Delia Smith

Share

Delia Smith, born in June of 1941 in Woking, Surrey, started out as a 16 year old who left school to work as a hairdresser and from there rose to the top in the way of culinary stardom. She took the compliments her boyfriend gave her on her cooking skills and chose to pursue a career in that direction starting out as a washer and then waitress before finally being given the privilege to actually cook.

All the while she poured over cooking books and tested various recipes to perfect her skills. She began writing for the Daily Mirror in the cookery department and then earned a column in the Evening Standard. Yet it wasn’t until 1973 and the first season of her ‘Family Fare’ cooking show that things for Delia Smith really heated up.

After the first wave of television success as the ‘Family Fare’ host, Delia pitched an idea to create a show that would help people lean to cook at a beginner’s level and this spurred her to then write three ‘Cookery Course’ instructional books with this same goal in mind. The television show materialized as well in the way of ‘Delia’s How to Cook’ in 1998 and it was an instant hit across the nation.

While she may have ended her run on television in 2003, she still continued to be an avid cooker and writer as she published ‘How to Cheat at Cooking’ in 2008 and it went on to be a best seller. Delia has since dabbled in many other pursuits including writing four religious novels outside of her expansive cookbook titles. She is a smart business woman who also has her own website, is a Norwich City Football Club shareholder, as well as the Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

She has come a long way from washing those dishes and today is a beloved cooking icon relelasing Delias Happy Christmas.