LIP-smackingly scrumptious, sexily succulent, and sugary sweet - Nigella Lawson is almost as delicious as one of her indulgent desserts.

The culinary queen is back on our screens pouting, puckering, dipping her fingers in her fare and licking spoons in her trademark seductively sexy style.

It's easy to see why men the world over drool over this domestic goddess.

But it's not just the guys who love her voluptuous figure and feminine curves.

She's surprisingly popular with the girls, who see her as a refreshing breath of freshly baked air. Far from the typical size eight TV skeleton, Nigella is the first to admit she struggles with her figure but makes no apologies for loving her food.

"I'm not a chef. I am not even a trained or professional cook. My qualification is as an eater."

"Like any woman I have my good days and my bad days, my good weeks and my bad weeks.

"People are different in all manner of ways and it would be idiotic to for me to say I want to be a different height," she confides.

"I've got the shape I've got, and I can be in good shape or bad shape within that, but it's not life or death.

"I've been around a lot of people who have been ill and died and I feel my associations with skinniness are not the same as other people's. For me, skinniness denotes lack of health."

Nigella's life has certainly been bittersweet. She lost her mother, sister and first husband - journalist John Diamond - to cancer and has suffered more than a sprinkling of sour press for marrying multimillionaire art collector and advertising tycoon Charles Saatchi, in what many perceived to be indecent haste.

More recently, papers have cruelly criticised her expanding waistline in her current series, Nigella Express, which sees the kitchen connoisseur whipping up finger-lickingly good fast food with tasty, time-saving tips.

But it doesn't sound like the woman who regularly tops the sexiest, most beautiful and yummy mummy polls will be calorie counting just yet.

"Wasting your life worrying about what size jeans you fit into is a very sad waste," she says. Wise words indeed.

The eldest daughter of former Tory chancellor Nigel Lawson, Nigella graduated from Oxford with a degree in medieval and modern languages and began her culinary career as a food reporter.

She's now considered one of the UK's most influential cookery writers and TV chefs.

Her most recent book, to accompany the series of the same name, is already well on its way to best-seller status.

"I love cooking because I'm greedy! And I enjoy feeding other people - my friends always tease me that someone only has to come to mend the boiler and I feed them!" she beams.

"Cooking is great for unwinding but I also find the whole process interesting - I like the research, finding out about different sorts of food and their history, and the way recipes get passed on from generation to generation."

With six successful books, a plethora of TV credits and awards under her belt, the woman dubbed "culinary crumpet" by Esquire certainly has her fingers in a number of piping hot pies.

Her most recent publication is all about having your cake and eating it - recipes boasting minimal effort and maximum taste.

"I absolutely love the quesadillas. My children are mad for them and a bowl of soup with a quesadilla is such a quick and easy meal.

"My idea of a Saturday supper treat is watching the X-Factor, lying in bed, eating my quesadillas! Although to be honest, I only did Mexican food because I wanted to include the title Speedy Gonzales!"

With her dark eyes, tumbling chestnut hair and clear complexion, Nigella has a bit of that Latino allure about her. It's hard to believe her half-century is peeping over the horizon.

"Obviously, hearing those numbers sounds old but what's the alternative?

"I never wanted to turn into someone who lied about their age - so many people I was at university with are now miraculously a lot younger than me!

"You only ever have your life so there's no point comparing it to someone else's.

"Obviously young skin looks lovely and you can't have that for ever but I feel I do my bit by eating high-fat food - a lot of avocados, a lot of bacon and of course a lot of water.

"I'm a great believer that people that have low-fat diets have very dry, old-looking skin and thin people age worse."

Now, if that's not a good enough excuse to treat yourself to that second helping, I don't know what is!

  • Nigella Lawson will be signing copies of her new book, Nigella Express, at Waterstone's Castlepoint from 12.30pm on Thursday. The next episode of Nigella Express is on Monday, November 19 (BBC2, 8.30pm).