Nigella Lawson - Biography

In a nutshell

Nigella didn't start out in the kitchen, licking spoons and standing by an open fridge. No, she started as a journalist for posh magazine The Spectator before reviewing books.

She carried on writing for a while before deciding that she might make a half-decent job of putting a book together herself. Horror novels weren't exactly her cup of tea so 'How to Eat' was born in 1998. It flew of the shelves and shifted over 300,000 copies in total ? not a bad effort by anybody's standards.

Luckily for Nigella there was a huge appetite (do you see what we did there?) for TV chefs and she jumped straight onto the bandwagon with shows like Nigella Express and her famous Christmas specials where we think if you ate everything she suggested you'd quite easily quadruple in size.

When people think of Nigella it isn't necessarily her food which comes to mind. It's more her particular style of presentation, which involves a lot of finger licking and slow, sensual breathing. Not our cup of tea but it probably pulls in the male viewers.

Nigella married John Diamond in 1986 and had two children, Cosima and Bruno. Unfortunately her husband died of throat cancer in 2001. She's now remarried to Charles Saatchi.

Did you know?

Oooh get her ? Nigella is eligible to use 'The Honourable' as a title because she's the daughter of a life peer. Luckily, she chooses not to.