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Delia returns for 40-year anniversary series

Ah, it seems like just yesterday that Delia Smith first appeared on our screens. Actually, it doesn’t, it seems more like the early '70s, but never mind: the first lady of English cookery is set to make a nostalgia-filled comeback, with a new BBC Two series in the oven.

With the working title 40 Years of Delia, the five-parter will “combine cookery with social history”, according to channel controller Janice Hadlow, with viewers and celebrity guests looking back at how Delia has influenced, well, the course of human history, basically.

“Delia single-handedly changed the nation’s eating habits from roast duck with cherry sauce in the 1960s to freezer favourites in the noughties,” said the BBC.

Another Beeb source told the Daily Mirror: "The five-part series will go through the archives and look at how Delia's recipes helped shape what we cook at home and how food tastes have changed. She is also planning to dust off some of her old recipes and give them a modern twist."

That "modern twist", we hear, will mean using up-to-date ingredients and taking into account the fact that these days it costs a tenner (or thereabouts) to buy a tin of baked beans. But with a 40-year career behind her, we’re sure a veteran like Delia will find that kind of culinary ingeniousness a piece of cake.

by Will Parkhouse, Thursday 28 May 2009

Sources: Daily Mirror, Broadcast
Picture:  PA

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