Big Cook, Little Cook is a television series for nursery school aged children, broadcast on BBC television channels. The programme is set in the kitchen of a café, with two chef characters, Big Cook Ben and Little Cook Small. Ben is a full sized adult, but Small is only a few inches tall and flies around on a wooden spoon. Ben and Small are played by Steve Marsh and Dan Wright, respectively. In 2005, the duo featured in commercials for Betfair, the Channel 4's official sponsor, during The Ashescricket series, being shown as two part advertisements at the beginning and end of each break. Trailers for the programme on the BBC spoofed the food adverts of Marks & Spencer, which featured the voice of Dervla Kirwan. Until February 2012, CBeebies aired repeats on the channel. An official magazine was launched in August 2005.
Format
The format of the programme generally includes a visit to the café by a nursery rhyme, fairy tale, or fictional character. Each episode would begin with Big Cook Ben and Little Cook Small doing an activity or encountering a problem, and then a visitor would arrive by the door of their café with Small giving the viewers and Ben hints about who the visitor is. After revealing that visitor, Small then tells a short story about the visitor and ends his stories proclaiming to be the real hero. Next, they decide to cook the visitor a meal from Ben's recipe book, and then collect the ingredients from either; the fridge, freezer, cupboard, fruitbowl & vegetable basket. If an ingredient is missing or if one of the two want toknow how an ingredient is made, Small will then fly away on his magic spoon to see where one of the ingredients is made, such as a chutney factory or a rice field. Once Small gets the ingredient or tells Ben how an ingredient is made, the two proceed to sing a song, remind the viewers of what is required for the recipe, and begin to cook. During preparation, Ben would remind the viewers to always ask their "grown-up helper" when it came to using knives and/or putting the meal in the oven. After finishing the meal and serving it to the customer, they then sing a song about cleaning up the kitchen. In return for cooking a meal for the visitor, they receive a gift that would solve their problem. Activities within the kitchen, such as washing and tidying up, are accompanied by a catchy song and dance routines. Both cooks act in an expansive and overblown style, but the show seems intended to encourage children to take an interest in cooking. The cooks rhyme a lot, like "We need a story to help us cook. Let's take a look in Little Cook's Book. Where do we look for things to cook?" Big Cook does most of the actual cooking and telling the viewers how to make the recipes while Little Cook does some preparation or sets the timer. Some of the aerial shots of Little Cook flying were filmed over the town of Skipton, North Yorkshire.
