Juliet England: How Cambridgeshire Deaf Association is cooking up a storm – live on TV!

There is, it goes without saying, no reason at all why a deaf person cannot cook as well as anyone else. (Or, in my case, as appallingly. I once put some cheese scones in to bake at school. On a cooling tray. I knew the teacher was genuinely furious when she wouldn’t even let me clear up the resulting molten pool of mess on the oven floor. Oh, and it was Open Day.)

Anyway. From Masterchef to Best Home Cook and the ubiquitous, delicious Nigella, the TV schedules are practically boiling over with cookery shows. But are they all 100% accessible to those of us who can’t hear?

In truth, content with BSL is limited. And while subtitles are, of course, widely available and generally (although not always) accurate and reliable, they won’t suit those whose first choice of language is not written English. They can also be a pain to follow if you’re trying to learn the steps involved in producing a dish, or taking a recipe down at the same time. Having a presenter using sign language is far more engaging.

One local deaf charity aims to redress the balance. When Cambridgeshire Deaf Association received a £12,000 grant from its county’s Community Foundation, it invested the money in some high-tech equipment which allowed it to livestream content from its city-centre offices.

Phone-ins for deaf people about the Covid vaccine and football were early successes, and more than a dozen footie chat sessions have now been completed. One of its presenters is Scott Garthwaite, aka the Punk Chef.

The organisation’s chief exec Andrew Palmer says: “We discussed Scott’s dream of a live weekly cookery show in the style of the BBC’s Saturday Kitchen. It seemed the perfect opportunity to create more content in lockdown. And people are more interested in cookery generally at the moment because obviously they’re spending more time at home, so it felt like the perfect match.”

Garthwaite, 41, has a degree in culinary arts, and has always cooked at home for his family, but he has also worked at a number of leading restaurants and has done a lot of TV presenting via the British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust and the BBC. Known for his hot-pink Mohican, and himself profoundly deaf, Garthwaite is based in Loughborough but originally from the north-east.

He told Limping Chicken: “This cookery programme with Cambridge Deaf Association is not about me the ‘Punk Chef’, it’s about giving something back to the Deaf community through food. I am setting a platform for the show by give deaf foodies and chefs the opportunity to cook live – maybe in future they can present this Sunday Kitchen Live themselves.

“There are loads of younger Deaf people who dream of working in the food industry or of presenting a cookery programme. I am doing it for them to set the benchmark, then they can thrive in my footsteps and have a great career of their own.”

Sunday Kitchen Live airs weekly for one hour from 1030am and is filmed in the deaf charity’s hall that’s normally used for events. (Garthwaite uses the hall’s small kitchen but a table is set up to provide an additional work surface.) Livestreaming takes places across the association’s social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – while the show, captioned and signed in its entirety, is also available to watch after broadcast.

“It’s done live, so Scott completes a lot of prep in advance. The idea is to inspire viewers with different cookery ideas, plus we have a chat with a different guest on the show each week – and take a look at the Sunday papers and talk about the top news stories,” explains Palmer

Guests include members of the deaf community and well-known local people. Deaf theatre maker Rinkoo Barpaga recently joined in one show. For the first episode, deaf footballer and presenter Lucindha Lawson got on board.

So far, offerings have included a vegan treat of celeriac and puy lentils, a Japanese meal, tuna plus a cowboy steak; the focus is on one dish for each show.

Palmer adds: “It’s still new, having only been started in February, but we had 15,000 views for the first three shows, and a steady number of returning viewers. Scott makes it look easy! He’s good at chatting and joking while cooking.”

Garthwaite kicks off each broadcast with an explanation of the style of cooking he’s doing, and the ingredients, before rustling up that day’s dish. The final 10 minutes of the show are given over to the Ravioli Challenge, in which the Punk Chef and his guest compete to cook the pasta as quickly as possible. Results are collated on a leaderboard to heighten the sense of competition.

Palmer says: “The British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust has done shows involving cooking before, and there are signed videos on Twitter and so on. But this is a first in being a deaf-led signed, live programme with a guest, to which viewers can contribute via social media.”

Since the lockdowns began, Cambridgeshire Deaf Association has created more than 170 videos including Covid updates, and there are three weekly online community events including a quiz. More phone-ins are planned, such as one about deaf representation in the arts. Long term, it would like to find a sponsor for the cookery show.

“We’re limited in what we can do – we’re a local deaf charity, not a TV station, after all. But we aim to bring people together at this tricky time through high-quality content around topics our community is interested in. We’re grateful to anyone who watches and provides feedback, and to our dozens of staff and volunteers who have worked so hard so we can provide as much information to the community as is practicably possible.”