Delia through the Decades, Monday 8.30pm, BBC Two

Posted by Stewart Turner

Delia Smith © BBC

It’s around 12 months since Saint Delia sullied her reputation by smearing a frozen burger with horseradish and calling it a Sunday roast in her much maligned How To Cheat series. In an effort to reinstall the First Lady of Food back in her rightful place, her latest vehicle celebrates the chef's five glorious decades in the limelight.

Cue a montage of Delias through the ages, from the floral pinnied and bowl haircutted "sexy Home Economics teacher’ look of the '60s and '70s, whizzing through the ‘extra from Howard’s Way’ years of the eighties and nineties, right up to the sizzled-on-sherry football fan we all know and love today.

Indeed, a sprinkling of national treasures popping up at the start to proffer their praise for the venerable Mrs Smith did make me wonder if Delia Through The Ages would amount to little more than six half-hour instalments of simpering ego massage, but thankfully a knowing voiceover from Stephen Fry and some glorious footage from the BBC archives made it much, much more than that.

This was as much a history of Delia as a history of British food, and from the dried eggs on toast and offal of the post-war years through to the '60s obsession with dousing desserts in brandy and setting them on fire, it was fascinating to watch our tastes evolve over the ages. Sure, there were a fair few soft-focus flits to the estate in Suffolk where she nuzzled her cat, but innumerable snippets which made the show a joy to watch.

Particular highlights included hilarious footage of Panorama’s April Fool’s Day broadcast of the “Swiss spaghetti harvest”, which apparently confirmed most of our suspicions that pasta grows on trees, and cosy chats with Delia’s mum – a woman who still clearly shudders at the thought of her daughter once posing as a swimwear model, despite everything she’s achieved since.

Next week it’s the turn of the '70s, which will doubtless feature our heroine in a pair of pink dungarees whipping up an apple crumble on The Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Delia, we salute you!

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