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USED to be a avid fan of cookery shows on the telly. The wonderful Keith Floyd, the roly-poly Ainsley Harriott, puppyish Jamie, cartoon Nigella and Two (posh) Fat Ladies I watched them all. Then there was the dark period when we got ‘the satellite’ and I could late night, binge on such horrors as Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, Nadia G’s Bitchin’ Kitchen and my favourite, until someone told me it was staged, Mystery Diners, with its hidden cameras and unrepentant baddies drinking all the restaurants profits. These days I have to admit I have lost interest in Rick Stein’s gentle bonhomie and Greg and John’s lousy scripts “Cooking doesn’t get harder than this – yawn.”

However I have discovered that you and I can watch all of Anthony Bourdain’s - Parts Unknown on FreeVee. To say that this is the best food programme ever is an understatement but the shocking thing about it is that Anthony committed suicide in a Paris Hotel Room in 2018. David Klion wrote that he “made it possible to believe that social justice and earthly delights weren’t mutually exclusive, and he pursued both with the same earnest reverence.”

Anthony grew up in a well to do Jewish/ Catholic family in New Jersey. He first started working in kitchens while studying at Vassar and it was while working at the Lobster Pot in Princetown that he fell in love with cooking. He graduated from The Culinary Institute of America in ’78 and from there he went on to run various restaurant kitchens in New York City. Eventually in 1998, Bourdain became executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles but then in 2000 his book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly became a New York Times bestseller and led to his first series on TV. A lifelong fan of Punk Rock he claimed that anybody who put on Elton John in his kitchen would be immediately sacked!

Early days

Parts Unknown is a mighty piece of work consisting of 7 series of 8 episodes each which zigzags all over the world. I will flag up some of the highlights in case you want to dip in and out.

Series 1 In 2013 with a slight loosening of The Generals grip on the country Anthony went Myanmar and got immersed in the food, the politics and even managed to find a Burmese Punk Band. The series went on to feature Libyan rappers, mayhem in the Congo and one of my personal favourites two large Canadian restaurant owners who subject Anthony to more food and drink in one week than the rest of us will probably see in a year.

Series 2 Anthony visits Copenhagen, despite insisting he has no time for clean, well ordered countries with no social problems, and spends most of his time with the boss of Noma rated at that time the best restaurant in the world. Other highlights of Series Two include an episode about a very empty and crumbling Detroit and a very manic visit to Tokyo.

Series 3 He visits Lyon where he is excited and deferential in the company of the grand old man of French Cuisine Paul Bocuse who treats him to some of Haute Cuisine’s greatest hits including a chicken stuffed with truffles enclosed in an inflated pigs bladder. In Russia he drinks literally gallons of vodka while asking lots of unwelcome political questions. Then in Thailand he admits that he used to only see the world in Black and White until visually and taste wise this country turned everything Technicolor.

Series 4 One of the exotic highlights of Series 4 is Zanzibar but perhaps the most interesting is Massachusetts where Anthony spent his formative kitchen years. He readily admits to having the time of his life in Princetown, over indulging in sex, drugs and rock n roll. However the present day area is rife with a chronic drug problem caused by prescription of opioid pain relievers like OxyContin which is leading people with mild pain symptoms to opium dependency and heroin addiction. Series 5 The two best of this lot are Madagascar and Beirut but the one Anthony loves best is meeting his hero Iggy Pop who believe it or not lives, not in a seedy New York hotel, but in sunny Miami!

Series 6 Okinawa, Charleston – South Carolina and then Borneo and Anthony revisits the Iban tribe up the Skrang River in the jungle. It’s a good example of how far he is prepared to go in his pursuit of genuine local experiences. In this episode he gets a very painful tattoo and (look away now vegetarians) takes the lead role in butchering a live pig!

Series 7 His Chicago episode is mostly set in a venerable old brown wood bar whose Landlord has a studio downstairs where he paints his customers who include the students from 2nd city Improvisational Comedy Troupe that spawned 90% of the best American comedians. Other highlights are his discovery that Manila is the home of most of the world’s most successful cover bands and that Cologne has a sister city Dusseldorf that they are barely on speaking terms with and their rivalry even extending to the beer they drink. Quite which of his many demons – hatred of fame, drug and alcohol abuse, tempestuous love life, pessimism about world politics – led him to take his own life, he leaves the world, particularly of travel and food journalism, a much poorer place.