Getting to know our leadership a little better.

[BlyBlyBabes 0]

It is important to understand as far as possible those who would lead us. So, for those who may have missed it, a 1999 profile published by The Independent newspaper is reproduced below.

It may help to explain, amongst other things, the somewhat unique ''large crowds/high season ticket sales'' phenomenon at Carrow Road in the face of appalling perfomances on the pitch - as also the acutely different responses to ''failure'' under Robert Chase on the one hand and the Smiths on the other.

Profile: Delia Smith

Simmer gently. Do not boil

Saturday, 11 December 1999

 

Once again, we are about to succumb to Deliamania. Another book of hers came out this week (How to Cook: Book Two), as seasonally tied to our palates as Dickens once was to our souls: it wouldn''t be Christmas without Delia (even though she spends her Christmases in the West Indies). The book will hop to the top of the bestseller lists and just stay there. If she mentions an ingredient not already in abundant supply in the supermarkets, you will not be able to get hold of it for months.

Once again, we are about to succumb to Deliamania. Another book of hers came out this week (How to Cook: Book Two), as seasonally tied to our palates as Dickens once was to our souls: it wouldn''t be Christmas without Delia (even though she spends her Christmases in the West Indies). The book will hop to the top of the bestseller lists and just stay there. If she mentions an ingredient not already in abundant supply in the supermarkets, you will not be able to get hold of it for months.

Delia Smith. The words might roll beautifully off the tongue - a dactyl followed by an accented syllable - but, really, when you know who they stand for, are there four more prosaic syllables in the language? Is there anyone who appears duller than Delia Smith? Maybe not; but I would suspect that there are millions of people who are precisely as dull as her: us.

Last year, I was entertained by Lisa Chaney''s biography of Elizabeth David, the woman who is said to have done more than anyone to change the culinary habits of a nation. (If only.) David''s was a story worth telling. Promiscuous, maybe even - who knows? - bisexual, difficult, solipsistic, a heavy drinker and smoker, morose, impetuous, intensely charismatic, posh, but with a penchant for ne''er-do-wells, male homosexuals and déclassés chancers, scornful of food writers ("who wants to be the doyenne of them?" she once acidly asked; the image that stuck in many reviewers'' minds was that of the ash from her fag dropping into the paella as she swayed, half-cut, over the pan. The book might not have been thrillingly written, but it told a tale or two. It turns out that it wasn''t even the official biography; that''s out now. But as I read its unofficial precursor, I thought: well, at least no one''s going to be writing a biography of Delia Smith.

I was wrong. Not only does everyone have a story; even Delia Smith, that blankest and most unassuming of our "personalities" has one. It has been joked that the prerequisite for being a TV personality is not to have one to speak of; but few have made a career from as ostensibly, even provocatively, sparse a personality as Delia''s.

Well, no one''s that dull, even if she comes, as if she were straight out of central casting, from Bexleyheath. Her biography, by Alison Bowyer (published in October by Andre Deutsch) begins not with her date of birth (1941) but with the announcement that she turned down a peerage offered by Tony Blair. Baroness Smith? It doesn''t feel right; and not just because she has entered that state of hyper-celebrity whereby we can dispense with her last name.

Her cookery, it turns out, was not a vocation she felt in her bones. It was born out of pique at the culinary talents of the woman with whom she felt she was competing, for the hand of one Louis Alexander, who later - and temporarily, as it turned out - spurned all women in order to become a Catholic priest. Delia resolved to become, like Louis''s ex-, a cook.

She also became a Catholic herself. It makes one wonder how easy it once was to make an impression on the soft butter of Delia''s spirit.

She arrived in London in 1960, after a childhood marked, it would appear, by a complete lack of appreciation (she poured her heart out about this much later, in starkly incongruous circumstances, on the children''s TV programme, Swap Shop). In 1962, while working for a travel agency, she posed in a bathing-suit for a company promotion. One night, that same year, she went to a restaurant called The Singing Chef, in Connaught Street, and was entranced not only by the food in general but in particular by the chef''s speciality, the omelette-soufflé flambé.

She became a washer-up at the restaurant, owned by Ken Toye (a chef who, yes, sang). Moving up the hierarchy of preparation, she drifted into other cookery work; as an assistant on a TV food ad she saved the day when someone dropped a pie just before a shoot. "I can make that," she said, and did. Word got around.

She became interested in trying to revive an interest in British food, probably in reaction to Elizabeth David''s championing of French and Mediterranean cuisine; she met literary agent Deborah Owen in 1969, to whom she gave tips on how to cook a nice poached egg for her husband, a young doctor and politician-to-be called David; and through her she got a job at the Daily Mirror. Her rise since then has been inevitable, and prodigious. She sold her two-millionth book 15 years ago.

She eventually settled down with Michael Wynn Jones, an Oxford-educated bon viveur and talented journalist. From the biography: "As a committed Catholic, it must have been hard for Delia to contemplate falling in love with someone who not only wasn''t a Catholic, but who didn''t even believe in God. Michael Wynn Jones''s lack of belief could have served to put Delia off him, and the fact that it didn''t probably owes a lot to Louis Alexander''s treatment of her. No doubt having been jilted by her first love, not for another woman but for God, a relationship with a non-believer must have seemed an attractive proposition to Delia. Here at last was a man who would put her first and love her above all else."

Indeed; and it also seems that, with her marriage, here was a woman who had exhausted herself from her many attempts at self-invention. Her frugality, her nervousness in front of the cameras all attest to this. One recent anecdote from her biography will haunt me for the rest of my days. Filming the How to Cook series at her Suffolk home this year, Delia decided that she did not want the crew using her toilet. I mean, the idea. So she ordered that a Portaloo be erected. But as it was lowered off the truck, it squashed one of her cats quite flat. Now, while it is awful to laugh in the face of tragedy - and I am more than usually devoted to cats myself, and so, in Clinton- speak, Feel Her Pain -- it is impossible to contemplate this story without at least one appalled fit of the giggles. Was this not some kind of perfect retribution, an awful warning against being too fastidious, the kind of person who would prefer to be thought prissy rather than charitable?

She used to infuriate me: with her mimsiness, her chilly relationship to the very stuff she was cooking with, the suffocatingly utilitarian nature of her prose. There are those for whom cookery is not simply a matter of getting people fed, but a kind of camp act in itself, the selfish person''s way of being both the cynosure and - for once - the performer of useful acts; such people (and I suppose I''m one), if they take themselves too literally, have a problem with Delia, who on the surface not so much represents as embodies the conventionality they abhor. I would, for example, turn the spines of her recipe books towards the wall when visitors I wished to impress came round.

Still, you can tell she doesn''t like to get her hands dirty: even if this is not in fact the case, the impression you get from her movements in the kitchen is very much one of a woman who would prefer to avoid sensuous contact with the ingredients. And, if we can be allowed to venture some idle and indeed terribly inappropriate speculation, based on not what people are but what they appear to be, you can wonder whether or not this lack of tactility would be transferred intact into other, more private arenas. (Elizabeth David, you suspect, looks like she would have been absolute dynamite in the sack. Am I prompted to such tastelessness by a memory of a remark of Egon Ronay''s, to the effect that Delia''s approach was "the missionary position" of cookery?)

I think, though, that even those who are reluctant to succumb to the stranglehold she has on the rest of the nation''s gorges have come to regard her as unstoppable, a force of nature, as pointless to rail against as English bad weather. Her masterstroke was to embark on a back-to-basics cookery course: how to boil an egg, how to make toast. People scoffed. Gary Rhodes scorned. Yet how many people did he convert to her cause, or at least stop from laying into her, when he did this? Me, for one. Thousands noticed that, whatever her faults, Smith is not a spiky-haired yo-yo with a Mr Creosote-like appetite for his own personality. And her advice was useful: toast is better if you let it stand for a short while before you butter it, eggs are better when they''re fresh, etc. Why not know these things, or make money from telling them?

The awful fact is that cooking, as a demotic art, a cross-country culture, is dead. Dead in these islands in a way that it is not dead in Italy, or France, or indeed pretty much anywhere else in the world with food in it apart from America. A friend of mine told me that his son recently asked his mother what "home-cooked" food was. Those who scratch their heads over such arcane terms as "home-cooked" constitute the overwhelming majority of Britons. A cookery revival is as bogus as a revival of, say, the Cornish language. How could it not be, when Delia Smith''s first book, How to Cheat at Cooking, contained recipes for baked fish fingers with tinned mushrooms and tomatoes, or sponge cake (bought) with tinned cherry-pie filling?

For beneath the brash millennial confidence, the Blairite get-up-and-go exhortations we have to suffer, this remains a country where millions still live in fear: fear of being thought foolish, or too clever, or too dowdy, or too flashy; the suburban terror of giving offence, that dislike of "airs" - the polar opposite of Elizabeth David''s patrician je m''en foutisme - the kind of quality that makes you wonder whether we live in a gigantic, continuously improvised Mike Leigh film set, fretting anxiously as to whether we fit in or not, passing judgements on the neighbours while, at the same time, subliminally aware that they are passing judgements on us. Which is why Delia is so successful, why so many look up to her; and why she is validated by her success. Those stories which are invariably repeated - the frying pans that sprint from the shops at her word, the nationwide shortage of cranberries that occur five minutes after she says the word "cranberries" on TV - are what we expect, and need.

"Here," she seems to be saying, "is something your neighbours have not yet thought of doing" - and suddenly the world and her dog, or rather, that large portion of Middle Britain whose gladiatorial ring is the dinner table, is doing it, all at once. Her quest was never for an independent authenticity, the kind of "real" cookery which Elizabeth David, or her greatest epigone, Jane Grigson, stood for. No, Delia''s aim was, is, to do precisely what the Joneses are doing, or what they think they ought to be doing.

"I''m not a cook," she says, routinely, when wishing to disarm her critics; and we assume she means she''s not an artsy-fartsy cordon bleu bighead. But she''s right, on the most basic level: she is not a cook - she''s a kind of boffin, fiddling with her dishes, helped by assistants, until they come out foolproof. Now even though no recipe is going to work out just so every time, given the right formula, it''s that kind of proposed security that ensures she speaks to and for so many people in this country; they''re not cooks either.

One does not want to belabour the role religion plays in Delia''s life, even if one writer has suggested that she was on "a mission from God" to educate the British about cooking; but you can''t help feeling that she''s a kind of priestess, her religion having denied her the opportunity to be the real article, the officiator of a rite whose responses we are trying to learn.

Her role, or that of the cookery that she represents, is communal, almost religiously ritual, a way of getting everyone singing from the same hymn sheet; a way of being seasonal.

And, while we''re at it, can we think of anyone else, off the top of our heads, who rejoices in the quality of infallibility?

Life Story

Born: 18 June 1941, at the Wynberg Emergency Maternity Hospital in Woking, Surrey.

Family: Father, Harold Bartlett Smith, an RAF wireless operator. Mother, Etty Jones Lewis.

Education: Upland Nursery School, Bexleyheath; then Bexleyheath School, a secondary modern school she attended after failing her 11-plus, and left with no qualifications.

Family: Married to journalist Michael Wynn Jones, 11 September 1971 at the Catholic Church of Our Lady in Stowmarket, Suffolk. No children.

Publications: Cookery writer, began at The Mirror Magazine in 1969. (First menu: kipper pâté, beef in beer and cheesecake). Evening Standard cookery writer, 1972-85. First book: ''How to Cheat at Cooking'' (1971). Followed by 26 more, to date, including ''A Journey into God'' 1988, ''Delia Smith''s Christmas'', 1990; ''Delia Smith''s Summer Collection'' (1993) and ''Winter collection'' (1995).

Television: (Selected BBC programmes): ''Family Fayre'' (1973-75), ''One is Fun'' (1985), ''Delia Smith''s Christmas'' (1990), ''How to Cook: Part One'' (1998).

Directorship: Norwich City FC, since 1996.

She says: ''What''s a real treat for me is when I go to evening games at Norwich City with my husband. We have Big Mac picnics in the football car-park. I absolutely love them with fries and loads of ketchup.''

They say: ''Delia got me on track when I was newly married - taught me how to poach an egg and make good soups'' - Debbie Owen, literary agent.

OTBC

 

[The Fish Seller 0]

It would appear she has much to thank Michael Wynn Jones for.

[. 0]

Says alot eh Bly?.....

It could only have happened happened here........

[William Darby 0]

If we fill our board with Journos....... 

[Fuglestad 0]

Ok, the game''s up. The only conclusion anyone can come to from that article is that she is EVIL, EVIL, EVIL, how dare she get rich after failing her 11 plus? How nasty of her to start as a washer-uper and work her way up with no formal training. EVIL EVIL.

I also find it hilarious that after all the board abuse on here, some of you have only just worked out that Wynn Jones is/was a journalist.

[Ian 1,129]

[quote user="Fuglestad"]

Ok, the game''s up. The only conclusion anyone can come to from that article is that she is EVIL, EVIL, EVIL, how dare she get rich after failing her 11 plus? How nasty of her to start as a washer-uper and work her way up with no formal training. EVIL EVIL.

I also find it hilarious that after all the board abuse on here, some of you have only just worked out that Wynn Jones is/was a journalist.

[/quote]Yes, anybody else (e.g. a man), and the usual suspects would be full of praise for someone who fought so hard to make themselves a success.Or something.

[Crafty Canary 495]

Yes, she has done well for herself and nobody is going to take it or her chattels away wspeciallynthe fans of her favourite chattell, NCFC.

[PKC 0]

Can''t see the point in this post why bother digging up a ten year old article that was written by someone with an agenda(as is common with this type of article), I''m sure there are a number of articles that paint a far rosier picture that I could find if I could be bothered, maybe I don''t try and spin everything to my own ends.

 By the way I''m not a fan of Delia and would rather see a change in the ownership of the club, but not at any cost.

[William Darby 0]

[quote user="Fuglestad"]

Ok, the game''s up. The only conclusion anyone can come to from that article is that she is EVIL, EVIL, EVIL, how dare she get rich after failing her 11 plus? How nasty of her to start as a washer-uper and work her way up with no formal training. EVIL EVIL.

I also find it hilarious that after all the board abuse on here, some of you have only just worked out that Wynn Jones is/was a journalist.

[/quote]Shocking isn''t it?  The Sainsburys mag was a big clue.  Should we organise a massive ''laugh in''?  The Norwich Summer of Laugh ''09  fans should accumulate together for a massive chuckle. And when asked why, we can say ''our club is run by journos, and we''re pissing ourselves, because ''others'' didn''t realise''.[;)]

[The Fish Seller 0]

[quote user="Fuglestad"]

I also find it hilarious that after all the board abuse on here, some of you have only just worked out that Wynn Jones is/was a journalist.

[/quote]How on earth have you reached this conclusion?

[Fuglestad 0]

I don''t think it is a problem that he is/was a journalist.

I find it funny that so many people on here, have missed a golden opportunity to pile more sludge and sh!t on the people who put money into our club.

The reason (I suspect) that many did not know this is because they spend their time on here, flying wildly from crisis, to conspiracy, and never actually reading anything informative. Scouring Archant sites for badly written sticks to beat the board with.

I am constantly surprised by the sensationalist and ridiculous opinions of Norwich City fans, and have found, alas it is better to laugh than cry. eg. "OH MY GOD, THE CLUB IS DOOMED, WE''VE SIGNED PAUL McVEIGH!" or he might just be training with us because he lives up the road and he''s a nice chap, and long-serving Canary.

Just try and understand that a club''s board is going to tell half-truths and use "spin", to paint the club in the best possible light. If they didn''t, you''d have burnt the ground down by now.

Hopefully this goes someway to explaining my flawed logic. I have no problems with Wynn-Jones being a journalist and have been aware of this for some time, I don''t think he ever made a secret of it.

I am slightly concerned about this Stephan bloke but not because he is a journalist but because he is working for Archant, who keep the EDP and Evening News afloat by peddling out badly written, un-edited, gumph. Ensuring they have a NCFC story every day, or nobody would buy the thing. If they''re really desperate they write an article about Towergate''s latest profits and a dubious timeline of events regerding Cullum/NCFC. I resent this attention grabbing headline, cheating me out of 42p but that''s journalism, that''s business, that''s life sadly.

Please don''t imply that Wynn-Jones being a journalist means there is any more spin than at any other club.

Finally, can you really take no comfort at all in the fact that we know who runs our club and that they are not going to sell off the ground and turn it into an Asda.  That''ll do for me, if that means a decade in League 1 fine. I''d rather that than be Portsmouth [soul-less shell of a football club], and if that makes me mad, or happy clappy, then fine.

[LQ 0]

Fantastic - cheers for that Bly.That Elizabeth David sounds like a woman I could have gotten on well with if only I were slightly more interesting in cooking than football![;)]

[The Butler 0]

Best bit was an ex Ipswich fan''s cat being squashed by a porterloo!

You could not make it up.

Other than that the story is as the woman is boring!

[ACE 0]

Poor cat :-(