Nigella Nothing Is Off Limits

Despite a slew of TV appearances, cookbooks, world tours and more, Nigella Lawson insists she’s an indolent person at heart. Sue Smethurst sits down with the most recognisable face in home cookery to crack the secret to her seemingly effortless success.

- Sue Smethurst

Nigella Lawson sashays across the room in a flowing summery print dress and kisses me on both cheeks, clasping my garden-roughened hands in her own perfectly manicured ones.

“Would you like tea?” she asks while beckoning me to sit.

It may be the first time I’ve met the queen of British home cookery, but it feels like we’re old pals because Nigella has been a part of my – and millions of others’ – life forever.

Countless numbers of mere kitchen mortals have attempted her famed chocolate Malteser cake, or triumphantly mastered her roast chicken. More than 10 million dog-eared copies of her iconic cookbooks sit on kitchen benches around the world. And we regularly welcome her into our homes on the many television shows she fronts. The former journalist and book reviewer, who has built a $40 million empire on mastering the art of effortless charm, is now one of the most recognisable women in the world.

Surprisingly, the 59-year-old is more beautiful and disarmingly charming in real life than on screen. Her porcelain skin is luminous and her thick arched eyebrows have been shaped with impossible precision. The Nigella recipe is part Sophia Loren, part Jane Fonda’s Barbarella, with a surprising sprinkling of self-deprecating humour. The result is definitely more goddess than domestic.

“There’s no difference between who I am publicly and privately, but I’m quite lazy,” she says when I ask if there’s a secret flaw in all of this bowl-licking lusciousness. “I’ve always had a theory that lazy people work harder because you have to drive yourself to get things done.”