Nigella Lawson recounted her student memories during an Evening With style show at The New Theatre last night, having studied languages at Lady Margaret Hall.

“I would go to the Covered Market a lot to buy onions and sausages. I cooked an awful lot. French onion soup was my speciality.”

She admitted that when she rented a room in Walton Crescent she “would go into people’s rooms and steal whatever liquor or bits of cheese they had to go in the onion soup – Benedictine I had to use once. That’s when I realised I was someone who liked feeding people, which I enjoyed, although it wasn’t such an eating-out culture as it is now.”

“There was a good Malaysian restaurant called Munchy Munchy near the station I remember and The Elizabeth was the expensive place, always full of Iranian princes trying to take you out in their sports cars.”

“When I first came here the Quat’ Saisons was a teeny little place in Summertown, so I was quite friendly with Raymond Blanc.

“Oxford was perpetually cold, so I ate anything with potatoes, anything starchy.”