Long before our screens were filled with celebrity chefs and tearful contestants trying to make bombe-alaska and croquembouche, there was a friendly, bearded Aussie bloke known as Peter, G'day, Russell, G'day, Clarke.
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More well known these days as a celebrated artist, he is only too happy to be among the talented locals exhibiting work at this weekend's Mandurang Valley Artisans Trail.
The 1980s series Come and Get It was a favourite in living rooms all around the country, but cooking is just one of the strings to the bow of its star, Peter Russell-Clarke.
At 84, and living in Heathcote, his personality hasn't dimmed. His conversation is still peppered with cheeky comments and the odd unprintable word or two.
He is a typical Australian larrikin, who's career credits include stints as a political cartoonist for the Melbourne Herald, a feature writer for The Age and a television writer.
But even before his television days, he was painting and indulging his love of art.
"Cooking and painting are in the same mould," he said. "With cooking you deal with colour, shape, form and taste. So too with painting."
Come and Get It was created when he realised that no one else was doing a cooking program.
"I was writing for television at the time. So I wrote a series for the ABC. But then I realised the person in front of the camera got a lot more money than the poor bugger behind the camera. Not many men had beards in those days so I created this bearded chef character."
If the beard was a novelty, so was the idea of men in the kitchen.
"Men didn't cook back then, except for barbecues," he said. "Fortunately in those days the executives at the ABC didn't care what you did, so you could do just about anything."
He is being humble. In the 1980s Come and Get It was incredibly successful and Peter Russell-Clarke was a household name.
The show ran for nine years, over more than 900 programs. His passion for food also extended to running cooking schools for men. He said he still believes in the importance of understanding food and eating well.
"That's what has me wondering some days if I should be playing hockey for Bendigo."
These days he makes his living from painting commissions, and has clients all over the world.
"I have to keep working, I've got a lot of bills to pay, otherwise they'd put me in jail."
He also has strong views on art and artists, and great admiration for our local practitioners.
"I don't just go squeezing colour onto a canvas and get the cat to roll in it and say, look how clever I am, look what I did, when actually the cat did it.
"I like each painting to have a story. If you look out the window at a beautiful view you might look at it but you don't see it. It's the same with a painting, you might look at it but you don't come back to it, unless it has an intriguing story."
He is happy to support the arts trail and says he rates one of the organisers, Nick Truscott, as a world standard watercolourist.
"I don't think people like Nick are appreciated enough. I would like to see Bendigo become a centre for the arts. The artists here are all very talented and it's clever, clever art.
"Sometimes artists have more money and they tend to paint what they know people will buy, but in Bendigo they paint because they're good at it.
"I don't know if I can help them or not, I'm just some old bugger with a beard. There are artists here like Nick Truscott who should be lauded to the heavens."