She's gone from being everyone's favourite aficionado of the "mum" haircut, like the cosy human equivalent of a BHS quilted dressing gown, to a crazy, pre-packaged, tin-loving, e-number-riddled harpy.

Suddenly we're meant to trade in the dream of wholesome home cooking and Laura Ashley aprons to spend £8 making a shepherd's pie from tinned fried onions and frozen bits of entrails.

It's all wrong.

The point is this: of course WE use chemically-enhanced reclaimed rubbish in our cooking, we being mere mortals unable to resist the lure of a Fray Bentos 2-for1, but YOU can't Delia.

You're meant to be a reassuring hangover from a simpler time.

You're not meant to know our filthy secrets.

It's like a teacher joining you for a fag behind the bike sheds.

No Delia, you and Aunt Bessie should never have met, but instead remained like the good and bad fairies on each respective shoulder, you whispering lovely things about organic produce and vitamins and health while she rubs her hands and cackles: "My Yorkshire puddings are ready in the same time it would take you to find How To Cook under all of last year's Vogues!

"Eat them with golden syrup and cream like Nigella does."

Of course Ms Lawson, I believe, is partly to blame for the misadventure.

For her, convenience food is part of the act — it's a naughty rebellion, a moment of culinary immorality.

It's saying, "I don't have time to peel and boil my own spuds, I spend my time lying on a chaise longue in a satin negligee while cherubs brush my glossy hair."

Only Nigella can make instant mash sexy. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall knows this, but do you Delia? Do you?

While Mrs Smith's gift to the world was a nifty way with the ultimate in "ill food", a dippy egg and soldiers, I also suspect eggs may be partly responsible.

It's a little trend I've noticed over the years, that too much personal association with eggs tends to lead to professional disaster.

Edwina Currie, Humpty Dumpty…nobody sees much of the Easter Bunny nowadays… the list could go on. Probably.

Mainly though, the reason How to Cheat has fallen so resoundingly on its freeze-dried face is that poor Delia just doesn't have it in her to rough it with the masses.

She may be using minced lamb from a tin, bless her, but she's buying it from ruddy M&S.

We all know that to do one's food shop in M&S is akin to affluence of the very highest kind, reserved only for princesses and Dame Judi Dench.

Clearly, nowhere in the production process did she seek guidance from the highest authority on lazy cooking, the Dali Llama of canned convenience — a student.

A student could have gently broken it to her that nobody in possession of a packet of Asda frozen mushroom risotto is also going to wait 40 minutes for dried porcini mushrooms to soak.

They are just going to eat the frozen risotto, and then ask if porcini is a kind of opera.

Likewise misguided is her belief that we'll be enjoying these recipes from a receptacle as civilised as a plate, when clearly the most fitting practice is to eat them straight from the saucepan and thus forgo washing up.

For this revelation I owe thanks to my former flatmate Krystof, who could most often be found roaming the corridors of our halls of residence eating beans, tuna and supernoodles out of a frying pan with a spatula.

And finally, perhaps the most scandalous of all her concoctions, Delia has corrupted that most noble of institutions, that which is currently serving medicinal purposes in my pre-exam misery period. Cake.

She has, I can only guess in a moment of tinned-meat-induced delirium, put frozen mashed potato in chocolate cake.

Which leads me to conclude that far from any genuine desire to improve the eating habits of our nation, Delia is actually reeking revenge for our treacherous love of Jamie, Nigella et al by stuffing us with so many complex carbohydrates that we all suffer a big communal coronary and die.

Though I must admit, while the Guardian's Giles Coren kindly said of the potato chocolate mutants: "These were beyond horrible. They had the sheen of a freshly laid dog turd", I'm actually quite tempted to try them.