When 50-year-old Nora Sands, from southeast London, appeared on our screens last year opposite Jamie Oliver in Channel 4’s Jamie’s School Dinners, she became the most famous dinner lady in Britain — and the unlikely heroine of the series.

Oliver, who set out to improve the lunchtime lot of pupils with his Feed Me Better campaign, describes her as “the only woman, apart from my wife, who makes me jump to attention”. With religious zeal the duo denounced the Turkey Twizzlers and fat-laden chips being served in our schools.

Following the programme, the education secretary Ruth Kelly announced an extra £280m for improving school lunches. Fresh food would be in and convenience foods out. She pledged to raise the minimum spending on primary schools from 37p in some areas to at least 50p a head. Oliver then went back to his award-winning restaurant, Fifteen, and Sands returned to the kitchens of Kidbrooke secondary.

Not for long. The Jamie effect had its own momentum. This time the revolutionaries have their sights set not just on our school canteens but our homes, too.

Sands is bringing out a cookery book, Nora’s Dinners, aimed at children who don’t know what a fresh vegetable tastes like because their parents are too hard-pressed to serve anything but convenience foods.

“I want them to get in the kitchen and become excited about food,” she said. “And if parents can’t cook then I want them to learn together.”

She and Oliver will also soon be returning to the screen in a sequel to School Dinners that could, if little has improved, pack a second political punch. Will Turkey Twizzlers have crept back on the menu? What about those greasy burgers?

WHEN Sands and Oliver swooped into schools in the London borough of Greenwich and Peterlee, County Durham, zapping nuggets and banishing Twizzlers, it made for great television.

Oliver threatened to “send a bomb” to Bernard Matthews, the producer of the sausage-style Twizzlers, which had 40 different ingredients, including eight E numbers.

The disgust on Oliver’s face was palpable. And so was his regard for the efforts of his co-star, the woman he calls his powerful ally. “Without Nora I would never have been able to achieve my goal,” he said. “She really is the most painfully honest person that I have ever met. She has a heart of gold and moral standards to die for.”

It didn’t start that way. At the beginning of the series, Sands, a dinner lady for 16 years, was not converted. She had grown used to reheating food and doubted that her pupils would want roasted cod with couscous. She was soon won over, but others took longer. “I really didn’t see where Jamie was going at first but in the end I found him an inspiration,” she said, admitting she was “stale until Jamie came”.

Together they piloted a range of freshly prepared meals that had to meet Greenwich council’s tight budget. These then replaced reheated prepared food in 80 other schools in the borough.

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