Nigella Lawson
English journalist, food writer, broadcaster and television presenter.
I am always surprised when people read double entendres into my innocuous babble.
I think cooking should be about fun and family. I'm not a trained chef. I don't pretend to be and I think part of my appeal is that my approach to cooking is really relaxed and not rigid. There are no rules in my kitchen.
I am greedy. I eat under stress. When you are eating, the rest of the world is tuned out. And when you tune back in you feel guilty about having been greedy and the rest of the world is still there, so you have to carry on eating!
She has flawless skin, perfect white teeth, a voluptuous body, ample height and lots of lush, brown hair. And then there are those cookbooks, which have become international best sellers. She has become enough of an icon stateside to be profiled last year in People and Vanity Fair.
I have long been convinced that Nigella's iconic status has less to do with her abilities than a desire on the part of her admirers to invest in what she represents.
I took a fortnight off. But I'm not a great believer in breaks. I don't want to be rattling around inside my own head. I did feel I was spiralling into a Kathy Burke character and tried going out, but I prefer it here. Filming keeps me busy. It absorbs me.
The thing I liked about writing about food when I started it was that I felt I was writing about food in a different way. Not like a food writer.
...obesity isn’t caused by those who adore food. People tend not to put on weight through eating meals. I’d say it’s people who eat non-stop.
I think sometimes that people assume because I'm on television I'm an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I'm not and I don't have any training. My approach isn't about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat.
It wasn’t really a chat show, it was a magazine show. I looked at it as a summer job. As long as no one makes me interview a celeb again, I’ll be happy. It wasn’t what I signed up for but, of course, nowadays everyone likes celebs. I’m pretty bored of them, though. I wasn’t interested and couldn’t be bothered to pretend I was.
No doubt there can be a shy, reserved side to Nigella Lawson - and some people interpret this as coldness - but it is not in evidence today. She seems flamboyant, if anything, and perhaps this is a persona she can slip in and out of (John Diamond once described her as 'a gay man trapped in a woman's body').