In 1962 at age 21, she started work in a small restaurant in
Paddington, washing dishes before moving on to waitressing, then helping with the cooking. She started reading English cookery books in the
Reading Room at the
British Museum, trying out the recipes on a
Harley Street family with whom she was living. Her next job was at Carlton Studios in London, where she prepared food for studio photography. In 1969 Smith was taken on as the cookery writer for the ''
Daily Mirror's'' newly launched magazine. Their deputy editor was
Michael Wynn-Jones, whom she later married. Her first piece featured
kipper pâté, beef in beer and
cheesecake. She baked the cake that was used on the cover of
The Rolling Stones' album
Let It Bleed, which she later recalled was in response to a request that was for "a gaudy cake" that had to look "really horrible." In 1972 Smith started a column in the
Evening Standard. She later defected to the rival
Evening News, but she returned to
the Standard when that newspaper bought out
the News. She wrote for both for 12 years; later she wrote a column for the
Radio Times until 1986. Smith's first television appearances came in the early 1970s, as resident cook on
BBC East's regional magazine programme
Look East, shown on
BBC One across
East Anglia. Following this, she was offered her own cookery television show,
Family Fare which ran between 1973 and 1975. Smith became a recognisable figure amongst young people in the 1970s and early 1980s when she was an occasional guest on the BBC's Saturday morning children's programme
Multicoloured Swap Shop, giving basic cooking demonstrations. In Taiwan, Smith was compared to Taiwanese chef
Fu Pei-mei, and she was called the "Fu Pei-mei of England". Her 1995 book ''Delia Smith's The Winter Collection'' sold 2 million copies in hardback, becoming the fifth biggest-selling book of the 1990s. In 2003 Smith announced her retirement from television. However, she returned for an eponymous six-part series airing on the BBC in Spring 2008. The accompanying book, an update of her 1971 best-seller
How to Cheat at Cooking, was published in February 2008, again becoming a best-seller. In 2010 she appeared in a five-episode series,
Delia through the Decades, with each episode exploring a new decade of her cooking. Also in 2010, Smith and
Heston Blumenthal were signed up to appear in a series of 40 commercials on British television for the supermarket chain
Waitrose. In February 2013 she announced that she had retired from television cookery programmes, and would concentrate on offering her recipes online. Smith has twice been the guest for
BBC Radio 4's
Desert Island Discs: first on 5 June 1982, when her choices included "
The Sound of Silence" by
Paul Simon and "
Llef" by
Rhos Male Voice Choir, and again on Christmas Eve 2023, when her choices included "
This Woman's Work" by
Kate Bush and "
Happy" by
Pharrell Williams. ==The "Delia effect"==