'His confidence at the stove was extraordinary. 'He inspired a nation to want to cook, which very few chefs have done,' stated chef Marco Pierre White, considered a bad-boy disciple of Floyd's (and No.

'They had told him they thought he was in the clear but to slow down on the alcohol.He said he had not felt this good in years which was why the heart attack was so unexpected. when he told me had a great meeting with the cancer specialist that morning,' said James Steen, who ghost wrote Floyd's memoir Stirred but Not Shaken, told the paper. 'I spoke to him on the telephone at 7 p.m. His partner, Celia Martin, told London's Telegraphthat Floyd suffered a fatal heart attack just as they were settling down on the sofa to watch a Channel 4 documentary about his eventful life -and just hours after they shared a champagne toast over lunch to celebrate good news from his oncologist. He also had a 2004 conviction for drunken driving after crashing his car with 3 1/2-times the legal limit of alcohol in his system. Married four times, he served in the British Army and worked as a journalist before settling into cooking. In first place was British chef Keith Floyd, whose TV-enhanced fame preceded the likes of Gordon Ramsay, and who when he died in 2009 was remembered as much for his hard-living ways as for his way around a kitchen. In 2007, he only came in second when Olive magazine issued its list of the 'most decadent foodies' of all time. Cooking is also increasingly being recognized as an art form-it's on TV 24/7, after all, and two people can pay into the thousands of dollars to eat at certain restaurants-and as long as there has been art, there have been patrons going gaga when they discover new talent.īourdain-though he became the 'bad-boy chef' poster boy for a generation with his frank anecdotes about drug and alcohol abuse, getting laid and acquiring the physical and mental scars of battle that accumulate over years of working the line-did not create the role. The heavily tattooed, often pierced and punkishly coiffed chef, whether male or female, has also become a stereotype-and while that's hardly the classic universal look for a chef (which was more sky-high toque than mohawk), it certainly goes with the artistic vibe that more and more chefs are projecting.

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