STEPHEN LEWIS wanders into the kitchen but declines to take sides in the great TV cookery debate.

THE oven gloves are off. TV's prim and proper Delia Smith, reigning schoolmistress of celebrity chefs, has turned against some of her more unbuttoned rivals.

Gary Rhodes once protested that Delia's How To Cook series was an 'insult to viewers' intelligence', while fellow TV chef Antony Worrall Thompson compared her to a Volvo, 'reliable but dull'. Stung by such criticism, Delia has responded by slamming her rivals as 'pretentious'.

"The whole subject of food and cooking lends itself to more pretension than any other subject, including art," she told a national newspaper. "And it has nothing to do with reality. Most people are just grateful that someone like me has bothered to teach them how to do it."

Scarcely a TV chef escapes Delia's newly-unsheathed claws. Jilly Goolden is dismissed as 'awful', while Michael Barry is 'all sweaty palms'. But it is Rhodes and Worrall Thompson for whom she reserves her particular wrath.

"I hate Gary Rhodes's programmes: and I think that Antony Worrall Thompson is worse," she is reported to have said. "He is dreadful, just repulsive. I think that Food And Drink, the show he is on, is the most disgusting programme on television. I will never, ever know, as long as I live, how the BBC or the general public can tolerate it."

Oh, how the journalist's heart sings when someone unbuttons their lip like this! As a dedicated hater of the kitchen - I can boil an egg and I'm a dab hand at heating up Asda's wonderful range of ready-cooked Indian dishes, but that's about as far as it goes - I can honestly say I have no interest to declare in the celebrity chef wars.

But it's an issue that is likely to divide cooks - the family kitchen variety no less than the professional chef - up and down the country. Should TV cookery programmes actually teach you how to cook, a la Delia, or should they simply be another form of entertainment?

Matthew Benson-Smith, head chef at the Hazlewood Castle Hotel near Tadcaster, admits he's firmly in the down-to-earth Delia camp. "I'm not a Delia fan exactly, but I agree with what she's saying," he says.

"Everybody puts down Delia big time, but I think her principles are the right ones. You can go away and cook what she's showed you. With some of them you haven't a clue where to start. You often find their recipes don't even work when you try to use them."

Jennie Cook, York's Malaysian TV chef, is also in the Delia camp. "I'm more for home cooking, more like Delia," she said. "When I'm doing demonstrations, I tend to be very light-hearted, not for showmanship but because that's what I am. But I aim to cook like a housewife."

Too many cookery shows, she adds darkly, are about entertainment rather than cooking. "And there's loads of people jumping on the bandwagon. There are too many TV programmes with too many gimmicks."

Not all local chefs agree. Stuart Nabbs, head chef at the Royal York Hotel and Evening Press 'Cooking For The Stars' columnist, says there is room for both approaches.

TV cookery programmes have done a great deal to raise awareness about good food and how to cook it, he says. "I've got a lot of respect for Delia. She's very good at what she does. But there is always room for individuals as well. Antony Worrall-Thompson and Gary Rhodes are also the top of the class in their field for what they do."

The real test of any self-respecting TV cookery programme is in what the viewers think. Among the people browsing the market stalls in York's Parliament Street this week (courtesy of the York Festival Of Food And Drink), sympathies were divided.

Suzanne Allen, holidaying in York from Scotland, said Delia was 'a bit posh'. "I like Ready, Steady Cook and the spiky haired one - what's his name? - Gary Rhodes," she said.

Her companion, David Gray, was more blunt. "I don't cook, and I don't like any of them at all. I don't like TV gardeners, either, or TV decorators or docu-soaps pretending to be entertainment."

Now that's telling them. Christian Melton, 34, from Brayton near Selby, was more conciliatory. "I enjoy cooking, and I do watch TV cooking programmes," he said. Delia, though, he said, was 'a bit staid and old-fashioned'. "I like Jamie Oliver. He's a bit more adventurous. It may be entertainment: but it can give you some good ideas."

Maybe. Me, I'll head for the take-away every time.

u Which TV chef gets your mouth watering and which makes your heart sink like a souffl? Write and tell us. The best letter wins a cookbook