I tell the person on the phone quietly and firmly to piss off. Then again, 'No, sorry, just... piss... off.' They are not trying to sell me a subscription to Sky or interest me in a second American Express card. They aren't even attempting to get me to take out critical injury insurance ('You never know what's around the corner, Mr Slater'). The cold caller is actually asking me to talk about Delia Smith for a piece they are writing. Could I help them with their research? I know not to talk to journalists. A lesson learnt the hard way. Especially those writing an unauthorised and unwanted article on a great British icon. It would be like spilling the beans about Alan Bennett, Stephen Fry or Victoria Wood. Supposing, of course, that there were any beans to spill. Even if you knew some delicious, salacious gossip, some tantalising indiscretion, to let it slip would feel like treason.
I first met Delia in 1978, in a dining room overlooking the English Lakes. The sun was setting and the sky slowly turning a deep orange rose, the lights had been dimmed somewhat over-theatrically, and dinner was about to be served, a set menu: 'The main course tonight is roast pork with seven vegetables.' There was cabbage with gin and juniper, parsnip purée, carrots with caraway, beetroot in blackcurrant jelly and, if I remember rightly, a daffodil perched on the edge of the plate. So good, so very, very 1970s. Unfortunately, I was not about to tuck into my leg of locally reared piglet with its strip of crackling and light marsala sauce. I was about to serve it instead. I was not a customer, but one of a team of waiting staff all set to serve a busy dining room in one of the then fashionable, fussily decorated 'country house hotels'. All seemed as usual, then someone told me that at one of my tables was one Delia Smith.
Suddenly I was all fingers and thumbs, convinced that the pork and seven vegetables would drop into her lap, or worse, into the lap of one of her guests, and should she ask me a question that I would get it all wrong and end up covered in embarrassment. Instead, Delia turned out to be one of the least intimidating people you could ever meet. Not only human but actually rather nice. We even chatted for a minute or two and I spent the rest of the season casually dropping into any conversation I could that I once met Delia Smith.
Of course, this was long before Delia Smith became Delia. A good 20 years before Jamie Oliver became Jamie and Nigella Lawson became Nigella. Twenty years, in fact, before Nigel Slater became Nigel. The single-name cookery brand is a phenomenon started by Delia. Or perhaps I should say 'for' her. I mean, Constance Spry was never known as Connie, and the legendary Robert Carrier would never, ever have been referred to as Bob other than by his closest friends. And I am willing to bet that no one save her husband would ever have dared to call Mrs Cradock by her Christian name.
That the one-name cookery writer syndrome started with Delia is a sign of the affection in which we, as a nation, hold her. We may have lunch at The River Cafe and dinner at The Wolseley but when it comes to entertaining at home it is to her recipe books that so many of us turn. Time and again. You know that her recipes are safe and workable. That they will, even for the most ham-fisted of cooks, come out as the picture promises. It is almost impossible to fail with a Delia Smith recipe. Which is more than you can say for any other name in the business. And it is that for which we love her. Delia is an icon whose status and longevity is based firmly on trust.
A couple of hours ago I was waiting at table once again. This time Delia was also on the best table, the only difference being that it was not in the Lakes, but in my dining room in north London. I had persuaded the country's most famous Norwich City supporter, along with her husband Michael, to come to dinner within a knife's throw of Arsenal. So we sit there, discussing not so much food, but cats, football and being 'done over' in the press. Delia manages to be slightly less infuriated with the journalists who have been paid for a story that is peppered with lies, exaggerations and, in my case, so-called quotes that I have never even thought of, let alone said. While I can't wait to get my own back on the witch who put words into my mouth, Delia takes an altogether more dignified view of such journalism. Yes, our favourite cook was hurt, but I get the feeling that she realises that no one can ever extinguish the warmth we hold for the person who gave us Peppers Piedmontaise and Squidgy Chocolate Cake. Delia rises above such pesky scribblings and hatchet jobs like a freshly baked cheese soufflé.
But this makes her sound like a saint. She is, of course, totally aware of her bankability, her ability to sell books (16 million to date), of running a hugely successful catering business (90,000 meals last year), of predicting the latest food product, and is, I am sure, happy to turn down the beggings and pleadings of television executives who want to poach her from the BBC. And when faced with the team opposing her beloved Norwich City Football Club I gather she can drop an aitch or two in the directors' box. When you watch her gently guiding the viewers through the making of an omelette, please don't think you are watching anything but a thoroughly modern, clued-up, high-powered business woman.
When I mention the £24 million she is supposed to have accumulated from the sales of her cookery books she bursts into amazed laughter. It is, she insists, rubbish. How the compilers of the various 'rich lists' come up with the figures they do is quite beyond her. But then I figure the money rumours must be exaggerated. Let's face it, if the owner of a football club had that sort of cash to hand then the team just might be doing a wee bit better than it is.
At the heart of it all is not so much money but a wish to communicate the joys of good food - through TV, the restaurant and catering, books and magazines. No one has ever been, or is ever likely to be, more successful at that. She tells me she has had enough of doing major television series, but might do something from time to time. Though she acknowledges that the formal, cooking-to-camera style of food programmes has passed its view-by date, we all know there is still a hard core of viewers waiting for her next series. According to Delia they will be waiting a long time.
Right now she has enough on her plate. A new series of books priced neatly under £10 on Fish, Chicken, Soup and Chocolate have already pushed every other cook off the bestsellers list, with at least another four to come. At a bookstore in the North I saw enough of them being unpacked to build a small fortress. The recipes aren't new, but are Delia favourites. They are not so much the recipes that people dream over; this is the stuff they actually cook.
I suppose I should, by rights, have been awake all night with worry about this meal. The truth is that I wasn't. There was a brief moment, at about 3am, when I do remember waking and thinking, 'God, I've got Delia coming to dinner tomorrow', but even half asleep it was accompanied by none of the palpitations one might expect. In fact, I remember feeling rather warm and fuzzy about it. As perhaps you might if Delia were cooking for you. It wasn't hard to work out what we were going to eat. We like, and dislike, the same sort of food. And though British cooking's first lady is not the sort of person you would knock up a hotpot for, I know that she is unlikely to be impressed by smart-assed food.
'I hate all that poncey food,' says Delia as we sink our teeth into some old-fashioned roast pork and crunchy pommes Anna. (Pommes Anna aren't supposed to be crunchy but I put them in too early.) 'My favourite era was when amateurs were cooking, and it was lovely, lovely food,' she says. 'Now it is all towers and drizzles, that stuff that Elizabeth David called "Theatre on a plate".' I have done a plain and carefully dressed salad too, a simple green one with a classic mustardy dressing, and then ice cream for afters, made with yoghurt, honey and vanilla seeds and served with slices of pink grapefruit, a tart and startling contrast to the richness of roast pork and its faintly smart marsala sauce. I wasn't trying to recreate that first meal, but a modern, simplified version seemed appropriate enough.
This leads us on to recipes. I am careful to avoid our one longstanding disagreement. Long after it became illegal to sell in anything but metric weights, Delia still includes imperial measures in her recipes. We have clashed over this before. Whereas every other writer has changed to metric, Delia resolutely includes imperial measures in her books and magazines. I think the quaint addition of the measurements of yesteryear actually makes the printed recipe appear more complicated. To say nothing of the implied desire to hold on to little England. Like pounds, shillings and pence, modern life has no place for pounds and ounces. But Delia still thinks in pounds and ounces and what is more, I have a feeling she always will. I decide not to bring the subject up, lest we choke on our chocolate truffles.
Delia and I have both been going through our vast store of old recipes. Recipes that are constantly asked for by readers and which we have to dig out and get copied. (Very, very boring that, by the way, just in case you were thinking of asking for something we did 10 years ago.) Neither of us can remember every recipe. But then I have yet to find a cookery writer who can. At the end of the day recipes are how we make our money and a reluctance to repeat them means that they tend to accumulate quietly under the bed.
Delia says she has been having huge fun digging out some of her early recipes. 'Oh, I'd forgotten that one,' she announces when I mention an old favourite of mine (chocolate hazelnut cake) and then we get chatting about how recipes have subtly changed over the years. Going through her old stuff must be like opening a huge treasure chest. Puddings and pies, soups and cakes you had forgotten about, many of which deserve to be dusted off, tweaked a little and given a new life. Funnily enough it is readers who tend to jog your memory about these treasures. Or what could end up being 'nice little earners'. Hence the new collection of little black books.
But that's not all. Delia has a new magazine out. It is initially a one-off but if it continues to sell as it is at the moment she would be silly not to expand it. Called Delia's Christmas Easy , it has that simple, clean, cool style so typical of Australia's light and airy food magazines but with the very British warmth of Delia's recipes. So there is roast tenderloin of pork with mustard crème fraîche, spiced roast parsnips and roast pheasant with chestnut stuffing. Surprises include a soufflé of Arbroath Smokies and a prune and armagnac creole cake but photographed in fashionable daylight rather than with the old studio lighting, and with simple white plates and monotone colours. No one could ever accuse Delia of standing still.
Not that she could if she wanted to. Delia's claim that she was 'reciped out' and intending to retire may have made the front pages earlier this year but seems to have been put on hold. Then again perhaps a new 200-page magazine and a collection of cookbooks is her idea of retirement. But it is unlikely that we will see any television from her again. 'It takes over your whole life,' she says.
I have no intention of bringing up the subject of money but I suspect any thoughts of retirement have been well and truly dashed by the simple fact that Delia has the most expensive hobby in the world. More expensive than non-stop partying in Monte Carlo. More expensive even than a serious coke habit. When it comes to eating money nothing has quite such an appetite as a football club. Delia's associations with Norwich City go back a long way, and Michael has always supported them, but this is about as expensive a game as anyone can possibly play.
Delia works tirelessly on promoting Norwich City, and one sometimes suspects she might be enjoying a well-earned retirement by now if it wasn't for the club that has so got under her skin. But then some of her readers may never make it to a match or to a table in the club's restaurant, they just want her recipes. So much so that it sometimes seems as if the books and magazines just sell themselves - last week more than 10 of the 25 bestselling cookery titles on Amazon were hers. Loyalty, it appears, is not something Delia will ever have to worry about.
How the hairdresser became a kitchen star
June 18, 1941 Delia Smith born in Woking, Surrey.
1957 Leaves school aged 16, without qualifications, and starts work as a trainee hairdresser.
1962 Gets a job as a dishwasher in The Singing Chef, Paddington, moves to waitressing and is later allowed to help with cooking.
1969 Begins writing for the Daily Mirror, where her future husband, Michael Wynne-Jones, was deputy editor. Her first recipe is published.
1971 Publishes her first book - How to Cheat at Cookery
1972 Starts writing for the Evening Standard, a relationship that would last 12 years
1973 Family Fare, her first TV series, begins on BBC1
1978 Volume one of the three-part Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course is published, backing up the eponymous series
1990 Delia's Christmas is broadcast and published, selling more than 1 million copies
1993 Sainsbury's The Magazine is launched by Smith and her husband. Her Summer Collection sells more than 1 million copies.
1994 Awarded OBE
1995 Winter Collection published
1998 How To Cook showed a nation of incompetents how to boil an egg. When the programme was aired 58 million more eggs were sold in six weeks, and sales of an omelette pan featured on the series leapt from 200 to 90,000 a year
2001 Her place in history is secured as Collins dictionary lists the 'Delia effect', where the whole country tries to buy something she recommends
2003 There is national consternation at the announcement that Delia is to give up cooking to concentrate on her directorship of Norwich City football club
· Research by Alice Ritchie
