Nigel Slater on Nigella Lawson: you made me realise that every meal is a celebration

You had me at Béarnaise. The line in How to Eat, your first book, my kitchen bible to this day, where you said “There is little better to eat than steak béarnaise”. My feelings then. My feelings now. A place of old-fashioned good sense in a world of ever more contrived and desperate cooking.

You appeared on my first television series and we sat on stools, tearing apart a roast chicken, still hot from the oven, with our bare hands. It’s not that you did it, it was that you did it with such barely controllable glee. Much the same way in which we pounced, 20 years later, on a tray of glittering, multi-coloured childhood sweets. Your recipe for roast chicken is my culinary safe house. You understand that sometimes, roast chicken, roast potatoes and bread sauce is what we really want.