Britain's beloved Delia gives up cookery shows

Smith, who began her screen career in the 1970s and has sold millions of cookbooks, says she will continue demonstrating her easy and reliable recipes in online tutorials, but her television days after over.

"When I started, there was further education in the BBC; now you have to entertain. You have someone telling me I haven’t got time to show this, or I haven’t got time to show that," she told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Smith recently ended a contract to promote upmarket supermarket chain Waitrose, after which she said her former bosses at the BBC were immediately on the telephone asking when they could film her next programme.

"And I said, 'no, thank you'. I am afraid to say this is the end when it comes to Delia on the telly," she said.

Such is Smith's influence that anything she endorses immediately flies off the shop shelves, a phenomenon known as the "Delia effect", which has earned a place in the Collins English Dictionary.

Her other major love is football -- she is a joint majority shareholder in Norwich City along with her husband, Michael Wynn Jones.