Delia, Jamie, Gordon, Nigella, Rick, Gary and Antony – their names and faces are everywhere, they are all over the TV schedules, their own brand products dominate the department stores and their cookery books fill up the bestseller lists. We think we know them well, but for the first time this is the story of how they took British cuisine out of the joke book and into the record books.

With behind-the-scenes access to the chefs and the teams of experts who helped build their empires, this is the untold story of how they turned their cooking skills into vast multi-million-pound businesses and international brands.