How TV chef Delia Smith had a massive impact on one of the Rolling Stones' biggest albums

22 September 2025, 13:07

Before TV fame, Delia Smith baked a cake seen by millions of people all over the world.

Delia Smith is one of the all-time great celebrity chefs.

Her cookery books are on shelves all over the country. Her TV shows are always must watch. Her ill-fated on-field appearance at Norwich City ("Let's be 'avin' you! Come on!") is the stuff of legends.

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But before she was a household name, one of Delia's culinary creations had already been seen by people all over the world.

That's because she baked the cake on the front of The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, the album that was home to the classic 'Gimme Shelter', 'Love in Vain', Midnight Rambler' and 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', among other classics.

Mick Jagger had apparently tapped master of the impossible MC Escher to design the sleeve, but after he declined he made do with Robert Brownjohn, who had been brought on board by Stones guitarist and friend Keith Richards.

Gimme Shelter (Remastered 2019)

Brownlee balanced that cake layer on top of a tyre, clock face, film canister (with a label reading STONES - LET IT BLEED), pizza and plate, all atop an antique record player with a Rolling Stones vinyl at the bottom.

The cake was topped with plenty of icing, and little figures of The Rolling Stones playing.

What does any of this have to do with the title Let It Bleed? Absolutely nothing.

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"The title was originally going to be Automatic Changer," explains the writeup on Brownjohn's official website.

"BJ created a surreal sculpture with an assortment of circular objects... stacked above a vinyl LP as if they were on one of the autochanger mechanisms that enabled old-fashioned record players to play numerous albums without stopping."

It added: "By the time the album came out the title had been changed to Let It Bleed but BJ's design was so powerful that the band kept it."

"I was working then as a jobbing home economist with a food photographer who shot for commercials and magazines." Delia was quoted as saying in Bill Wyman's memoir Rolling with the Stones.

"I'd cook anything they needed. One day they said they wanted a cake for a Rolling Stones record cover, it was just another job at the time. They wanted it to be very over-the-top and as gaudy as I could make it."

We don't know how much Delia got paid for the gig (and don't imagine it was a lot), but according to her website, Mick Jagger did send her a signed copy of the album by way of thanks.