The businessman, magazine journalist and author Michael Wynn Jones, who has died aged 85, may be remembered by fans of Norwich City football team as the man who saved the club, but to most others he was the husband of the cookery writer Delia Smith. He was the man behind much of her success, typing up her articles, trying her recipes and discreetly guiding her career for more than 50 years.
Wynn Jones was the deputy editor of the Daily Mirror’s short-lived midweek colour supplement in 1969 when Smith was recommended by the literary agent Deborah Owen to the paper’s editor Mike Molloy as a possible cookery writer to join a stable of columnists including Keith Waterhouse, Jeffrey Bernard and Eve Pollard. She had never written for newspapers and it took several goes but, directed by Wynn Jones, she soon got the hang of it, her first recipes being for kipper pate, beef in beer and cheesecake. She cooked the meal for him and two years later they were married; it was the precursor to millions of sales of easy-to-follow recipe books.
