Celebrity chefs not on menu at Floyd’s send-off

FAMILY and friends celebrated the eventful life of TV chef Keith Floyd at a humanist funeral yesterday, but his celebrity peers were notable by their absence.

Floyd, 65, who was diagnosed with bowel cancer in June, died at the home of his partner Celia Martin in Dorset on September 14 after suffering a heart attack. Fellow celebrity chefs, including close friends Marco Pierre White and Jean-Christophe Novelli, paid tribute to the flamboyant restaurateur following his death. However, yesterday White, Novelli and a long list of famous food enthusiasts who paid a debt of gratitude to Floyd for paving the way to successful careers were nowhere to be seen among the 200 guests.

Biographer James Steen, who helped organised the humanist service at Ashton Court Mansion, in Bristol, said: “This wasn’t an event for chefs, nor did his family specifically invite any. I don’t think that’s a problem, and I don’t think Floyd would be bothered by that.”

Floyd’s daughter, Poppy Floyd, 25, made a moving and mixed tribute to the hundreds of mourners who filled the 15th century Grade I-listed mansion.

Ms Floyd said she had “happy and enthusiastic memories” rather than the “gruesome and alcoholic ones publicly screened” the night he died.

She continued: “Many of us here know the reality hidden behind fame and celebrity is not as glorious as we would like to imagine. I suppose a lot of that truth has now been revealed.”

Ms Floyd followed her brother Patrick, 40, who read Rudyard Kipling’s poem If and a performance of a song called Keith Floyd Blues by songwriter Bill Padley.

Close friend of Floyd and royal commentator James Whitaker closed the service, and talked about the chef’s excesses.

He said: “The reality of Keith was that he was an extraordinary character who cooked sublimely, married recklessly and was extravagantly generous, often with other people’s money, who smoked so much that you could hear the nails hammering home.”

He added: “In the last few years he could hardly bring himself to taste his own creations. If he did eat, he wanted simple food like spring lamb in gravy, beans on toast or a Fray Bentos pie and maybe occasionally a few spoonfuls of caviar.”

The service included some of Floyd’s favourite songs, including Johnny Cash’s Walk The Line and Desperado by The Eagles.

Billy Joel’s The Piano Man was also played because Floyd felt the lyrics mirrored his own life.

Following the service, guests were invited to the Bordeaux Quay restaurant on Bristol’s Harbourside for a farewell meal of cassoulet, duck, goose — and lots of red wine.

His coffin, made from banana leaves and draped in sunflowers — in acknowledgement of his love for food and France — was carried out to Waltz In Black by the Stranglers, the theme tune to his television show.