Byline: DIANA APPLEYARD
ARTIST Andy Warhol once claimed that everyone should be famous for 15 minutes. By that estimation, today's celebrity chefs have certainly had more than their fair share of the limelight.
Nigella, Delia, Gary, Jamie and co. are rarely off our screens or the bookshelves.
However, when it comes to the internet, most have enjoyed rather less than 15 minutes of glory.
That tiger of the kitchen, Gordon Ramsay, is tamed into answering questions on a website rather hilariously titled website handbag.com, And many of the others' websites are simply blatant advertisements for their restaurants, shops, cookery workshops or product endorsements.
But it's not all doom and gloom. The indefatigable Jamie Oliver's website, www.jamieoliver.net, is a joy.
Clearly written by him - no one else could take such liberties with the English language - his personality spills out from the screen.
He has even dragooned his wife Jools into writing a monthly-updated diary.
The site is well designed, with lots of recent pictures, and some good, seasonal recipes such as baked Jerusalem artichokes.
What was especially good about this site was the Kids Club feature, aimed at encouraging children to get involved with cooking.
Just wait - the 'Pukka Tukka' badges are on their way.
THE chef who comes nearest to rivalling Jamie is Nigel Slater, with his down-to-earth column on the www. femail.co.uk website, owned by the Daily Mail.
Not only does he give tasty recipes, Nigel also answers questions in a very informative way. He champions organic food, saying the difference in taste can be 'truly startling'.
Martha Stewart, the American doyenne of gracious living, is also doing her thing in cyberspace.
Log on to her website (www.martha stewart.com) and, quite frankly, you may never want to leave.
It is an entire way of life - there is simply everything on this site, from a thousand recipes to recommended holidays, gardening, crafts, chatrooms, weddings and how to care for, and dress, your baby. And everything is done with such a deceptively simple, elegant style, it's enough to make you look around your own home in dismay and take it out on the cat.
With the weather so cold, Martha suggests indoor crafts to entertain housebound children. Transform old mittens into animal puppets, create a hair ornament with twists of beads and wire, and make your own soothing lipbalm flavoured with lemon, tangerine or mint.
And then, just in case you have more time on your hands than you know what to do with, Martha will tell you how to create the perfect Barbie party for your daughter.
Of course, there is a commercial imperative behind the website - almost every idea or recipe is accompanied by a product Martha can sell you personally.
But it is all done with such style you really don't feel like you're being fleeced.
There has been talk of Nigella Lawson, author of How To Be A Domestic Goddess, launching a super-site (www. nigella.com), and I am sure that if she does, Martha Stewart is the woman to follow.
Search for Nigella on the web at the moment and you'll find a site from her Channel 4 programme Nigella Bites, featuring a handful of recipes.
The original cookery goddess, Delia Smith, features surprisingly little on the web. Type her name into Google, the search engine everyone is using, and you simply get a list of her books and videos. Informative, but rather soulless.
Meanwhile, Rick Stein has a well- designed website, which points you towards his restaurant, his seafood school, his shop, Petroc's Hotel, demonstration evenings and books.
Antony Worrall Thompson comes at you via the Great British Kitchens website, and packs in several rather tasty-looking recipes such as lamb shanks with garlic, rosemary and flageolet beans. There are lots of details about his books, but no one dedicated site.
LIKEWISE, type in Marco Pierre White and you will be directed immediately to a website dedicated to his restaurant - called, fetchingly, 'The Restaurant - and treated to a mouth-watering description of the delicious food you could eat there, if only you could afford it.
And on BBC Online, you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about spiky-haired chef Gary Rhodes, such as what he would bury in a time capsule to commemorate this century's most innovative food.
(Answer: muesli and salad cream, among other things.) But few other star chefs have made much of an impression online, and for many, the net has proved to be something of a black hole.
A site seems a great idea for promotion and marketing, but then the huge costs, and the time involved, probably make this brilliant idea seem, well, less brilliant.
