Celebrity chefs in Christmas cookbook battle
fROM tHE gUARDIAN -Thursday December 20, 2007

Nigella Lawson is beating Jamie Oliver in the battle for the best-selling cookbook this Christmas, a retailer said today.
Her book, Nigella Express, has so far out-sold its rival, Jamie at Home, by more than 100,000 copies at Waterstone's. It is on track to hit the one-million sales mark to be her best performing cookery book to date at the book chain.

Waterstone's said Nigella Lawson's previous best-selling cookbook was Nigella Bites, launched in 2002, which has sold nearly 300,000 copies. Jamie Oliver's biggest-selling title so far at Waterstone's is Jamie's Italy, which sold 735,000 copies over Christmas 2005.

Waterstone's spokeswoman Sian Jones said: "Nigella Express has outsold Jamie at Home
at Waterstone's. That's not to say Jamie hasn't been a huge success, it has,
but Nigella's book has been helped by a later-airing TV show and some frankly
irresistible recipes."
Nigella Express is currently number one in the bestsellers list on the Waterstone's website while Jamie atHome is in eighth place. A GfK NOP poll of 1,000 people carried out for
Waterstone's last month found that 40% of respondents would prefer to have
Christmas dinner cooked for them by their mothers rather than Nigella Lawson,
Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsay or Nigel Slater.