Three LITTLE Words
as national treasure Delia Smith turns 80, we look back at her career and reflect on how the “delia effect” changed attitudes to home cooking
Funnyman John Bishop has teamed up with writer and director Tony Pitts for another season of their brilliantly simple podcast. The premise is easy – each week, a guest picks out three words that mean something to them, plus one they never want to hear again. What follows is an insightful chat about the power of language.
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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.”
She also baked the cake pictured on the cover of The Rolling Stones’ 1969 album
Let It Bleed. After being asked to make a gaudy cake, she covered it in cream and glacé cherries, with no idea of what it would be used for.
She also wrote a column for the
Evening Standard before moving to the
Evening News and later went to the
Radio Times, where she stayed until 1986.
Delia, a devout Roman Catholic, first hit our TV screens in the 1970s on BBC East magazine programme Look East. But it wasn’t long before she had her own cookery show, Family Fare, which ran from 1973 to 1975 and proved a hit, establishing her as a family name.
The public loved her easy-to-understand recipes and relaxed, stress-free approach to preparing food.
The cook went on to become a consultant for Sainsbury’s from 1993 to 1998 and launched
Sainsbury’s Magazine with Michael. Her 1995 book
Delia Smith’s Winter Collection sold two million copies in hardback and was the fifth biggest-selling book of the
1990s. She is thought to have amassed a fortune of
£30 million over the course of her career. Her series How To Cook and the spin-off book,
How To Cheat At Cooking, saw the impact of the “Delia effect”.
Sales of eggs rose by 10% when she showed people how to boil them and she was responsible for a run on frozen mash and tinned minced beef. She also caused a national cranberry shortage in 1995 as people tried to recreate one of her dishes.
The word Delia made the cut in the 2001 Collins English Dictionary, with the entry, “The recipes or style of cooking of British cookery writer Delia Smith.”
The “Delia effect” struck again in 2010 when she fronted a Waitrose ad for ginger and rhubarb crème brûlée. When British farmers were unable to meet demand, Waitrose had to import German rhubarb.
On gaining a CBE in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Delia said, “There are so many people who do so much, but to be picked out amongst them is a great honour. I think the main thing is what my husband said, he said it’s sort of a tribute to home cooks all over Britain.”
She was recognised for her TV work with a BAFTA Special Award in 2013. “Delia’s achievements have paved the way for today’s cooking programmes and formats,” said Andrew Newman, chair of BAFTA’S Television Committee. “It is unlikely that Jamie [Oliver], Nigella [Lawson], Gordon [Ramsay], The Hairy Bikers and much-loved competitions such as
The Great British Bake Off or Masterchef would have happened without her contribution.”
Away from the kitchen, Delia is known for her commitment to the football team Norwich City, and she and Michael are joint majority shareholders of the club. She famously told Norwich supporters during a tricky 2005 game, “We need a 12th man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let’s be ‘avin’ you! Come on!”
As the chef enters her ninth decade, the “Delia effect” lives on. “I still receive so much warmth wherever I am,” she revealed. “All I ever really wanted was to convince people not to be afraid to cook and that they could do anything I could do.”