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Take one cook, add a passion for football, lay the mixture on a firm base of religion and you have the phenomenon that is Delia Smith.
For 30 years, Delia has delighted the British public with her own brand of gastronomic guidance.
Her no-nonsense approach has seen her recognised as the Gold Standard among TV chefs. Clarissa, Keith and Ainsley may have their bikes, booze and buffoonery but Delia, all bread and butter pudding to her contemporaries' soufflés, is still the tops.
 City Slicker: Delia Smith with players from her beloved Norwich
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But, for a time at least, everything is set to change. Following the huge success of her two How to Cook books and their accompanying television series, she has decided to hang up her apron to concentrate on her other great love, Norwich City Football Club.
She and her husband Michael Wynn Jones, who kindled her love for The Beautiful Game, are majority shareholders there.
Food is a crusade to her  |
Alison Bowyer, Delia's Smith's biographer
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Its Carrow Road stadium's restaurants and function rooms already feature her recipes and there is talk of her naming the club's new conference facility the Delia Smith Business Centre.
As in her professional and religious life (a Roman Catholic convert, she attends Mass every day), Delia Smith takes her football very seriously indeed. Recently she brought the world renowned couturier Bruce Oldfield in to redesign the team's kit.
 Early days: Cooking spaghetti in the 70s
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"It's a crucial time not just for Norwich, but for all football clubs at the moment," she says, "We're all in great difficulties and we have to find other sources of income in order to survive.
"We have a big football stadium with lots of rooms and lots of space and it's trying to fill it with people eating and drinking and enjoying food on the other days of the year, because football is only 24 days a year."
On set discussions revolve around two things, food or football |
David Willcock, executive producer, How to Cook
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Her biographer, Alison Bowyer, says that such a sabbatical was to be expected. "Delia's been saying this for a while. Don't forget, she gave up cookery writing in the 1980s to concentrate on her religious books.
"During the whole of the 1980s she only brought out one cookery book, and that was a reissue. But food is a crusade to her and she will be back."
 Her books have sold 11 million copies
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"One of our first meetings was at Carrow Road. When you're with her in the directors' box, she's there in the middle of all the men in suits, wearing her team scarf and shouting. She's very vocal."
In recent years commentators have noted the existence of the so-called Delia Effect, whereby her endorsement of a food product or cooking utensil, be it sea salt, vegetable bouillon or a balloon whisk, sees shoppers falling over themselves in a buying frenzy.
This time, success might be much harder to achieve. Indeed the mixture of an ailing football club with little to spend on quality players, and constant outgoings to cover, may yet leave Delia Smith as sick as a parrot.
But the woman who rose from unqualified teenage washer-up to sell 11 million books and create a fortune estimated at £24m has never been one to duck a challenge.
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