“The Delia Effect” is well known and when this English cook taught her viewers how to cook an egg in 1998, sales rocketed by 10% overnight. Worth some £23 million, she’s also endorsed Aunt Bessie’s mashed potatoes and supported the Labour Party. Smith was baptised into the Church of England but attended a Methodist Sunday School. She later joined a Congregationalist Brownie Group but converted to the Roman Catholic Church at the age of 22. Together with her husband, Michael Wynn-Jones, she is a majority shareholder in Norwich City Football Club and it is here whilst supporting “The Canaries,” that’s she’s known to get a little carried away with her use of the English language.
Category: CREATIVES
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Delia Smith CBE
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Pam Ayres MBE
This supposed “First Lady of Comedy” spouts lines like: “He had a bull name Floyd, but he was unemployed.” How long did it take her to come up with that? Her appearances on Radio 4 and elsewhere are peppered with references to “blummin’ people” and how she’s “stuck all [she] can stick.” Could someone please put her out to pasture before all our eardrums burst? -
John Reith, The Rt. Hon. The Lord Reith KT GVCO GBE CB TD PC (1889 –1971)
“Dictatorship tempered with an amount of human decapitation” was his style as Director-General of the BBC. This Presbyterian didn’t get on with Churchill as he felt he could have done a better job himself. John Reith was emancipated by a booze fuelled sailing trip with the governor of the Bank of England without his wife and subsequently encouraged drinking in the offices of the BBC. When he left the corporation, he vented his outrage whenever they played jazz music. -
Arthur Ransome (1864 – 1967)
Though best known for Swallows and Amazons, Ransome’s life in Russia was what makes him most fascinating. He was sued unsuccessfully by Lord Alfred Douglas over a biography of Oscar Wilde, played chess with Lenin and married Trotsky’s personal secretary, Evgenia Petrovna Shelepina. Accused by many of being a spy, his books on fishing, some might argue, are actually his finest literary examples. -
Tippi Hedren (born Nathalie Kay Hedren)
Discovered by Alfred Hitchcock, this thrice married actress endured five days of prop men throwing live gulls, ravens and crows at her in her debut film, The Birds. Cary Grant told her: “I think you’re the bravest lady I’ve ever met.” She worked with Hitchcock next on Marnie but then decided she didn’t wish to continue. Afterwards, she commented: “He told me he would ruin my career and he did.” Hedren, whose daughter is Melanie Griffith, now runs the Shambala Preserve in Acton, California. Here she keeps lions that have previously belonged to Anton LaVey and Michael Jackson. -
Adam Caldwell
A rising star in the interiors industry. Caldwell, who hails from Gastonia, North Carolina, has just completed a stint as a freelance designer at NH Design by Nicky Haslam and is now based in New York. He has a penchant for colourful trousers and American-style cookies. -
Taylor Swift
This American singer-songwriter was born in 1989 and earned $120 million between 2009 and 2012. The first thing she did on her 18th birthday was to register to vote and she’s dated Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhall, Conor Kennedy and Harry Styles. Swift owns homes in Nashville, Brentwood, Beverley Hills and Cape Cod. In August 2012, she added a $4,800,000 million oceanfront estate next to the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts to her burgeoning collection but offloaded it in March 2013 at a profit of $875,000. Perhaps it’s time that she paused for a moment. -
Isabella Blow (1958 – 2007)
This wildcard was the muse of Philip Treacy and discovered Sophie Dahl and Alexander McQueen. A flamboyant deal maker, Blow had a “natural sense of style” and a truly brilliant eye. She left this world far too soon and is sorely missed. -
David Nalbandian
This aggressive Argentinean is truly the Joey Barton of tennis. Kicking a panel in the 2012 Queen’s final resulted in a linesman being injured and him being disqualified. He’s neither a McEnroe nor a Becker in the making. -
Susan Hill CBE
Best known for her chilling novel The Woman in White, this writer also did a stint on the BBC’s The Archers and runs a small publishing house named Long Barn Books. Married to the Shakespeare scholar Professor Stanley Wells, Hill lives in a farmhouse with 50 acres of woodland in the Cotswolds and describes ghosts as having been: “Good to me.”