Bob Crane's 1978 Appearance on 'Celebrity Cooks' [Podcast]

It's so fantastic and extraordinary, it's become urban legend when discussing the final months of Bob Crane's life.

Celebrity goes on a national Canadian TV cooking show; breaks down; falls apart; rants about death, sex, and his impending divorce; is brought to tears; and shocks the studio audience. A station network executive pulls the episode from syndication following celebrity's murder because of an eerie sense of deja vu and premonition of the crime, as well as celebrity's depressed state and inability to stop talking about death and sex during the show's taping.

Such is the case with Bob's appearance on the Canadian television series, Celebrity Cooks. 

Or is it?

Bruno Gerussi and Bob Crane on Celebrity Cooks, January 25, 1978.
Photograph by Ron Goldman.

While researching Bob's life for Bob Crane: The Definitive Biography, Linda Groundwater and I talked with three people directly affiliated with Celebrity Cooks: owner Derek Smith, talent agent Anne Kear, and stage manager Roger Packer. A fourth person connected with the series, photographer Ron Goldman, also provided a statement. All four were present on the day of Bob's episode taping, and all four emphatically agree—everything we thought we knew about Bob Crane's appearance on Celebrity Cooks, as based on a 1978 magazine article, referenced in Robert Graysmith's book The Murder of Bob Crane, and depicted in Auto Focus, is wrong.

In our latest episode of Flipside: The True Story of Bob Crane, Linda and I discuss Bob's appearance on Celebrity Cooks. We take apart the 1978 article that started the whole myth, and we provide answers from Celebrity Cooks as well. It will never cease to amaze Linda, me, or the folks from Celebrity Cooks that this brief moment of Bob's life, which is held up as an example of his life falling apart, never actually happened.

Listen to "09. Bob Crane’s 1978 Appearance on 'Celebrity Cooks'" on Spreaker.

For an earlier post about Bob Crane's appearance on 'Celebrity Cooks,' click here.