JOINT majority shareholder Delia Smith is to be given a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) award, as part of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's 2009 birthday honours.

Honours are given to people from all walks of life and all sections of society who have made a difference to their community. There are several different types of award, each one recognising a different type of contribution. With a cookery career spanning 40 years, the award comes in recognition of Delia's contribution to television cookery and recipe writing.

 "Obviously it's a very, very great honour," Delia told canaries.co.uk. "I've been writing recipes for 40 years now and so I imagine it's recognition of that. It does feel special - it's difficult for me because what I do, I write recipes and demonstrate them on TV, feels just like regular, every day work. It doesn't feel like it deserves any special honour.

"When I got my OBE, I met the Queen so I might meet her again, or it may be another member of the Royal Family. It will be a great day out and we'll have a celebration."

Despite four decades of cookery work under her belt, the work is still well and truly underway: "At the moment, I'm working with the BBC on a series about the 40 years I've been writing recipes, and it's been interesting for me going through the decades - starting in the 1960s, and going back and looking at how things have changed.

"It's scheduled for October, November time, and it will be five programmes of the decades and then the last programme will be the Christmas update. That's been very interesting for me, and I'm working on a new book as well, a new version of Christmas, because I did Christmas 20 years ago and we decided it needed updating.

"The publishers wanted me to update the Christmas book, and while we were doing that we thought it might be good to do a TV series as well. Then when we went to the BBC, the controller of BBC Two was much more excited about covering the 40 years, so it was her idea. It's very funny when you watch it and you see what I was wearing. I've got some celebrities who help me - Stephen Fry is a Norwich City supporter so it was good to get him."

She continued: "After that, I don't think there'll be any more, but when I say that everyone always says 'Oh, you've said that before!'. But I don't think so, I think I'm getting a bit past it now!"

Reflecting on her career so far, Delia added: "I've been looking at the archived footage of when I started, and in my very first series I'm holding a green pepper - I said 'Now, you probably won't be able to get one of these', and it just seems crazy now.

"You can now go into a supermarket and shop around the world, and when I first started unusual ingredients were hard to get. When I first started my cookery column, olive oil was something you could only get in the chemist. Now, it's wall-to-wall!"

Between football and cookery, Delia was asked by reporters which was her biggest passion in life. She replied:" Now, it's football. I can't wait to get back to Carrow Road now and start things here again."