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The news of the death of Keith Floyd got me thinking. Which "famous" chefs inspire you and why? I've got three personal favourites. For me, Floyd was the guy who first got me excited about cooking because of his style and the sense of fun he introduced into the idea of cooking. That and the honest way he'd add the richest ingredients without so much as a by your leave to the fitness fanatics. He'd never even consider substituting cream or mayonnaise with a low fat substitute. He also taught me the very important lesson, that there's no such thing as cooking wine and that you should never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink. Flavour is paramount. Secondly and possibly even more profound was the effect Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall had on my ideas of cooking and ingredients. If you haven't already got it I'd highly recommend to anyone to buy his book, "Meat." It completely re-educated me in terms of the way animals should be treated with respect if their only purpose on this earth is to feed us. That respect goes all the way from the conditions in which the animal is kept whilst alive, through the way it is killed and right down to the use of every part of the animal. Consideration to each of these areas also vastly improves the flavour of meat and meat based dishes. HFW has taught me it's a criminal waste to throw out a chicken carcass and giblets without making a fantastic stock from it, which had added exponentially to the flavour of the dishes I cook. The man is an inspiration. Perhaps controversially on these boards, I also quite like AWT. I assume his political leanings aren't to many peoples' tastes around these parts (for that matter, neither would KF's) but again for his pure enjoyment of the finest ingredients and his refusal to compromise on flavour by using 'healthy' subsitutions in his ingredients. Whatever you think of him as a bloke, as a chef I think he comes across as a class act. Incidentally my two most loathed would be Ainsley Harriot and Jamie Oliver. The former simply because he comes across as a big fucking idiot, the latter because of his horrible public political schmoozing with Blair, his stupid borderline downs face and the fact that he's now trying to be a cross between a social commentator and a chef in America. You're not Louis Theroux, Oliver, now fuck off.