Retired chef hopes to sell margarine sculptures to shops

But now a retired chef is hoping to turn his hobby into a business after winning another industry accolade.

Paul Rogerson aims to sell his fatty creations to supermarkets and speciality butchers.

The 63-year-old won gold at the Chefs' World Cup in Luxembourg four years ago for turning some dollops of fat into Don Quixote, while he won praise and publicity from his startlingly lifelike image of Rabbie Burns.

He also took gold at the ScotHot industry awards earlier this month, beating off competition from chocolate and ice sculptors with a carving of an Oriental scholar.

Paul, a former executive chef at the Caledonian Hilton and recently retired Jewel & Esk Valley College cookery lecturer, said: "I suppose I would have liked to exhibit it as art at some point but I haven't had the opportunity.

"This has really been more of a hobby over the decades, although one which takes up most evenings and weekends.

"I would like to see them in supermarkets and speciality butchers and fishmongers, and I'd sell them, I can't give them away for free."

Using cooking fat normally used to make pastry, Paul, who lives in Corstorphine, has created caricatures in the form of Roger Rabbit and the famous Spanish hero Don Quixote.

He has also taught the unusual art to several apprentices over the years and has travelled far and wide to competitions and high-profile buffets.

Paul originally stumbled into sculpting after working with a group of Japanese chefs at Gleneagles in 1973.

He said: "We got talking about ice sculptures and I asked them if that's something they had done much of in the Far East.

"I'm not quite sure what happened but they took this to mean I wanted to do ice sculpting and shortly came up to me saying 'here are the tools you asked for'.

"The head chef and the manager didn't want them, and unfortunately they were 72, and about 1000 now, so I bought them and that's where I started out."

However, he finally settled on margarine, rather than ice, after a few accidents.

"It can be a perilous business - I once pushed a carving block over a cracked slate on the way back to the fridge and the whole thing shattered."That doesn't happen with fat."

But despite the hours invested in his work, Paul will never be able to exhibit it more than once, due to the statue's short life span.

He said: "It takes around a month to create one of these, although you only have around two months at the most before it starts to go rancid and bits fall off.

"The current one, for which I won gold on the table of honour at ScotHot, took about five weeks of careful work, so I'd like to see it displayed somewhere.

"It's also taking up the entire kitchen and my wife won't have it in there any more."