Delia calls 'cut' after 40 years on TV

07 February 2013 - 02:41 By Reuters
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British celebrity chef Delia Smith. File photo
British celebrity chef Delia Smith. File photo

British celebrity chef Delia Smith is quitting television, saying entertainment has overtaken education on cookery shows.

Smith, 71, the UK's best-selling cookery author, with more than 21million books sold, told fans at a trade show that she was leaving TV after about 40 years to focus on a new venture, the Delia Online Cookery School.

The chef said she was still passionate about teaching people how to cook in a no-nonsense style, but she now wanted to work online with her followers, who have coined the phrase "doing a Delia" to refer to preparing one of her recipes.

According to her online biography, Smith quit school at 16 and worked as a hairdresser, as a shop assistant and in a travel agency before starting to cook.

She used to wonder why British food was so awful and French food so good.

After working in a restaurant and as a magazine cookery writer, she wrote her first cookbook in 1971. But she made her name with her first TV show, Family Fare, in the mid-1970s.

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