The life of Brian

If only Brian Turner's mum had lived to see the banners fluttering outside a posh hotel in Grosvenor Square with the name of her son emblazoned on them. She would have thought that our Brian had come a right long way from Halifax, West Yorkshire.

The circuitous route to Mayfair, that started with Brian helping his dad cook and serve that apogee of British culinary endeavour, the fry-up, in a transport cafe on a trunk road south of Leeds, is an illuminating story of chefdom.

When in 1964 Turner left Leeds Technical College with a general catering diploma, he headed for London with the aim of getting work in the kitchens of The Savoy, where he could immerse himself in the ways of classic French cooking.

A two-year stretch at Simpson's in-the-Strand before he was given a post under Louis Virot at The Savoy Grill probably stripped him of any dewy-eyed notions about great kitchen art, but he persevered and later left to learn French and more about French cooking at the Beau Rivage Palace in Lausanne.

After that there were long stints at Claridge's, The Capital hotel, where he hung on to a Michelin star which had been awarded in the mid-1970s, and then in 1986, the fulfilment of every ambitious chef's dream, his own eponymous restaurant.

Turner's in South Kensington (now no more), serving modern French food, was where he emerged as genial host, a bluff, blithe side to his character that later found an outlet in TV programmes like Ready Steady Cook. Not so obvious to the general public has been the commitment of Brian Turner CBE to improvements in the profession, partly expressed through his membership of the Academy of Culinary Arts, of which he is currently chairman.

I am beginning to sound like a Michael Aspel script, but it strikes me as interesting that Turner's most recent project, BRIAN TURNER MAYFAIR at the Millennium Hotel Mayfair, champions British food.

As Marcus Wareing, Gordon Ramsay and Eric Chavot cleave to French traditions at The Savoy Grill, Claridge's and The Capital, Brian is overseeing "rich and fine" chicken liver paté on thick, buttered toast, steak-and-kidney plate pie with oysters and kidney gravy, and steamed treacle sponge pudding with double cream custard being sent out from the kitchens of his latest enterprise.

You will notice that I am not suggesting that he is doing anything as practical as cooking. An appropriate attire and role for a chef in his mid-fifties are in spotless whites, working the dining room.

St George's Day seems the right one to be reviewing a meal of smoked eel fillet and streaky Cumbrian bacon on warm potato salad followed by grilled veal chop with chipolatas, lardons, butter onions and mustard mash and then a savoury of Yorkshire Blue rarebit. All was well turned out, the eel assembly a surprisingly delicate affair, the chop rather overburdened by its garnish, the rarebit richer and more calorific than most puddings.