‘DELIA HAS PAVED THE WAY FOR TODAY'S TV CHEFS'

AS NATIONAL TREASURE DELIA SMITH TURNS WE LOOK BACK AT HER CAREER AND REFLECT ON HOW THE “DELIA EFFECT” CHANGED ATTITUDES TO HOME COOKING

- ELLIE KIRWIN-JONES

Brought up around food – her mother and grandmothers were all expert cooks – it seems Delia’s fate was written in the stars. Although she left Bexleyheath School without qualifications, at 21 she got her first restaurant job in Paddington, London.

Delia, who was used to helping in the kitchen at home, recalled, “I was always asking the chef how to do certain things and one evening he suggested I come and spend an evening washing-up and actually see it all happening. Well that was it really.”

And once she’d been given the chance to get stuck into the cooking, there was no going back. She supplemented her pay by working as a private chef and spent time in the British Museum Reading Room copying down 18th-century recipes she later tried herself. When a food photographer suggested she pitch her historic recipes to a book publisher, a 50-year career in food writing and broadcasting was born.

In 1969, she became a cookery writer for the Daily Mirror’s newly launched magazine. Her first feature included kipper pâté, beef in beer and cheesecake. She married the magazine’s deputy editor Michael WynnJones in 1971. The couple were unable to have children, which Delia has said she would have loved, but added, “Maybe one of the reasons I’ve been so successful in my career is down to the fact I haven’t had any.”