The 64-year-old broadcaster, who on her cookery shows has guests coming round to eat along with a segment where she goes to the fridge to get a late-night snack, said she regularly makes meals alone in her south-west London home.

Lawson also told The Times: “I am very pro-eating in bed.

“I will eat absolutely anything in bed except something that needs a knife and fork. It has to be either fingers or a spoon.”

She also said she “sometimes” eats on the sofa, and often does something “much worse”.

Lawson explained she has a “bowl on the kitchen surface and I lean up against it and eat standing up. I am about to take my bowl somewhere else but then I get sidetracked”.

The self-styled domestic goddess also said many of the meals she makes for herself are often not “actual recipes”.

She added: “They’re just cooking in a pan and building up a feast for this little bowl. I often just eat out of a bowl with a spoon.”

Lawson explained some of her eating habits stem from her marriage to the writer John Diamond, who died in 2001 from throat cancer, aged 47, as he “couldn’t eat” due to his condition.

She says: “I had to make a conscious decision to cook for myself. Otherwise, it was very easy to say, ‘Oh well, I will just have a sandwich,’ which isn’t good.

“Cooking for myself became a very important way that I found both physical and emotional sustenance.”