About Delia Smith

Delia Smith has shown the British public how to cook for more than 25 years and is one of the leading modern authorities on good basic cooking.

Delia's simple style of teaching has changed attitudes to cookery in the UK. Helped by a team of assistants, she prides herself on testing her recipes over and over again to make them easy to follow, simple and achievable. Anyone who follows a Delia recipe can do so with confidence, and her ability to increase the sales of ingredients by a simple mention is legendary.

So where did it all begin? Delia left school at 16 with no qualifications and worked as a trainee hairdresser. She then became a shop assistant and later worked at a travel agency. At the age of 21, some time spent washing up in a restaurant pointed her in the direction of food. She says it was when a boyfriend kept praising his former girlfriend's talents in the kitchen that she got fed up and started cooking seriously.

Studying English cookery books at the British Museum inspired her to try out recipes when cooking for family and friends. But not every dish she made was successful. Her mother recalls the Great Rice Pudding Disaster when she forgot to add an essential ingredient - sugar.

In 1969, Delia became cookery writer on The Mirror and later wrote for London's Evening Standard. One of her first TV experiences was as an assistant on a TV food advertisement. When someone dropped a pie just before filming began, she volunteered to make the replacement.

When she presented her first series for BBC One, cooking at home was declining as people were turning to takeaways, supermarkets and the novelty of ready-meals. Delia wanted to run basic TV cookery courses to revive enthusiasm for cooking at home. When her Cookery Course was broadcast, accompanied by back-up books, it was an instant success.

Delia Smith's Summer Collection and her Winter Collection followed and, in 1998, her How to Cook series stripped cookery back to basics, placing importance on simple ingredients and teaching basic techniques. The book is the most successful yet.

Away from cooking, Delia's great passion is football - she's a director of Norwich City FC. When the media reported that she was giving up recipe-writing to concentrate on the Canaries in January 2003, it caused a national debate. Of course, the reports of her retirement proved somewhat exaggerated and, with more books planned, we'll be seeing plenty more of Delia.