[Techman]

Yes, I've had valve sets in the kitchen, but kept them as far away as possible from cooking and kettles. I now use a little Ferguson 4 band mains battery transistor set that came in a job lot box of old radios from a junk sale several years ago and guess what, it sits right between the kettle and the cooker, inches away from both of them and works just fine - a valve set wouldn't survive in such a position. I used to run a CRT TV in the kitchen and that used to hiss and crack to the point that it had to be switched off PDQ if cooking had already started before it had been switched on. So long as the set had been switched on and allowed to warm up before the commencement of any cooking, everything was fine with no EHT tracking, which was bad enough when it happened to knock the tuning completely off station.