BBC Good Food Show Winter - Birmingham NEC 28 November - 1 December 2019

Affectionately known as the Yummy Brummie (coined by Olive Magazine), Glynn Purnell owns and runs Purnell’s in Birmingham. Winning dozens of awards for his inspired and adventurous cooking, Glynn has remained firmly rooted in his home city and won the Birmingham’s first Michelin star in January 2005 as Head Chef at Jessica’s.

Glynn’s first food memory involved baked beans on toast and curry powder! Left in charge of his little brother and sister, he would experiment on them with new combinations and challenged their taste buds. He continues to do this with dishes like poached egg yolk, smoked haddock milk foam and cornflakes on the menu at Purnell’s, cooking which earned him top accolades on BBC’s Great British Menu. Glynn takes old fashioned flavours and brings them up to date with dishes like Royal of Goats Cheese and Pineapple on sticks.

The proud owner of three establishments in Birmingham: Purnell’s restaurant opened in 2007 and was awarded a Michelin star in 2009, Ginger’s Bar and Purnell’s Bistro. He started work in kitchens at the age of 14 and spent the following two years at the Metropole Hotel, going every day after school. They took him on as an apprentice and six years later he won the prestigious Salon Culinaire award. Glynn moved to Simpson’s which won a Michelin star while he was a Sous Chef and where he also won other personal awards such as the Academie de Culinaire Francaise Annual Award of Excellence in 1996. He went on to work with Claude Bosi at the 2 Michelin-starred Hibiscus in Ludlow before helping to launch Jessica’s back in Birmingham in 2003.

Glynn has taken part in BBC’s The Great British Menu, winning twice and then appearing as a mentor. He has previously featured onThe Great British Food Revival, Pies and Puds with Paul Hollywood and with Mary Berry and Michel Roux Jnr and Tom Kerridge on Food and Drink. Glynn is a regular guest chef on Saturday Kitchen with James Martin and recently appeared on BBC 2’s Extra Slice. Glynn’s book Cracking Yolks and Pig Tales was published by Kyle Books in May 2014.

He has leant his knowledge to iconic British department store Harvey Nichols as consultant in 2015 for the launch of their new restaurant concept in Birmingham.

Life at No.27 was born as an allotment and GYO blog, with the aim to inspire more people, particularly the younger generation, to put down their phones and pick up a spade. Using passion and energetic enthusiasm to not only change the stereotypical view of allotments and grow your own, but also showcase the number of benefits both physical and mental that getting outdoors can bring.

Life at No.27 has become the face all ages and abilities can relate to, as well as showing that anybody can learn to garden and grow their own produce. Life at No.27 now reaches out across the blog, a monthly radio show, the YouTube Channel, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Annabelle, its creator, works with a number of leading brands, regularly contributes to various gardening magazines and also works with schools to inspire the next generation of gardeners.

Above all, keeping it simple and more than anything fun.

Packed full of magic moments, the Big Kitchen is the place to see your favourite chefs and experts cooking up a variety of seasonal dishes in a LIVE demonstration. We’re delighted that Travelsphere, our Big Kitchen sponsor, will be bringing additional FREE themed sessions to the menu this year on Thursday and Friday. Join Penny Smith and Marcus Bean for A Taste of Italy.

Raymond will be at the Show on Thursday 14 June. See him live in the Big Kitchen.

Tom is a great character with amazing presence, obvious warmth and an infectious laugh, so it wasn’t a surprise when Tom landed his own TV show. The brilliantly popular BBC2 series Proper Pub Food became a huge overnight success with excellent ratings with Tom’s fan base growing weekly as the 6 part series went on. Accompanying the show Tom wrote his first book of the same title which fast became a best seller. Most recently, Tom has been presenting BBC2’s new series Bake Off Crème De La Crème which saw some of the country’s top pastry chefs compete, creating elaborate pastries and desserts. Tom is also part of the team on BBC2’s The Food Detectives, helping people improve their cooking skills.

In 2014, Tom presented his second series, Best Ever Dishes which again proved extremely popular, along with his bestselling book of the same title. Tom also took on the challenge of opening another restaurant, The Coach, which is also in Marlow. The Coach is a relaxed modern pub, open all day, every day serving breakfast, lunch, dinner and pub snacks. The Coach has a no reservations policy and has enabled more visitors than ever to taste Tom’s incredible take on traditional pub food.

Tom also took on hosting BBC2’s flagship cookery show Food and Drink. Tom cooked alongside other TV heavyweight chefs, championing seasonable produce and creating dishes accessible to everyone at home every Friday night on BBC2.

In 2015, Tom’s latest book, Toms Table was published and topped the best seller charts. It also inspired a special pop-up ‘Toms Table’ restaurant at Harrods Food Hall which saw Tom cooking dishes from the new book as well as favourites from both his restaurants, the pop-up sold out and was a huge success.

Prior to having his own show, Tom appeared on shows such as Market Kitchen, MasterChef the Professionals, Saturday Kitchen and has competed and won the main course twice on BBC2’s Great British Menu. No-one else has ever won twice!

Tom’s first catering job was a stint as commis chef at Calcot Manor in Gloucestershire. He also worked for Stephen Bull and Gary Rhodes before joining Odette’s in Primrose Hill. After a spell at Monsieur Max in Hampton he moved to Norwich to take over running the Michelin starred restaurant Adlards.

He then decided it was time to find his own place taking over a run down pub in Marlow called the Hand and Flowers. The rest is history…

Extremely creative, productive and with a unique perspective on life, landscape design, gardening, art history and disability, Mark Lane has led a remarkable life. He has gained recognition as a first-class landscape designer, being the UK’s first garden designer in a wheelchair, as well as the first BBC gardening presenter in a wheelchair.

As a broadcaster he is a presenter of the award winning BBC Gardeners’ World, as well a presenter for BBC Gardeners’ World Live and the Royal Horticultural Society’s Flower Shows – Chelsea, Hampton Court Palace, Tatton. BBC Gardeners’ World is one of the handful of factual TV programmes with a long pedigree of 50 years, viewed by a staggering 3 million people on a weekly basis, in the UK alone. Says Mark: “I’m here in a wheelchair and I can do these things. First and foremost I am a presenter, who just happens to be in a chair, but if I can be an inspiration to other people, then all the better for it.”

Birmingham foodies and lovers of all-things-local are in for a treat this summer as BBC Good Food Show reveals its biggest Brummie line-up to date.

Some of Birmingham’s most loved chefs are confirmed for the four-day event – which takes place from 14 – 17 June at NEC Birmingham – alongside the city’s most popular street food vendors, and plenty of local artisan producers.

Well-known faces, Glynn Purnell and Aktar Islam, will be pitting their local knowledge against each other during an exclusive Brummie showdown in The Big Kitchen. Brad Carter, owner of Michelin starred Carters of Moseley, and culinary cult hero, Lap-fai Lee, will also be showcasing their signature cooking styles in demonstrations on the BBC Good Food Stage.

With their irresistible enthusiasm, Si King and Dave Myers, aka The Hairy Bikers, have become national treasures. Big hearted, down-to-earth cooks with a love of good food, they have been cooking together for more than twenty years. They have created haute cuisine dishes with Michelin-starred chefs and travelled the world in the pursuit of great food. They’ve also explored the length and breadth of the British Isles to discover brand new recipes and create their own fresh takes on cooking classics.

Michael Perry (Mr Plant Geek) will be sharing expert advice on the Blooming Interiors Stage on Saturday 16 and Sunday 17 June with his Weird and Wacky Plant Show (houseplant edition), and the Gardeners Unplugged stage on Sunday 17 June.

Michel Roux Jr was born in 1960 in Pembury, Kent, where his father Albert Roux worked as a private chef for the Cazalet family. His earliest food memories are the smells of the Fairlawne kitchen – pastry, sugar caramelizing and stews – where he played under the table while his father and mother Monique prepared the meals.

After deciding to follow in his father’s footsteps, he left school at 16 for the first of several challenging apprenticeships at Maître Patissier, Hellegouarche in Paris from 1976 to 1979. He was then Commis de Cuisine at Alain Chapel’s signature restaurant at Mionay near Lyon, Michel’s biggest influence. His military service was spent in the kitchens at the Elysée Palace at the time of Presidents Giscard d’Estaing and François Mitterrand. He also spent time at Boucherie Lamartine and Charcuterie Mothu in Paris, and the Gavers Restaurant in London.