My delightful friend Lucy Young – the cookery writer – has just done up her new house in the dreamiest style. My very favourite room is the kitchen, where the Duck Egg Blue AGA Total Control takes centre stage…


“I love my new AGA,” Lucy tells me. “I first saw a pale blue AGA about 25 years ago and fell in love with it then, before I even had an AGA. My last one was cream, which went perfectly with the kitchen in my old house. But when AGA launched the Duck Egg Blue model for its foundry’s 300th anniversary, I absolutely knew the next time I bought an AGA it would be in that colour.

“I’m thrilled with it and it’s amazing how many people on Facebook have said that the picture I posted of it convinced them that they should choose the same colour. I’m so in love with it I’ve even painted my front door in the same colour. When you stand at the front of the house and open the door you look down and can see the AGA.

“I started cooking on it before the kitchen was even finished. The first thing I cooked was fillet steaks in a brandy sauce. It was Christmas Eve and the kitchen was a building site. I stood among piles of rubble, with the plaster drying on the walls, with just the AGA and a tressle table in the kitchen. We didn’t even have a sink – just a bowl of water. I couldn’t wait to cook on it!”

Lucy is well known as Mary Berry’s assistant and an acclaimed cookery author in her own right. She’s been working with Mary for 22 years and when Mary was interviewed in the Daily Express last week she listed Lucy as one of the five things she couldn’t live without. She said: “There has never been a cross word between us and I value her opinion on everything. Although Lucy is a lot younger than me, we have a wonderful friendship.”

The pair even write books together, the latest being ‘Cook up a Feast’ by Mary Berry and Lucy Young, which you can buy here. I can’t recommend it highly enough – it has given me so many ideas.