Background
His mother, Mary Jerrold, was an actress famous as the murderous Martha Brewster in the first stage presentation of Arsenic and Old Lace as well as many screen roles. His father, Hubert Harben, was a noted stage actor.
His mother, Mary Jerrold, was an actress famous as the murderous Martha Brewster in the first stage presentation of Arsenic and Old Lace as well as many screen roles. His father, Hubert Harben, was a noted stage actor.
Harben was educated at Highgate School.
His first occupation was as a commercial photographer. He was then engaged to run the kitchen of the Isobar restaurant in the Isokon building in Hampstead, London from 1937 to 1940, when he enlisted in the Royal Air Force, but an eye injury put paid to his flying career and he was assigned to the Army Catering Corps. He compered a British Broadcasting Corporation wireless cooking programme from 1942, then a British Broadcasting Corporation television programme, Cookery, from 1946 to 1951, followed by Cookery Lesson (with co-presenter Marguerite Patten) and What"s Cooking from 1956.
His emphasis was always on method and principles rather than recipes, but he could be remarkably dogmatic - "The Pot to the Kettle not the Kettle to the Pot!".
Philip Harben can be credited with the first television "moment" when on live television he cracked an egg that was so bad he had to abandon the recipe while he and the studio crew broke into helpless laughter. He had a regular column in the British Woman"s Own magazine in the 1950s.
In 1958 he helped found the Harbenware kitchen utensils company, which in 2012 is still operating under the same ownership.
