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A parody on televised cooking program s, the Swedish Chef wears a toque-blanche and has bushy eyebrows that completely obscure his eyes. He was one of the few Muppets to employ an actual puppeteer's hands, originally Oz's, in the designs--that is, they were visible to the audience through his sleeves and facilitated handling food and utensils.

A typical Swedish Chef routine consists of him in a kitchen, tossing apparently random and unrelated ingredients into a pot (and just about everywhere else) while singing a nonsense song and speaking in his own incomprehensible dialect of mock- Swedish, with many 'eu' and 'oo' sounds and nonsense like "børk børk børk."

In one sketch, a misaimed explosive charge slightly damaged the face of the puppet. The Chef's face remained scarred through the rest of the season.

This nonsense language has been given a life of its own, with "Swedish Chef" translators on several websites such as Google, and in 2003 the Opera published a special "Bork" version of its browser which turned the MSN website into "Swedish."

The Swedish Chef character is actually based on real life Swedish chef Lars Bäckman . His rather unsuccessful appearance on " Good Morning America" caught the attention of Jim Henson, who later bought the rights to the recording and created Lars Bäckmans muppet alter ego.

1 Merchandising

During the 1980s, the Swedish Chef had his own short-lived breakfast cereal for sale in grocery stores, called " Croonchy Stars."

2 External Links

• alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork, the USENET newsgroup for discussing the Chef.
• The enchefizer, a program which "translates" English into Mock Swedish.
• The Dialectizer, which can translate webpages into Mock Swedish.