Julian Howard Crowfoot (born 5 May 1943 in Buxton, Derbyshire) is a chef, restaurateur and hotelier who became infamous for a certain sexual penchant which allegedly caused a slump in Cadbury’s Wispa profits.
Career
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Public school educated, Crowfoot achieved no formal qualifications and entered the catering trade at the age of 16, working his way up from washer-upper to owner of a string of restaurants. He won renown as a dessert chef, and also popularised wine tasting courses at his various establishments.
Crowfoot became a household name via his 1985 primetime BBC2 show Choc-wise with Julian Crowfoot, exploring the wonders of chocolate and its many and varied uses in cookery. An eponymous book was published to accompany the series.
A large proportion of his recipes contained alcohol. His speciality, rum and Wispa soufflé, became one of the BBC’s most requested recipes of the 1980s.
However, an infamous appearance on a 1989 edition of the chat show Wogan, during which a clearly inebriated Crowfoot repeatedly swore, despite the programme’s pre-watershed slot, and insulted his fellow guest Su Pollard, saw the demise of his terrestrial television career.
In the 1990s he acquired a short-lived presenting stint on the obscure cable channel Menu TV.
After an ineffective attempt at reviving his obsolete TV career with an appearance on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me out of Here! in 2002, Crowfoot opted to bow out of the public eye altogether and throw himself into the hotel business.
He returned to his Peak District roots to purchase the historic Rosterbury Manor Hotel at Tunclough, where he runs regular wine tasting workshops and residential cookery courses.
Personal life
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Crowfoot’s first marriage, to teenage sweetheart Pat, the mother of his two children, collapsed at the height of his fame following his high-profile affair with the children’s TV presenter Cassie Pincher, who shortly thereafter became his second wife.
However, her affairs with two members of the Chippendales male strip troupe were exposed in the media.
In a lurid kiss-and-tell to the Sun following their acrimonious divorce, Pincher claimed her infidelity resulted from her repulsion at Crowfoot’s preference for lolling around the house all day in baggy green Y-fronts, and his fetish for smearing his 16-stone body in melted Wispa and inviting her to lick it off. Sales of the chocolate bar briefly dipped.
Crowfoot subsequently suffered a well-documented nervous breakdown and battles with alcoholism and obesity. He was banned from driving for 18 months after pleading guilty to driving his Jaguar XJ6 at more than twice the legal alcohol limit.
Following his infamous Wogan interview, he admitted himself to the Priory rehabilitation clinic.
It was there he met his third wife Wendy, a fellow recovering alcoholic, whom he married following a whirlwind romance. That union too ended in a swift divorce, however, when it was discovered that Wendy was allergic to chocolate and thus unable to enjoy her husband’s recipes or indulge his aforementioned Wispa fetish.
References
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1. ^ “‘How Crowfoot’s careless Wispa made our marriage a total choc-up,’ by TV babe Cassie”
2. ^ “‘Cooking sherry doesn’t count,’ pleads troubled chef banned for drink-driving”
External links
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- Rosterbury Manor official website
- Whatever Happened To…?
