Nigella Lawson has admitted that she is anxious about life returning to normal after lockdown ends – and will be employing a social 'diet' to ensure she doesn't feel overwhelmed or exhausted by seeing people again.

The TV chef and former Red cover star has been isolating alone in her London home since 'before it was legally enforced' in the UK on 23rd March.

At first she said she lost her focus for a while, but now – as lockdown slowly eases in England – she says 'the idea of emerging from it is making me anxious...a part of that is a fear of the health risk involved, but I know really it’s because I have become utterly content with my desocialisation. I have gone feral.'

Writing in her Sunday Times Style column yesterday she admitted she has always been a homebody ('I’ve often found it difficult to leave the house in the first place') and has enjoyed this enforced period of alone time away from 'braving the outside world'.

Nigella then echoed the sentiments of many as we readjust to socialising again.

'This is not to say I don’t love my friends,' she wrote. 'Nor do I deny that company can be as uplifting as it can be exhausting. I just don’t want much of it, not yet.'

Her plan is a social '5:2' diet of sorts, with people rather than food: 'I am not going to be gadding about, but for two evenings a week — or maybe just lunches at the weekend — I will pretend to be a normal person, letting those strange entities, people, into the garden, and apply myself to learning how to have a conversation again. For the other five, I will continue, greedily and gratefully, to feed on solitude and silence.'

Sounds like a good idea to us. Read Nigella's latest Sunday Times Style column in full here.

Subscribe to Red now to get the magazine delivered to your door. Red's latest issue is out now and available for purchase online and via Readly or Apple News+.

Like this article?Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox.