Delia concentrates on Canaries

Delia Smith: Letting cookery take a back seat

Delia Smith is putting her TV cookery career on hold - to concentrate on her beloved Norwich City football club.

The 58-year-old kitchen guru and her husband, publisher Michael Wynn Jones, hold a 58% stake in the First Division side, nicknamed the Canaries.

Now she has ditched plans for a third series of her How To Cook BBC Two programme to put her energy into the team.

Norwich's Daryl Sutch competes with Ipswich's David Johnson on Sunday

Her spokesman said: "The original agreement was that there was only ever going to be two series, then there was some talk of adding a third.

"The How To Cook books and series have taken three years and she would have had to have gone straight into doing a third lasting up to another 18 months.

"Delia has decided she wants a break and wants to do something else involving her other passion in life, Norwich City."

Bestseller

Smith has sold 11 million copies of her hardback cookery books over the past decade.

Her How To Cook series proved a sensation when critics attacked her for demonstrating how to boil an egg - but viewers loved the series, and sales of products featured in the programmes soared.

Delia facts

She left school at 16 and took a job as a trainee hairdresser

She only took up cooking when she was 21

Her first book was published in 1971

She began her TV career in 1973 with her first show, Family Fare

Smith and her husband have invested £4m into Norwich City, which is reported to be losing £4,500 a day.

On the field, manager Bruce Rioch quit "by agreement" last week after the side won just one out of 11 matches. New manager Bryan Hamilton led the team to a 2-0 victory at local rivals Ipswich on Sunday.

Smith's plans for the club include building a state-of-the-art conference centre at the club's Carrow Road ground. She also runs the club's catering operation.

She told The Times she had an ambition to "get some style into football".

Smith is not to leave cookery completely. She is to continue to supply recipes for Sainsbury's Magazine - edited by her husband - and there are plans for a Delia Smith website.