The Cooking Canon is the
screen name of John Eley, a British
celebrity chef.
Eley appears on television and radio, contributes to a range of magazines and tours the country with his road show.
Career
Born in 1949, he is an
English Anglican priest who was a lighting engineer before studying for the
priesthood at
Salisbury & Wells Theological College. His first post was as a
Curate
A curate () is a person who is invested with the ''care'' or ''cure'' (''cura'') ''of souls'' of a parish. In this sense, "curate" means a parish priest; but in English-speaking countries the term ''curate'' is commonly used to describe clergy w ...
at
Sherborne Abbey, after which he became a Minor Canon at
Carlisle Cathedral.
During his time at Sherborne, Eley began to promote the ''Abbey Cookery'' recipe book in Sherborne bookshops and he was spotted by BBC TV producers. In 1980 he began to appear as a chef on the
BBC television show ''
Pebble Mill at One'', and subsequently presented a regular cookery slot on the
breakfast TV programme ''
Good Morning Britain'' with
TV-am.
[ The Times, Wednesday, January 4, 1984; pg. 21; Issue 61729; col A ''Today's television and radio''; passim]
His ecclesiastical career then took him to All Saints,
Bromsgrove
Bromsgrove is a town in Worcestershire, England, about northeast of Worcester and southwest of Birmingham city centre. It had a population of 29,237 in 2001 (39,644 in the wider Bromsgrove/Catshill urban area). Bromsgrove is the main town in the ...
and after that Kedington Benefice -
Great Bradley
Great Bradley is a village and civil parish in the West Suffolk West Suffolk may refer to the following places in Suffolk, England:
* West Suffolk (county), a county until 1974
* West Suffolk District, a local government district established in ...
.
Bibliography
Eley's television success led to the publication of a series of
cookery books by
BBC Books:
*
*
*
*
Notes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cooking Canon
1949 births
Living people
20th-century English Anglican priests
English television chefs
English writers