Nigella warns about high-pressure Christmas

“Domestic goddess” Nigella Lawson has spoken about the huge pressure women are under at Christmas.

Lawson said it was an “extreme act of cruelty” to imply that the time of year could be stress-free.

In an interview with the Radio Times, she said it was “an incredibly high-pressure time for women.

“You have cooking combined with family, and together they’re enormously incendiary.

“I think it would be an extreme act of cruelty to imply that you can have a stress-free Christmas.

“Because there’s no such thing. Wrapping presents, for example, is the thing that sends me over the edge and under the other side.

“I always get my hair stuck under the Sellotape, which is completely disgusting for the person opening the present.”

Speaking about the “domestic goddess” tag, Lawson said: “The argument has become so polarised...

“Either you’re a bitch who spends too long in the office and never sees your children, or you’re some little throwback wanting to make things nice in the kitchen.

“And, of course, in real life women are both. Or neither.

“You have to find a way of integrating those two sides of yourself. Otherwise you go mad.”

The cook and journalist said she would “never say no to chips and curry sauce - I have very low tastes.

“Just that, a nice drink and some nice friends and I’d be happy.”

On the subject of media talk of television fakery, she said viewers were not idiotic, adding: “When I say on TV ’this cake takes 20 minutes to bake’ and then one minute later it’s ready, what do they think I have done?

“Do they think I have some kind of time lord qualities?”

Lawson previously told Red magazine that she once made her children give their Christmas presents to charity.

Lawson, whose husband is wealthy art collector Charles Saatchi, wanted to show daughter Mimi, 14, and son Bruno, 12, how lucky they are.