Nigella happy to be curvy

Her hour-glass figure, flowing dark hair and pose in a revealing off the-shoulder dress may seem a touch familiar.

Nigella Lawson is happy to show off her voluptuous figure as she echoes Jane Russell in this seductive image.

The Hollywood actress scandalised 1940s society in a poster for the film The Outlaw, which left little to the imagination.

Miss Lawson, however, sees herself fitting into an even earlier era, when curves were all. 'I'm very glad that I don't have that skinny straight-up-and-down shape, that I'm this Edwardian throwback with a very small waist and ankles and wrists, and the rest - billowing,' she said.

The 46-year-old celebrity cook, pictured in a magazine this week, has been called sexier than Marilyn Monroe by her husband since 2003, Charles Saatchi. 'I've never been with a man who thinks that skinniness is desirable, which helps,' she said in the interview with Red. It's very important to be with someone who makes you feel madly desirable.'

She has vowed never again to go on a diet after her mother's admission shortly before dying of cancer.

'My mother was tortured by her weight,' she said. 'When she was dying she said "It's the first time I haven't worried about what I'm eating". You've got to think how warped it is to feel released from dieting because you have a terminal illness.

'When I had a daughter, I vowed I would never say "I hate myself, I'm fat" in front of her because I didn't want to pass it on.'

She added: 'You can't live on 1,000 calories a day and be happy. Now diets are all saying "This isn't a diet, this is a way of life, forever". Well, that makes me want to throw myself out of the window.

'Now I don't know what I weigh. I don't want to be totally consumed by that world. Even when I was dieting, I'd take recipe books to the gym and balance Ten Best Cream Cakes on the treadmill.'