Australian TV Chef Peter Russell-Clarke Passes Away at 89

Television chef, author and artist Peter Russell-Clarke has died, 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.

An avid artist

The National Portrait Gallery in Canberra requested a self-portrait of Peter Russell-Clarke for an exhibition in 2004.

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.