BBC to screen new 40 Years of Delia series

BBC to screen new 40 Years of Delia series (Image credit: PA Wire/PA Photos)

Delia Smith is to celebrate her 40-year career with a new cookery show, the BBC confirmed. The 67-year-old celebrity chef, who started out as a food writer for the Daily Mirror in 1969, will recreate her most popular recipes, but using modern ingredients and a modern budget, in a series of half-hour shows to screen on BBC Two. A BBC spokesman confirmed the show - which has been given the working title of 40 Years Of Delia - is in the pipeline, saying: "Delia is close to signing up." The series will also include comment from celebrity fans such as fellow Norwich City FC supporter Stephen Fry and will look at the influence Delia's recipes have had on the way we cook. BBC Two controller Janice Hadlow told Broadcast magazine the show would 'combine cookery with social history'. The BBC said: "Delia's single-handedly changed the nation's eating habits from roast duck with cherry sauce in the 1960s to freezer favourites in the noughties." It's not yet known when the show will be broadcast.

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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.