In 1970s Derby Simon Jardine would have been happy with a roast, mashed spuds, and a few peas; Dave Green, anything washed down with a pint, but he had a real hankering for sausages and bacon; and Tom Freeman, a Chinese takeaway after a long night at the turntables.
Why do I mention this? I have just read a few recipes in my Sunday newspaper and had my long-held view that wordy chefs really should dismount from their superior steeds and join us in the real world. I am, like a lot of the blokes I know, a dab hand in the kitchen, or, better put, I can make a boeuf bourguignon any time … I just call it a beef stew.
My gripe is the verbiage of these anally exploring cooks. Take the beef stew with a potato lid in today’s newspaper. Quite simply that is a Lancashire Hot Pot using a bull or a cow instead of sheep. Reading on, the recipe calls for two glasses of ‘good red wine’. I’ll not repeat that, but feel free to join me in dropping one’s jaw vertically. Who in their right mind, or even their addled mind, pours good red wine into a stew to cook and bubble away? A good red wine is for a good crystal glass to be then glugged down a good throat. Red plonk will do for the pot, trust me.
Turning the page another recipe calls for Venezuelan chocolate. OK, good dark choccy can enhance lots of dishes, especially a chilli con carne, but why be so specific? And if you’re going that far, is it grown east or west of Caracas? Who picks the cacao pods? Rubbish. Cheapest possible from your supermarket of choice does the trick.
Then there’s that really, really silly instruction, nay, demand, that the salt be Maldon Sea Salt. Why? What’s wrong with Cheshire’s finest – as long as it’s not the stuff they throw on the road? Why the outer reaches of Mondeo-man in Essex? Alright, I’ll give a little about sea salt as even the taste buds of my three score years-old plus body knows the difference between that and the drizzle from the plastic container with the flip up slot, but why Maldon?
Don’t get me wrong: I like some chef authors and celebrities. Anthony Bourdain is a particular favourite, but he is capable of putting anything in his mouth (yuk); and Delia is a goddess, despite supporting the wrong football club. TV chefs are different. Jamie Oliver was great when he was a ‘cheeky chappy’ and not a millionaire; the Hairy Bikers I loved until they started acting silly and lost weight; Nigella Lawson … but I can’t see her in the same light now, i.e. without a little stain of white powder above her top lip; and my all time favourite – now no longer with us – Paul Bocuse. That Lyon restaurateur was irascible, a perfectionist and didn’t speak a word of English – well, not when I tried to interview him.
Back to basics please lads and lasses. What’s the best way to open a can of beans, and which way up should bread be buttered?

First Dead Body, and all up-coming books in the Simon Jardine series, are centred around Derby and the Derby Evening Telegraph. I have dug out some of the photos taken during that heady time and added them to this web site. See ‘Photos’.
Many are not flattering, some are embarrassing – but I’m old enough to take your brickbats and cheeky comments.
Music was a key factor in my newspaper days in Derby and I was lucky enough to meet, and in some cases, establish lasting friendships with some world-renowned musicians and vocalists. Slade were top of the list as well as Top of the Pops, and the list of interviewees goes on and on.

I attended the Leicestershire ‘Everybody’s Reading’ event and heard Elly Griffiths, author of six very successful Ruth Galloway mysteries set in North Norfolk; Mark Wright, first time author of Heartman and heading for stardom; and John Martin, author of Crime Scene Great Britain and Ireland.
They were propounding their views on locations of crime fiction. Elly (North Norfolk) says the location dictates the characters; Mark (Bristol), that the locations develop the characters; and John (expert on crime writing)) tied it up nicely and neatly with a message that it could be both, but locations were integrally important factors in crime novels.
My view is that it is usually easier for the reader to grasp the location as a foundation of reality on which the more complex, ethereal, fictional characters and their foibles can be developed and woven.
Derby is the core base for the Simon Jardine series (First Dead Body launched it in summer this year), and the Derby Evening Telegraph in the old danced hall on Albert Street is central for logic and geography. Jardine pivots the story on the fulcrum of his office and radiates to extant pubs like the Dolphin and Exeter Arms, along with now disappeared venues such as: the Crown Club, Spondon (jazz); Cleopatras on Babington Lane (rock), closed, re-opened closed and shut and redeveloped; and Tiffanys, Babington Lane (disco and dance bands), where the building remains, but the sweet sounds have dissipated into the ether.
Derby is important, not just because it is where I began my career in newspapers there in 1970, but also because it was at a time when the town was going through big changes. Rolls-Royce crashed, putting tens of thousands of jobs in jeopardy; Brian Clough and Peter Taylor were about to take on the management of Derby County; the town’s heavy engineering industries (such as large conveyor belts) were thriving, but facing foreign competition; rock music was going through a mini hey-day; and in 1977 the town, which already had a cathedral, was about to become a city.
The 70s was also the decade when the ‘Free Love’ of the 60s actually happened. Girls became emancipated and boys were no longer the sole decision makers in life. ‘Girls just wanna have fun’ is a 21st century phrase, but it flowered 40+ years ago … more of that anon.

Today, September 27, is the 40th birthday party of Scarthin Books, Cromford – my favourite independent bookshop. If you’re going – be sure to wear those 1970s togs! Only four copies of First Dead Body left in store. Buy one and then I’ll have to deliver more … thank you.

Page 55 of artsbeat, September 2014 (www.artsbeatblog.com) – Magazine of the Year in the Midlands Media Awards 2014
Former reporter
publishes debut
crime novel
Reviewed by Guy Cooper, new books manager, Scarthin Books, Cromford
This is the first novel by ex-journalist Richard Cox and is a crime story set in Derby in the early 1970s.
Simon Jardine is a young reporter and is paired with seasoned crime reporter Dave Green.
The dead body in question is that of a young man whose death appears suspicious. Dave knows the victim and his mother well and, as they investigate a story of corruption and further crime emerges involving a prominent local gay businessman and his company’s operations in building the new ring road around Derby.
Dave Green has his own reasons for being interested in the family of the dead boy, whose father, an ex-convict works for the construction company and seems to be hiding something from his wife.
Colonel Hamilton-Pocklington, the local businessman, also has his own secrets to protect and finds himself being blackmailed. The reporters pursue the story in the smoky pubs and local jazz scene in Derby, looking at links between the construction firm and the local council.
Things begin to unravel culminating in an exciting car chase across Derby.
This is a good, gripping read and, as an ex-journalist, Tony Cox provides a very interesting angle on the crime novel by basing it around reporters rather than police and the 1970s setting is well drawn, with pubs, live music and attitudes to gay people convincingly written.
This is certainly a promising start to a planned series featuring Simon Jardine and I look forward to the next one.
First Dead Body (The Choir Press. Pb, £6.99)