittingstall hosted the River Cottage series on the UK television channel Channel 4, in which audiences observe his efforts to become a self-reliant, downshifted farmer in rural England; Fearnley-Whittingstall feeds himself, his family and friends with locally produced and sourced fruits, vegetables, fish, eggs, and meat. He has also become a campaigner on issues related to food production and the environment, such as fisheries management and animal welfare.
Fearnley-Whittingstall established River Cottage HQ in Dorset in 2004, and the operation is now based at Park Farm near Axminster in Devon. An organic smallholding, HQ is also the hub for a broad range of courses and events, and home to the River Cottage Cookery School. Fearnley-Whittingstall continues to teach and host events there on a regular basis.[citation needed]
After a temporary relocation to Africa, where Fearnley-Whittingstall was considering a career in wildlife conservation, he returned to England and became a sous chef at the River Café in London. He has since said that "being messy" and "lacking discipline", though, made him unsuitable for working in the River Café kitchen, but that he regards his time there as a period that helped shape his current career.[7]
Following his time at the River Café, Fearnley-Whittingstall commenced freelance journalism and was published in Punch, the Evening Standard, and The Sunday Times.[8]
Television
Early shows
Fearnley-Whittingstall's initial television exposure was on A Cook on the Wild Side (1995), an exploration of earthy cuisine.[8] His next series was TV Dinners (1996), in one episode of which he notoriously flambéed and puréed a human placenta to then serve as pâté.[8][9] In 2002, he presented the six-episode series Treats from the Edwardian Country House.[10]
In 2004, Beyond River Cottage followed Fearnley-Whittingstall's progress as he set up a new business, River Cottage H.Q., on a 44-acre (18ha) property close to Dottery (near Bridport), Dorset, with his family.[11] Underpinning his new enterprise is the selling of the produce cultivated on his property at the local marketplace, and audiences bear witness to the host's experiences as a produce seller, while also intermittently receiving the recipe lessons traditionally seen on food shows. The series concludes with a Christmas special in which a feast is brought together, consisting of a 10-bird roast using Fearnley-Whittingstall's own geese and ducks.[12]
In 2005, a series called The View from River Cottage was produced using extracts from the four previous series, accompanied by newly recorded narration.[citation needed] This was followed by River Cottage Road Trip special that consisted of two newly produced one-hour instalments.[13] During 2006, Fearnley-Whittingstall moved River Cottage HQ from the original barn near Bridport to its new premises, Park Farm, a 66-acre (27ha) farm near Uplyme on the West Dorset/East Devon border.[14] A new series called The River Cottage Treatment was filmed there and was broadcast on Channel 4 in November 2006.[15] This premise of this series involved guests described as "urban-dwellers, fast-food lovers, and convenient food-mongers" to spend a week with the host on the new property, the guests being required to undertake farm duties and to eat according to the River Cottage philosophy.[16]
In 2007, Fearnley-Whittingstall presented, River Cottage: Gone Fishing, a short series that is the concept's 10th overall, in which he examines some of the lesser-known fish to be caught around the British Isles.[17] From 2008, he filmed magazine-style food programmes, produced at River Cottage HQ, based on the seasonal themes. River Cottage Spring ran from 28 May 2008 to 25 June 2008 on Channel 4, and in one of the episodes, Fearnley-Whittingstall demonstrated his "holistic" approach to cooking by teaching a vegetarian how to slaughter, prepare, and cook lamb.[citation needed]
In late 2008, River Cottage Autumn was broadcast from 16 October to 6 November 2008. In one of the autumnal episodes, Fearnley-Whittingstall, together with his friend, John, embarks on a mission to catch crustaceans at a nearby beach with the use of pots. The pair seek to catch prawns, crabs and lobsters, in addition to the blue velvet swimming crab that is commonly found at the particular coastal location where they are based.[citation needed] On 19 October 2009, a new series of four episodes aired on Channel 4: River Cottage – Winter's on the Way. In one of the episodes from the winter series, Fearnley-Whittingstall captures, prepares, and cooks rabbits that he finds on his property and introduces viewers to salsify; according to the host, salsify was popular during the Victorian era.[citation needed]
New River Cottage
In September 2010, a new series of River Cottage episodes, entitled River Cottage Every Day, commenced. The series encouraged viewers to cook from scratch more frequently and was accompanied by a book of the same name.[citation needed] In autumn 2011, a new series, River Cottage Veg, was launched and is based on Fearnley-Whittingstall's developed awareness regarding the problematic way in which meat is produced and consumed in the modern era. During the series, the food activist addresses the challenge that he defines in the series' first episode: "A whole summer without flesh". Fearnley-Whittingstall explains further: "In the weeks ahead, I'll be expanding my vegetable horizons, seeking out new flavours and textures, and cooking up a whole raft of vegetable dishes with the same excitement and gusto that I've always bestowed on meat and fish."[18] A new series of River Cottage, entitled Hugh's Three Good Things, aired on Channel 4 in December 2012.
Accompanied by a cookbook, the series was based on the notion that a great meal can be prepared from gathering three good ingredients; in the first episode, Fearnley-Whittingstall uses beetroot, egg, and anchovies to make an open sandwich.[19] He also competed against guest chefs in each episode and viewers were invited to challenge the television host with a superior recipe.[20] In 2012, he presented River Cottage: Three Go Mad a three-episode series inviting various British TV personalities to River Cottage and teaching them how to cook.[21]
New series
In August 2015, alongside Lindsey Chapman, he hosted a series of five daily programmes on BBC One, linked to three evening programmes Big Blue Live. The series concentrated on marine wildlife around the UK coast.[22] In November 2015, Fearnley-Whittingstall presented Hugh's War on Waste on BBC One, campaigning against waste by food producers, retailers, and consumers.[23]
In 2018, he filmed Britain's Fat Fight with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, a documentary for BBC One, where he explored the obesity crisis in Britain, asking food producers, restaurants, and the government to confront the crisis.[24] Fearnley-Whittingstall's letter to the government was signed by 97,869 people; the government responded, and on 25 June, launched a new childhood obesity strategy. Also in the programme, Fearnley-Whittingstall, in partnership with Newcastle City Council, launched Newcastle Can (newcastlecan.com), an initiative and experiment aimed to encourage the citizens of Newcastle to work together to get healthier and fitter.[25]
On 20 June 2022, a new four-part series called River Cottage Reunited premiered on More4.[26]
Guest appearances
Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall appeared on Celebrity Countdown in 1998; he was named by former host Richard Whiteley as the de facto champion with the highest score of the series.[citation needed] In 1997, he appeared on Channel 4's Time Team live dig in Turkdean. A year later, he again joined the Time Team live dig, this time at Bawsey.
He then appeared on the first series of Channel 4's The F Word in 2005, advising Gordon Ramsay on the rearing of turkeys at Ramsay's London home; the turkeys are eaten in the last episode of the series. Further appearances on The F-Word in 2006 and 2007 involved Fearnley-Whittingstall advising Ramsay on the rearing of pigs and lambs; again, the consumption of the livestock occurs in the last episodes of the series.
At the start of 2008, Fearnley-Whittingstall – along with fellow celebrity chefs Jamie Oliver and Ramsay – was featured in Channel 4's Big Food Fight season; his contribution to the season was Hugh's Chicken Run, which was shown over three consecutive nights. He created three chicken farms in Axminster (one intensive, one commercial free-range, and the third a community farm project staffed by volunteers), culminating in a "Chicken Out!" campaign to encourage the eating of free-range chicken. In 2008, based on the success of the project, further discussion occurred among Channel 4 executives regarding the filming of another season.[27]
In 2009, Fearnley-Whittingstall became a permanent team captain, opposing a different guest captain each week, on a food-based panel game, The Big Food Fight, which began on Channel 4 on 8 September; this is not to be confused with the earlier project of the same name. On 12 June, he was a guest on BBC One's Have I Got News For You[28] and he recorded a guest spot on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that was broadcast on 26 July and again on 31 July 2009.[29]
Fearnley-Whittingstall appeared on BBC Two's satirical music panel show, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, on an episode recorded in 2008; airing was delayed until 19 January 2011, due to the scandals[which?] surrounding Russell Brand that led to his resignation from the BBC.[citation needed]
Writing
Fearnley-Whittingstall published Cuisine Bon Marché in 1994. He wrote the cookbooks, The River Cottage Year, The River Cottage Fish Book (with Nick Fisher), The River Cottage Cookbook (winner of the Andre Simon Food Book of the Year award, the Guild of Food Writers’ Michael Smith Award, and the Glenfiddich Trophy and Food Book of the Year), and The River Cottage Meat Book (the last two books with photographs by Simon Wheeler).[30][31] His most recent books have been published by Bloomsbury, including River Cottage Every Day and River Cottage Veg Every Day!.[32]
He has written articles for The Guardian and The Observer since 2001. A collection of his short articles was published in October 2006 under the title Hugh Fearlessly Eats It All: Dispatches from the Gastronomic Frontline. He edited The Big Bento Box of Unuseless Japanese Inventions, written by Kenji Kawakami.
Activism
In January 2008, Fearnley-Whittingstall called on hospitality and food-service operators to use less intensively farmed chicken:[33]
It's one thing to challenge individual consumers to give up intensively reared chicken, but it's also an issue where anyone in the business of selling chicken has to take a stand... in some cases I know chefs, not naming names, at the very high-end sector who are not using free-range birds. Some of them are on the road to Michelin stars.[33]
In 2012, Fearnley-Whittingstall filmed a Channel 4 series, Hugh's Fish Fight.[34] The series was broadcast in three parts on Channel 4.[35] The campaign's website said it had received over 700,000 signatures by 2012.[36]
In November 2015, he filmed Hugh's War on Waste.[37] with the BBC and began a campaign to reduce consumer waste in the UK. The two programmes focused on food and clothing waste, both by supermarkets and by shoppers in their own homes.
In 2018, he filmed Britain's Fat Fight with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, where he explored the obesity crisis in Britain, asking food producers, restaurants and the government to confront the crisis.[24]
Fearnley-Whittingstall helped develop Stinger,[40] a nettle-flavoured ale, with the Hall & Woodhouse brewery.
Another Fearnley-Whittingstall project was the conversion of an old inn in Axminster to an organic produce shop and canteen,[41] which opened in September 2007.
In 2009, he became a patron of ChildHope UK, an international child-protection charity working in Africa, Asia, and South America.[42]
In 2009, The River Cottage Summer's Here programme promoted the Landshare project that seeks to bring together people who wish to grow fruit and vegetables, but have no land, with landowners willing to donate spare land for cultivation. The online project was commissioned by Channel 4.[43]
Fearnley-Whittingstall married Marie Derome in 2001; the couple live in East Devon with their four children.[18][45] Fearnley-Whittingstall also runs the River Cottage Canteen and Deli in the centre of Axminster and, in 2011, launched a second River Cottage Canteen and Deli in Plymouth (since closed) and a third in Winchester (which closed in 2020).[46][47] He supports the Green Party of England and Wales.[48]
In 2012, his barn at River Cottage was damaged by fire.[49]
Fearnley-Whittingstall is not a vegan in his personal life. He has commented: "I have not become vegan, as some are beginning to think. I still eat meat, fish and dairy products, in moderation".[50]
Published works
Fearnley-Whittingstall has published these books:
TV Dinners: In Search of Exciting Home Cooking (1996)
A Cook on the Wild Side (A Channel Four book) (1997)
The Best of TV Dinners (1999)
The River Cottage Cookbook (2001)
The River Cottage Year (2003)
The River Cottage Meat Book (2004)
Preserved with Nick Sandler and Johnny Acton (2004)
The Real Good Life: A Practical Guide to a Healthy, Organic Lifestyle with the Soil Association (2005)
Soup Kitchen, with Thomasina Miers and Annabel Buckingham (2005)
The River Cottage Family Cookbook with Fizz Carr (2005)
Hugh Fearlessly Eats it All: Dispatches from the Gastronomic Front line (2006)
Little Book of Soup with Thomasina Miers, Annabel Buckingham (2006)
The Taste of Britain, with Laura Mason, and Catherine Brown (2006)
The River Cottage Diary 2008 (2007)
The River Cottage Fish Book with Nick Fisher (2007)
River Cottage Diary 2010 (2009)
River Cottage Every Day (2009)
The River Cottage Bread Handbook (US Version) with Daniel Stevens (2010)
The River Cottage Preserves Handbook with Pam Corbin (2010)
River Cottage Veg Every Day! (2011)
Three Good Things on a Plate (2012)
River Cottage Fruit Every Day! (2013)
River Cottage Light & Easy: Healthy Recipes for Every Day (2014)
River Cottage Love Your Leftovers: Recipes for the Resourceful Cook (2015)
River Cottage Much More Veg (2017)
War on Plastic with Hugh and Anita (2019)
Eat Better Forever: 7 Ways to Transform Your Diet (2020)
River Cottage Good Comfort: Best-Loved Favourites Made Better for You (2022)
How to Eat 30 Plants a Week (2024)
Related Research Articles
Axminster is a market town and civil parish on the eastern border of the county of Devon in England. It is 28 miles (45 km) from the county town of Exeter. The town is built on a hill overlooking the River Axe which heads towards the English Channel at Axmouth, and is in the East Devon local government district. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 5,626, increasing to 5,761 at the 2011 census. The town contains two electoral wards whose combined population is 7,110. The market is still held every Thursday.
River Cottage is a brand used for a number of ventures by television chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. These include a long-running Channel 4 television series, cookery courses, events, restaurants and products such as beer and organic yogurts.
Escape to River Cottage is the first River Cottage television series in which celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall takes over a Dorset cottage and sets out to achieve a form of rural self-sufficiency.
River Cottage Forever is the third in the "River Cottage" Channel 4 series franchise, following on from Escape to River Cottage and Return to River Cottage in which chef and journalist Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall de-camped from the rat-race of city living to move to the rolling hills of the Dorset countryside, which provided the perfect backdrop for his experiment to live off the fat of the land in as self-sufficient a style as possible, tucked away at the bottom of one of the Dorset valleys is the ideal home: River Cottage.
Return to River Cottage is the second series of the Channel 4 programme that follows Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall during his second year of living in the country at River Cottage, Dorset after leaving the city behind. The preceding series was Escape to River Cottage.
Heston Marc Blumenthal is an English celebrity chef, TV personality and food writer. Blumenthal is regarded as a pioneer of multi-sensory cooking, food pairing and flavour encapsulation. He came to public attention with unusual recipes, such as bacon-and-egg ice cream and snail porridge. His recipes for triple-cooked chips and soft-centred Scotch eggs have been widely imitated. He has advocated a scientific approach to cooking, for which he has been awarded honorary degrees from the universities of Reading, Bristol and London and made an honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The F Word is a British cookery programme featuring chef Gordon Ramsay. The programme covers a wide range of topics, from recipes to food preparation and celebrity food fads. The programme was made by Optomen Television and aired weekly on Channel 4. The theme tune for the series is "The F-Word" from the Babybird album Bugged.
John Douglas Torode is an Australian-British celebrity chef and TV presenter. He moved to the UK in the 1990s and began working at Conran Group's restaurants. After first appearing on television on ITV's This Morning, he started presenting a revamped MasterChef on BBC One in 2005. He is a restaurateur; former owner of the Luxe and a second restaurant, Smiths of Smithfield. He has also written a number of cookbooks, including writing some with fellow MasterChef presenter and judge, Gregg Wallace.
The River Café is a restaurant in the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, London, specialising in Italian cuisine. It was owned and run by chefs Ruth Rogers and Rose Gray until Gray's death in 2010; since then, Rogers has been the sole owner and has run the restaurant.
Hugh's Chicken Run is a programme as part of Channel 4's 'Food Fight' series in which celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall launched the campaign to encourage more consumers to demand free range chicken. Fearnley-Whittingstall was joined on the campaign by fellow celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, who chose to highlight the issues in the more graphic Jamie's Fowl Dinners.
Beyond River Cottage is the fourth series of the Channel 4 programme that follows Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as he pursues the ideal of rural self-sufficiency as a farm-owner in Dorset.
Gordon Ramsay: Cookalong Live is a British cooking show starring Gordon Ramsay. Originally conceived as a one-off episode, Channel 4 later commissioned a full series for late 2008. A Christmas special aired on 25 December 2011 and a second on 25 December 2012.
River Cottage Spring is a Channel 4 programme that follows Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at his Dorset home and teaching school River Cottage throughout the spring of 2008, harvesting crops, cooking organic food, teaching families to be smallholders and challenging Tesco against the source its chicken products.
Emma Farrell is a British freediving instructor, and the author of the book One breath: A Reflection on Freediving. She started freediving in 2001 and has been teaching since 2002. She was head of instruction at the UK's DeeperBlue freediving club from 2004 until her resignation in 2009; she now runs her own freediving training company, GoFreediving, which teaches the SSI freediving programme. In 2007, she was stated to be one of only ten freediving instructor trainers in the world. Emma has explained that control over one's own mind and self-relaxation are key to free diving.
Fearnley-Whittingstall is a surname. Notable people with this name include:
Caldillo de perro is a fish soup of Andalusia. The name is said to come from "el Perro," the nickname of a shipboard cook in El Puerto de Santa María. The main ingredients are hake, garlic, olive oil, lemons, and Seville oranges. It is customarily served with sour orange juice. It is a common dish in the fishing districts.
River Cottage Australia is an Australian adaptation of the English franchise of the same name. The series sees former chef Paul West showcase local produce and farming while attempting to live in a self-sufficient manner. The series premiered on 27 June 2013 on The LifeStyle Channel and ran for two seasons before moving to The LifeStyle Channel's sister network LifeStyle Food in 2015 where it aired a further two seasons.
River Cottage: Gone Fishing is a Channel 4 programme that follows Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall as he explores more sustainable fishing methods in the Channel Islands, Scotland and back in the West Country. Fearnley-Whittingstall's aim was to get people to eat greater varieties of fish and shellfish.
Paul West is an Australian chef and TV presenter most well known for River Cottage Australia.
Nick Fisher was a British television scriptwriter, journalist and angler. He won a BAFTA award in 2006 for his work on The Giblet Boys which was voted Best Drama in the BAFTA Children's Awards, and was nominated as Best Writer for the same programme.
↑ Fergus Byrne (10 March 2011). "Simon Wheeler". The Marshwood Vale Magazine. Marshwood Vale Magazine. Archived from the original on 19 February 2013. Retrieved 21 September 2012.
↑ Simon Wheeler (2012). "Simon Wheeler: About". Simon Wheeler Photography. Simon Wheeler. Archived from the original on 14 March 2012. Retrieved 21 September 2012.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
