Hello and thank you for downloading the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service

with me for Hanna Heither. Today we're going back 40 years to the launch of a groundbreaking

Indian cookery program on the BBC. It was presented by the Indian actor,

turned food writer, Mother Jeffrey. In this series I'm going to show you how to cook all kinds

of Indian food. Some of it you may be familiar with, the kind of food you've had in Indian restaurants

and some of it you've probably never eaten is the kind of food you get in Indian homes.

Mother Jeffrey's Indian cookery was the first mainstream series about Indian food

and the first to be presented by an Indian. It was also the first to reach a mass audience.

When my program came on air, there weren't any cookery programs, not Indian cookery. It was

a immediate, immediate hit and nobody expected that. Born in Delhi, Mother Jeffrey came to London when

she was in her early 20s to study drama at the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts.

It was here that she became an accidental cook. She desperately missed home cooked food.

Well you know I came to London from India where the food at home was just glorious. It was just

delicious and tasty. There was a plow, there was a biryani, there was curry which is made with yogurt

and dumplings and chickpea flour and then I got to London which is post-war the late 50s and the

food other than fish and chips everything else was awful. The Indian food I tried to get was horrible.

So I wanted real Indian food so that's when I started writing letters to my mother at home

and my mother sent me these handwritten letters and all the recipes were like three lines even though

my mother's recipes were very short. I was able to remember the taste and experiment.

Mother acted in TV, film and radio productions in England then headed to New York. She wrote food

articles and gave classes to supplement her income. It was there that she was contacted by the BBC.

In the early 1980s the BBC had an adult education department which was guaranteed the 7pm slot

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