Derek Cooper, who has died aged 88, was for many years the presenter of BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme. His interrogations - on behalf of the listener impaled ministry spokesmen and representatives of food manufacturers, as well as publicists for the agrochemical industry, on sharp stakes of deadly understatement. His rich baritone voice and faultless enunciation were described by one enthusiastic critic as lolloping "out of the ether like a gigantic labrador hewn from honey-baked ham". The programme was an arresting, yet familiar and well-loved, accompaniment to the preparation of Sunday lunch.
Derek was born in London and spent his (Catholic) childhood in three places. There was his parents' home in New Malden, south-west London he went to Raynes Park county grammar school his father, George, working as a clerk on the railways. He also spent time on the Isle of Skye, in the Hebrides, where his mother, Jessie, grew up, and attended Portree high school during the early years of the second world war. And there were the billowing orchards of Kent, where his father's family had been brickmakers and fruit growers. His university studies were postponed by service in the Royal Navy from 1943 to 1947, but eventually he settled at Wadham College, Oxford, where at least one of his contemporaries thought him "the wittiest man in Oxford".
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