Australian celebrity chef Peter Russell-Clarke dies aged 89
Family friend Belinda Pinder confirmed his death on Sunday afternoon. Reports suggested he died after complications from a stroke.
Born in Ballarat in 1935, Russell-Clarke began his career at age 14, working a junior artist at an advertising agency, before moving into freelance cartooning and working as a food consultant for popular magazines, including New Idea and Woman's Day.
He went on to produce his own cookbooks before shooting to wider fame through his catchy "g'days" which featured in the theme song of his 1980s ABC cooking show Come and Get it.
The show ran from 1983 to 1992, with 900 episodes written and hosted by Russell-Clarke wearing his signature neckerchief.
His appearances on Come and Get It made him one of Australia's pioneering TV celebrity chefs.
"I realised that the bloke in front of the camera got more applause than the person who wrote it," he told the ABC in 2017.
"So I wrote myself into the series and I became known as a cook rather than a painter or a writer."
For more than two decades starting in the mid 70s, he was also a popular spokesperson and TV and radio presenter for the Australian Dairy Corporation, as well as for companies such as the Australian Egg Board and Kraft Cheese.
Russell-Clarke was also the chef for the Prince of Wales's Silver Jubilee dinner in 1977. He was also invited to cook for Australian prime ministers, Victorian premiers, and the Duke of Edinburgh.
He also wrote at least 35 cookbooks and was a United Nations food ambassador.
As a child, displaced from his rural Victorian home after the separation of his parents, Russell-Clarke spent time in foster homes and, briefly, and on the streets of Melbourne, a period which he told SWILL magazine in 2023 led to his appreciation of fine food and different cuisines.
But Russell-Clarke started painting long before his interest in the culinary arts grew.
He worked as a commercial artist for about 65 years, including for 10 years as the political cartoonist for The Herald newspaper in Melbourne.
In 2022, Russell-Clarke told the National Portrait Gallery about the similarities between his love for cooking and painting.
"[While painting,] you're mucking around with colour, form, texture, shape. And with cooking, you're doing the same thing," he said.
"Cooking is only supplying heat to food. The same as painting. Painting is supplying paint to a surface, whether it's a canvas or a piece of cardboard."
His artworks have been featured in exhibitions in Australia and overseas, at private venues, auctioned at the Shepparton Art Museum and collected by the National Immigration Museum.
Russell-Clarke was even commissioned to produce several pieces for the federal government.
He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Jan, their two children Peter and Wendy, and three grandchildren.
The ABC has contacted the family for comment.
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The Advertiser
3 hours ago
- The Advertiser
Pioneering TV chef Peter Russell-Clarke dies aged 89
Chef, artist, writer, illustrator and author Peter Russell-Clarke is being remembered as a pioneer of television cooking after his death at age 89. Russell-Clarke died on Friday - surrounded by his wife of 65 years, Jan, and his children Peter and Wendy and their families - from complications following a stroke. Best known for his 1980s cooking show Come and Get It, Russell-Clarke was born in Ballarat in 1935. The son of an Anglican minister father and dressmaker mother, he was renowned for his Bohemian style of dress - complete with signature neckerchief and artist's smock. Russell-Clarke worked as a creative director in an advertising agency in the 1970s and was a political cartoonist for The Melbourne Herald. He appeared alongside journalist Derryn Hinch in the 1983 film At Last … Bullamakanka: the Motion Picture and ran an unnamed pop-up restaurant in Carlton decades before they became a thing. The author of almost 40 recipe books, Russell-Clarke was also a food ambassador for the United Nations and cooked for dignitaries including the Duke of Edinburgh and the then-Charles, Prince of Wales. His relaxed and informative five-minute cookery show on the ABC - peppered with "g'day", "ripper" and "you beaut" - notched up 900 episodes and spawned his distinctive catch-cry "come and get it". He was also a familiar face on commercial television thanks to his "where's the cheese?" advertisements for the Australian Dairy Corporation. Chef, artist, writer, illustrator and author Peter Russell-Clarke is being remembered as a pioneer of television cooking after his death at age 89. Russell-Clarke died on Friday - surrounded by his wife of 65 years, Jan, and his children Peter and Wendy and their families - from complications following a stroke. Best known for his 1980s cooking show Come and Get It, Russell-Clarke was born in Ballarat in 1935. The son of an Anglican minister father and dressmaker mother, he was renowned for his Bohemian style of dress - complete with signature neckerchief and artist's smock. Russell-Clarke worked as a creative director in an advertising agency in the 1970s and was a political cartoonist for The Melbourne Herald. He appeared alongside journalist Derryn Hinch in the 1983 film At Last … Bullamakanka: the Motion Picture and ran an unnamed pop-up restaurant in Carlton decades before they became a thing. The author of almost 40 recipe books, Russell-Clarke was also a food ambassador for the United Nations and cooked for dignitaries including the Duke of Edinburgh and the then-Charles, Prince of Wales. His relaxed and informative five-minute cookery show on the ABC - peppered with "g'day", "ripper" and "you beaut" - notched up 900 episodes and spawned his distinctive catch-cry "come and get it". He was also a familiar face on commercial television thanks to his "where's the cheese?" advertisements for the Australian Dairy Corporation. Chef, artist, writer, illustrator and author Peter Russell-Clarke is being remembered as a pioneer of television cooking after his death at age 89. Russell-Clarke died on Friday - surrounded by his wife of 65 years, Jan, and his children Peter and Wendy and their families - from complications following a stroke. Best known for his 1980s cooking show Come and Get It, Russell-Clarke was born in Ballarat in 1935. The son of an Anglican minister father and dressmaker mother, he was renowned for his Bohemian style of dress - complete with signature neckerchief and artist's smock. Russell-Clarke worked as a creative director in an advertising agency in the 1970s and was a political cartoonist for The Melbourne Herald. He appeared alongside journalist Derryn Hinch in the 1983 film At Last … Bullamakanka: the Motion Picture and ran an unnamed pop-up restaurant in Carlton decades before they became a thing. The author of almost 40 recipe books, Russell-Clarke was also a food ambassador for the United Nations and cooked for dignitaries including the Duke of Edinburgh and the then-Charles, Prince of Wales. His relaxed and informative five-minute cookery show on the ABC - peppered with "g'day", "ripper" and "you beaut" - notched up 900 episodes and spawned his distinctive catch-cry "come and get it". He was also a familiar face on commercial television thanks to his "where's the cheese?" advertisements for the Australian Dairy Corporation. Chef, artist, writer, illustrator and author Peter Russell-Clarke is being remembered as a pioneer of television cooking after his death at age 89. Russell-Clarke died on Friday - surrounded by his wife of 65 years, Jan, and his children Peter and Wendy and their families - from complications following a stroke. Best known for his 1980s cooking show Come and Get It, Russell-Clarke was born in Ballarat in 1935. The son of an Anglican minister father and dressmaker mother, he was renowned for his Bohemian style of dress - complete with signature neckerchief and artist's smock. Russell-Clarke worked as a creative director in an advertising agency in the 1970s and was a political cartoonist for The Melbourne Herald. He appeared alongside journalist Derryn Hinch in the 1983 film At Last … Bullamakanka: the Motion Picture and ran an unnamed pop-up restaurant in Carlton decades before they became a thing. The author of almost 40 recipe books, Russell-Clarke was also a food ambassador for the United Nations and cooked for dignitaries including the Duke of Edinburgh and the then-Charles, Prince of Wales. His relaxed and informative five-minute cookery show on the ABC - peppered with "g'day", "ripper" and "you beaut" - notched up 900 episodes and spawned his distinctive catch-cry "come and get it". He was also a familiar face on commercial television thanks to his "where's the cheese?" advertisements for the Australian Dairy Corporation.
The Australian
3 hours ago
- The Australian
Australia's ‘first celebrity chef' Peter Russell-Clarke dies
Pioneering Australian chef Peter Russell-Clarke has died, aged 89. The celebrated TV personality, author and artist died on Friday due to complications from a stroke. Born in Ballarat, he was considered the country's first celebrity chef after he rose to prominence in the 1980s with his ABC show 'Come and Get It'. Peter Russell-Clarke has died aged 89. Photo: Impressions/Getty Images. Known for his catchphrases 'G'day', 'You beaut' and 'Where's the cheese?', he was a fixture on Australian televisions during the show's run from 1983 to 1992. He died in Melbourne on Friday surrounded by his wife Jan and children Peter and Wendy. He wrote over 35 cookbooks, at the height of his fame was a spokesman for the Victorian Egg Board and the Australian Dairy Corporation, was an accomplished artist and worked as a political cartoonist.
Sydney Morning Herald
4 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Where the cheese was: The real story behind Australia's foul-mouthed polymath
Peter Russell-Clarke, the neckerchief-clad larrikin who became an unexpected fixture in Australian lounge rooms and taught a generation how to cook long before MasterChef, has died aged 89. Russell-Clarke was the unruliest of media pioneers – a bona fide polymath whose flair for cooking was matched only by his biting political cartoons and a sharp tongue that went gloriously rogue in a now-legendary bloopers reel, long before the internet invented 'going viral'. With a trademark beret, stained smock, and a tea towel thrown over one shoulder, he was never just a cook. He was a storyteller. A painter. A provocateur. A genuine original. The sort who could poach an egg and puncture a prime minister's ego in the same five-minute segment. A familiar face on television throughout the 1980s and early '90s, Russell-Clarke fronted more than 900 episodes of Come and Get It on the ABC. He showed generations of Australians how to toast herbs and cook chops on residual heat, and became inextricably linked with dairy marketing via a single immortal phrase: 'Where's the cheese?' Yet, to reduce his life to a catchcry would be like calling Michelangelo a ceiling painter. Russell-Clarke was nothing less than a renaissance man with an Australian accent and a foul mouth. He was a culinary educator, but also a talented illustrator, prolific writer, advertising guru, political cartoonist, restaurateur and satirist. He was also a wine blender and a UN food ambassador. A man who once painted Dreamtime stories with Aboriginal elders in Far North Queensland and later cooked a jubilee dinner for the then Prince Charles. Born in Ballarat in 1935, Russell-Clarke's early life was marked by instability. His father, a defrocked Anglican minister, and his dressmaker mother, sent him to a Catholic boarding school in Bowral, NSW, 'to get back at the Anglicans', but didn't bother paying the fees. His childhood, shaped by alcohol-affected parents and stints in foster care, was anything but linear. At one point, he lived with a Chinese-Australian family who taught him to cook banquet-style meals and introduced him to Eastern flavours. He would later claim these early culinary lessons formed the backbone of his intuitive, nose-first approach to food. It is difficult to know whether all his tales were true or had added garnish. He briefly lived on Melbourne's streets, scrounging behind Bourke Street institutions like Florentino. Even then, his standards were high. He once said he'd written a letter to the chef, complaining that a discarded fish had freezer burn. 'I'm buggered if I know how long I existed like that, but it was a while. Good times, it made you lose weight!' he recalled in an interview years later. That mix of refinement and irreverence would become his signature. By his late teens, Russell-Clarke was working as a junior artist for one of Australia's top advertising agencies. His job, initially, was fetching lunches. But soon he was freelancing as an illustrator and food consultant – two disciplines he would blend with great success. He went on to become political cartoonist for the Melbourne Herald, where he drew the comic strip Ben Bowyang and skewered public figures with glee and accuracy. Loading At the same time, he began illustrating for Shell, Mobil, Ford, and even Boeing – work that would take him across the globe and into the homes of corporate high-flyers. But it was food, that always kept calling him back. Russell-Clarke ran one of Melbourne's most popular restaurants, a no‑name, no‑menu venue in Carlton, often booked out 18 months in advance. Again, Charles came calling and, reportedly, he told him to 'bugger off' because he was fully booked. 'I cooked a Silver Jubilee dinner for him and the only reason they chose me is that they knew they could get away with not paying for the meal,' he once said. 'The place was well ahead of its time, like a modern pop‑up. You just came and got whatever there was. It's just too hard if someone orders off the menu.' He wrote, illustrated, or ghostwrote 35 books – including 25 cookbooks and an encyclopaedia of food. He was also, at various times, food editor for New Idea, Woman's Day, The Age, and The Daily Mirror. For 27 years, he was the face of the Australian Dairy Corporation and the Egg Board, starring in TV commercials he often wrote and directed himself. Those of a certain age will remember him best as the five-minute man on ABC. Come and Get It, which aired just before The Goodies or Inspector Gadget, delivered succinct recipes in an unmistakable Russell-Clarke tone: warm, matey, occasionally bemused. 'G'day!' he'd begin, and off he'd go – chatting about burnt herbs or properly cooking tomatoes ('you release a perfume') before wrapping up with 'you beaut!' and a cheeky grin. Behind the scenes, he was anything but tame. The infamous blooper reel – first passed around on email and then eventually YouTube – revealed a man unafraid to unleash torrents of profanity, frustration, and wit. The contrast between the polished, public Russell-Clarke and the mercurial off-air version only deepened public affection. Even in his later years, battered by health challenges – a heart attack, stroke, and cancer diagnosis – Russell-Clarke's energy remained fierce. Living with his wife of six decades, Jan, in Tooborac, north of Melbourne, he still cooked, still painted, and still spoke with vision-impaired cooking enthusiasts about low-heat techniques. He insisted that blindness needn't be a barrier to kitchen excellence – 'It should make you a better cook,' he said. 'You do it gently, and slowly. Like making love.' That gentleness wasn't always evident in his professional life. He could be abrasive, outrageous and contradictory. But there was wisdom in the way he treated food. A lamb chop deserved your attention. Herbs were to be toasted and respected. Food, for Russell-Clarke, was not just sustenance but story, art, politics, and theatre. 'There was nearly a war over Brussels sprouts, but the King of Brussels saved the day by telling the King of England how to cook them properly,' he once told a young reporter. 'I don't know if that story's true or not, but it sounds good.' His art reflected that same narrative sensibility. He painted for commercial clients, for federal commissions, for himself. He exhibited widely around Australia and internationally, owning his own Soho Galleries on Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula and completing a 10-storey mural series for a Lygon Street building – from rabbits underground to pigeons in the sky. His cello paintings, inspired by musical theatre pieces he composed, portrayed instruments as people: sinuous, playful, human. In 2004, the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra requested a self-portrait for one of its exhibitions. He obliged with a piece that was part man, part mirth. After losing his home in a devastating fire while overseas, Russell-Clarke did what he always did – started again. Fifty paintings were destroyed. Four finished books went up in smoke. He said it was a blessing. 'The first book I've rewritten is much better,' he shrugged. 'I'm singing and dancing.' He famously called himself a 'ratbag,' a label friends, fans and colleagues endorsed with affection. He poked fun at TV chefs who embarrassed contestants, he mocked advertisers who softened his language, and he laughed when strangers asked him, decades later, 'Where's the cheese?' Russell-Clarke didn't suffer fools, food snobs, or faddish TV formats. When asked to relaunch Come and Get It, he declined after a young producer told him they'd need to modernise the format. 'I told her to stick it and hung up,' he said flatly. He was married to Jan, a former dancer and his best mate of more than 65 years. 'Without her, I'd be a bit buggered,' he said. 'She does all the bookwork; otherwise I'd be in jail.' They had two children – Peter Jr, who for decades was a senior Apple designer in the US, and Wendy, a choreographer – and three grandchildren. When asked recently how he'd like to be remembered, Russell-Clarke, ever the storyteller had one final punchline ready: 'Having a gravestone with your name on it is bullshit. Who gives a stuff whether you lived or died, really? You don't need to be read about on a piece of stone.' 'I won't have a funeral. I'll probably jump off the West Gate Bridge with a candle up my bottom!' He lived as he cooked: with flair, feeling, and zero fear. He will be remembered not just as a chef, not just as a cartoonist, but as an Australian original whose voice – booming, bellowing, or softly humming over a stove – echoed far beyond the kitchen.
