Throughout my teenage years, our lounge room sang “Come and get it, come and get it” and all in earshot would carol back, “with Peter. Russell. Clarke!”

The chef, restaurateur, cookbook author and illustrator, artist, cartoonist, TV presenter and media personality Peter Russell-Clarke has died after a stroke, aged 89. As Australia’s first television chef, he changed the way we thought about how to prepare food from local ingredients, championing food that was both healthy and tasty.

Having always been fascinated by food, how it is produced and prepared, Russell-Clarke’s five minute program Come and Get It, which ran for 900 episodes over nine years from 1983 to 1992, had everything I was passionate about. He provided a lens into our food as it journeyed from farm to fork, a focus on healthy food – and, of course, a charismatic Aussie bloke at the helm.

New flavours and new health messaging

Television chefs and cooking show celebrities were not a thing in the 1980s.

Reality TV had followed the adventures of naturalist  Harry Butler and travel documentarians the 

© Pearls and Irritations