Delia ad lib: cooking on TV in 1973

In the 80th anniversary issue of Radio Times, Delia reminisced on the far-from-salubrious conditions under which she cooked in her early days on our televison screens...

She says: 'I had to do my first series in 1973 in the weather studio at BBC TV Centre. There were no facilities. I either had to wash my saucepans in the ladies' loo, or we had a bucket under the counter where we washed everything else.

There was no budget for editing, so there was no editing! I had to get the timing to within seconds and if I got it wrong I had to do it again. I was brought up the hard way!