After Dinner Speakers: Delia Smith, Ian McCaskill, Mike Wilmot

Delia's simple style of teaching has changed attitudes to cookery in this country. Helped by a team of assistants, she prides herself on testing her recipes over and over again, making them easy to follow, simple and achievable. Anyone who follows a Delia recipe can do so with confidence, and her ability to increase the sales of ingredients by a simple mention is legendary. So where did it all begin? At 16 Delia left school with no qualifications and worked as a trainee hairdresser, then she became a shop assistant and later worked for a travel agency. At the age of 21, a time washing up in a restaurant pointed her in the direction of cookery. She says it was when a boyfriend kept praising a former girlfriend's talents in the kitchen that she got fed up and started cooking seriously. Studying English cookery books in the British Museum inspired her to try out recipes, cooking for family and friends. But not everything was successful. Her mother recalls the Great Rice Pudding Disaster where she forgot to add an essential ingredient, sugar. In 1969 Delia became cookery writer on the Mirror and later wrote for London's Evening Standard. One of her first television experiences was as an assistant on a TV food ad. When someone dropped a pie just before filming began, she stepped in saying she could make that. When she presented her first series for BBC1, home cooking was declining as people were turning to takeaways, supermarkets and the novelty of ready-meals. Delia wanted to run basic television cookery courses to revive enthusiasm for home cooking. When her Cookery Course was broadcast, accompanied by back-up books, it was an instant success. Delia Smith's Summer Collection and her Winter Collection followed and, in 1998, her How to Cook series stripped cookery back to basics, placing importance on simple ingredients and teaching basic techniques. The book is the most successful yet. Away from cooking, Delia’s great passion is football. Taking a very active interest in Norwich City FC, she is a director of the club. When in January 2003, the media reported that she was giving up recipe-writing to concentrate on the Canaries, it caused a national debate. Of course, the reports of her retirement proved somewhat exaggerated, and with plenty more books planned, we'll be seeing plenty more of Delia. Delia's latest book is Delia's Vegetarian Collection.