Nigella Lawson Cooks Up Successful Shows

Nigella Lawson is an English television presenter, culinary writer and journalist. She is most for her cookery shows on the BBC, as well as her recipe books like Nigella Bites and Forever Summer with Nigella. She was born on January 6th 1960 to influential parents – her father Nigel Lawson was a Conservative cabinet minister and mother, Vanessa Salmon was a socialite and heir to the Lyons Corner House Empire.

Nigella lost her mother to liver cancer in 1985. Nigella Lawson studied at Godolphin and Latymer School and then went on to graduate in Medieval and Modern Languages from St Annes College, Oxford. Nigella Lawson participated in the third part of the BBC family-history documentary series, Who Do You Think You Are? in which she traced her mothers side of the family, the Salmon (originally Solomon) family to Ashkenazi Jewish settlers in the Netherlands and German Rhinelands.

This was the starting point of her career in the media. In 1986, Nigella Lawson became the deputy literary of The Sunday Times and also wrote a restaurant column for the Spectator and a comment column for The Observer. She began her career with the BBC as a newspaper reviewer on the Sunday morning programme, Breakfast With Frost.

She began her career in culinary shows by appearing as a sidekick on Nigel Slaters Real Food Show for Channel 4 but then went on to have her own shows on the channel which were broadcasted in Britain. The show titled Nigella Bites went on for two series from 1999-2001 which was followed by a Christmas special in 2001.In 2002, Nigella Lawson presented Forever Summer With Nigella.

In 2005 Lawson hosted a show with ITV1 titled Nigella Lawson in which she invited celebrity guests to join her in a celebrity kitchen. However the show was not very well received and was taken off air after a few episodes. After this she was featured in Off Duty: Worlds Greatest Chefs Cook At Home which came out in 2005. In autumn next year her third series of cookery show, Nigella Feasts made its debut in the US on the Food Network.

Her most recent culinary show was aired in late 2006 on BBC2 and was titled Nigellas Christmas Kitchen. Two of the programmes episodes attained the second highest ranking for BBC2 with the third episode becoming the most watched show in the week it was aired. Nigella Lawson has authored accompanying books to all her cookery shows and these include Nigella Bites(2001), Forever Summer with Nigella(2002), Forever Summer (2003) and Feast : Food to Celebrate Life (2004).

In 1986 Nigella Lawson met journalist John Diamond when they were both writing for The Sunday Times and married him some time later. However, Diamond succumbed to throat cancer in 2001 after which she married art collector Charles Saatchi in September 2003. Her books have sold over 2 million copies worldwide and UKTV Food estimates that she has personal fortunes over 1.7 million pounds. In 2001 Lawson was voted Author of the Year by the British Book Awards. Nigella Lawson