Delia Smith is the Jay-Z of the middle-class television chef world, albeit a Jay-Z who keeps getting drunk at football matches and has fingers like chubby uncooked sausages.
So why is Delia Smith like Jay-Z? Well, her forthcoming gangsta rap album All Eyez On Me (I'm Making Flapjacks) is certainly one reason, and the other is that she's about to break her own self-enforced retirement. The BBC has announced that Delia Smith is set to make her television comeback next year, six years after announcing that she'd hung up her whisk for good, with an update of her 1971 book How To Cheat At Cooking. Of course, the TV cooking landscape has changed immeasurably over the last six years, so it's clear that Delia needs a gimmick – which is why she plans on screaming all her recipes like they're red-eyed, wobbly-legged football chants.
Look around at the state of television cookery at the moment and what have you got? Gordon Ramsay bellowing swearwords. Jamie Oliver slowly transforming into a Shed Seven-loving Michael Winner. Nigella Lawson dressed in tinfoil knickers pretending that she's friends with poor people. Heston Blumenthal cooking a burger atom by atom using a particle accelerator made out of unicorn piss. Food Poker – a programme so hopelessly schizophrenic that it's like a nightmarish Vietnam veteran's flashback as presented by Matt Allwright.
What TV cookery needs now is a steady hand – an awoken monolith who can show these upstarts how things are done. And, clearly, that means Delia Smith. Delia Smith is the undisputed queen of the TV kitchen – if Delia writes a recipe involving cranberries, the whole country sells out of cranberries in a day. If Delia shows us how to make omelettes properly, the whole country sells out of omelette pans in a day. And if Delia turns up on YouTube drunkenly shouting into a microphone at a football match, the whole country lurches around sporting venues all red-eyed screaming "Let's be 'avin you! Come on!" the next day. That's the all-encompassing power of Delia Smith's influence.
And now, after a six-year absence, Delia Smith is returning to television to teach us slack-jawed morons how to cook food without buggering it up by hitting packets of pasta with wooden spoons like bloody cavemen. Next year Delia Smith will return to the BBC with an updated version of her 1971 book How To Cheat At Cooking, with a BBC spokesperson saying:
"It's going to be something we've not done before with Delia, showing how to cut corners, but not cut corners on quality or taste. We're also going to show her life beyond the kitchen. It's great that she's coming back and it's showing more of her life than ever before."
Now, we know what you're thinking. Delia Smith's How To Cheat At Cooking sounds an awful lot like Nigella Express, but hopefully it won't copy Nigella Express' 'don't worry if you haven't got any eggs, use one of your shoes or whatever instead' mentality. Or end each show with Delia Smith smearing butterscotch sauce across her face in a silky nightie like Nigella does. We really hope that last one doesn't happen, by the way. We have trouble enough sleeping as it is.
But, hey, if anyone's qualified to stare into a TV camera and awkwardly intone ways that the general public can cheat at cooking, it's Delia Smith. All we have to do now is see if Delia Smith cheats at cooking the same way we cheat at cooking – but let's hope not, because watching a 66-year-old woman eat a three-day-old slice of takeaway pizza in front of Loose Women with one sausagey hand rammed down the front of her trousers isn't entertainment. But it is strangely arousing.
Stabby McGee says
Dawn of War player, Stuart?
Crowbars And Lace says
“Nigella” looks like a disease spread by rodents.
How’s it pronounced?