I SUPPOSE the key thing to say about the introduction of Delia Smith on to the pitch at Carrow Road during the televised match on Monday night is that it didn’t work. But that’s not to say it wasn’t worth a try.

The Norwich City joint majority shareholder and culinary legend had just witnessed a first half in which her points-hungry team had taken a two-goal lead over Manchester City, only to surrender it meekly and go in level at the break. For teams in the relegation zone, such slides tend to have a grim inevitability about them. You didn’t need to be an astrologer or a student of ancient narrative forms to sense where the next goal was likely to come from, and it wasn’t going to be from Norwich.

True, there was a glimmer of hope in the fact that Manchester City are managed by Kevin Keegan. And, as everybody knows, teams managed by Keegan tend to resemble a Rolodex in a strong wind; there’s a lot of flapping and you are never exactly sure what’s going to turn up. But even allowing for Keegan, it felt bleak for Norwich at half-time on Monday.

Now, confronted by such a situation, many of today’s prissy, oil-drizzling TV chefs might have been content to have sat tight in the stands and let destiny run its course. But not Delia, who is from the old school, where you roll your sleeves up, take the lard out of the fridge and get on with it. And so it was that the author of Delia’s Christmas and countless other seminal works of the kitchen shelf, left her seat and walked on to the pitch with a microphone in hand to make what is, these days, a rare television appearance.

A newspaper less sensitive than the one you are reading maintained that Delia seemed “a little unsteady on her feet”, but we are content to put that down to the condition of a tacky surface on a damp February night. It was clearly a pitch that would take a stud, but Delia was asking it to take a kitten heel, which is a different proposition altogether from a balance point of view.

We are also sure that the odd, rasping drawl that Delia adopted — fully two octaves beneath the gentle soprano she always used while coaxing us to get the best out of our carrots — was a tactical decision, the better to underscore the urgency of her message to the people. After all, there’s potatoes dauphinois and there’s relegation, and clearly each of them is going to call for its own, wildly different rhetorical approach.

Delia’s sermon was addressed, necessarily, to the crowd, but one likes to think that its flavour and import was relayed to the players in the dressing-room. That said, it didn’t get off to the best of starts. “A message for the best football supporters in the land,” Delia growled. I don’t think she necessarily meant to be ironic. The problem was, irony crept up on her somewhere and she sounded as though she did. Irony can be cruel like that.

She got stronger, though. “We need a twelfth man here. Where are you? Where are you? Let’s be ’avin’ you. Come on.” Say what you like about the delivery, the dropping of important consonants in the word “having” demonstrated her continuing mastery of the popular touch.

Back in the Sky Sports studio, Dion Dublin was asked for an opinion but was unable to offer one because he was laughing too much. This was a shame because, in a long playing career, Dublin has worked under many managers, including Graham Taylor, and so might reasonably be thought to have insight to offer on the decoding of unusual or obscure half-time talks. But that’s pundits. They always let you down.

Other observers have since chided Delia for her failure to be Martin Luther King. But Delia’s approach has always been about simple ingredients, simply blended — to the point where some critics have derided her for a patronisingly downbeat assessment of her audience’s knowledge and understanding. Well, let them eat complicated cake. All I can say is that Delia’s recipe for boiled egg is a firm family favourite round my way and looks set to remain so. Manchester City, of course, came back out and got their inevitable third goal, despite everything. The moral of this episode? You cannot stand in the way of destiny, any more than you can cook a decent steak with insufficient heat beneath the pan. But Delia’s efforts were inspiring, in their own way. They showed what you can throw together even when there doesn’t seem to be much in the cupboard. And let’s face it, when did you last see Nigella Lawson get under the floodlights on a cold Monday night and urge the home crowd to do its business? I’ll tell you when: never.

Still dissolving like butter over gas, Andy “The Viking” Fordham was revealed to have shed a further 7lb at this week’s Celebrity Fit Club weigh-in and ducked under the psychologically important 28-stone mark. He’s down 2st 10lb in total. Alas, his target weight-loss for the fortnight had been 9lb, so the good news was tempered by some concern. Come on, the Viking. Don’t plateau on us now, big man.

GILES SMITH RETURNS ON SATURDAY