THE dinner lady is so busy promoting her new book that she doesn't even have time to wash herself. This she announces the minute she walks in the door. It's a very busy morning in a very hip London restaurant, and Nora Sands is talking loudly about her personal hygiene to a journalist with a dictaphone. It's going to be an interesting hour.

She tells it like it is, this Irish cook. Which is probably why she was an instant hit with anyone who watched Jamie Oliver's School Dinners series last year.

Oliver had decided he wanted to revolutionise the UK's school dinners by replacing chips and nuggets for pastas and salads. He waltzed into Nora's kitchen in Kidbrooke School in Greenwich, where she had worked as head cook for 16 years. He took his boyish charm and cheeky-chappy demeanour, turned it up a few notches, and aimed it directly at Nora. A lesser woman would have been wrapped around his pinky finger before he could say "Easy, sweetheart." But this dinner lady wasn't impressed. Worse. She was angry.

"We could have killed him in the beginning, " she says now, cheerfully speaking on behalf of all the dinner ladies at the school.

"Looking back on it now, it's funny. But it wasn't funny at the time. In some of the tapes, it looked like I was going to kill someone."

Indeed it did. And that someone was invariably Oliver. In one particular clip, Nora literally chases Jamie down the hall, presumably T with the intention of causing him bodily harm.

He had just announced he was sending her out of her kitchen for the day. Clearly, he was asking for it.

"I didn't want to watch myself. I didn't like it, to be honest with you, " she says. It sounds like a big admission, the way she says it. "I liked what came out of the series, but I didn't like myself in it. Especially my voice. I was convinced they'd changed the way I talked."

Ah yes. Her voice. It's not the volume that makes it distinctive. Nor the conviction that resonates in every syllable. No. It's the accent.

A wholly unique inflection, borne out of 15 years of rural Kilkenny living, followed by a lifetime in London. Of course, the volume helps make it heard.

It's the same voice that earns Nora recognition on the street, one year after her television debut. That, and the way she laughs.

Her whole body goes into convulsions when she's really tickled by something. And it doesn't take a whole lot to tickle her.

"No one notices me until I open me mouth, " she says (laughing). "But when I talk I get a look from somebody, and I know my voice has been haunting them. I suppose as well, I just say what I think. I can't help meself."

This is probably why she is being closely shadowed by a PR lady named Debbie, whose job it is to ferry Nora around London city to do interviews promoting her new cook book for children, Nora's Dinners. Debbie sits close, on the edge of her seat, watching her charge intently.

But her censoring presence seems to make no difference to the dinner lady, who is busy talking about her first major promotional work for the book last week.

"I've got over the worst of it now. I've had me first book signing, " she smiles, shy and proud all of a sudden. And very embarrassed.

Her hand flies up to her face, and she peeks out from behind it.

"It went good, " she says. "Well, I think it was good." She looks to Debbie for affirmation.

Debbie nods, gently.

"It was strange as anything, though, " says Nora. "It was nice, but it wasn't what I imagined it would be like. I was a bit nervous of it all. Beforehand you get a bit frightened, you know. You can't imagine it in your head, so you're nervous of it.

"And the funny thing about it is I wasn't like this at all in the beginning. I mean, when Jamie came to the school, it just didn't seem like a big deal. And he's quite a known celebrity, I think, isn't he?" She looks again to Debbie. Who nods, gently.

The problem for Nora, or perhaps the key to her success is that she didn't go looking for any of this.

By her own admission, when Jamie Oliver arrived at her school, no one realised that they were making a television series that was going to attract international media coverage and promote widespread debate about child nutrition.

"We didn't see what was happening, we didn't realise what was going to come out of it, " she says. "We just carried on as normal.

When it came out on the television, we were as shocked as everyone in the country, even though we were part of it. Do you understand? We were just doing our work, so we didn't see it."

But not seeing the bigger picture didn't stop Nora from becoming passionately involved in Oliver's project. After a rocky beginning, the two worked together against the wishes of every child in the school, and even some of the parents. At one point in the series, parents are seen passing fast-food through the gates of the school to their children, who were refusing to eat any of Oliver's healthy alternatives.

Nora refuses to be drawn on her feelings about this. "You can't condemn people, " she says. "I would have gone in for myself to look at what food was being served. But you can't tell people how to live their lives."

Now, with Oliver travelling around the country, trying to spread the word, Nora continues working in Kidbrooke, intent on changing the way children eat. She sees this as her life's work, and has no intention of leaving it any time soon.

"Oh, yes, yes, yes. That's my place of work.

This, " she waves her hand in the general direction of her book, and Debbie. "This is just a bit of a sideline." A solid minute of uproarious laughter follows this announcement.

But she's serious.

So serious that she scheduled the launch of her very first book to coincide with her Easter holidays.

"I couldn't take time off me job, " she says, looking scandalised at the suggestion. "Not at this crucial time in the school's dinners, I just couldn't do it. It wouldn't be fair to do that to the children. It's going very well, but there's still a lot to do. They eat the food, but some of them are still really looking to get chips.

There's a lot more education to be done. It's only halfway there, really. You can't just give up on something like this. It's for the next generation as well."

For the first time since the interview began, Nora hasn't laughed between sentences. Her commitment to the project, and her joy in seeing it working "even a little bit" shines through her.

"We have to keep it going to keep the children well, " she says. "All the cooks go home to a dinner, but some children don't. They don't go home to anything. So at least if they have a good meal at school, they've eaten something good. I don't know much about nutrition, but that has to be better for them."

It is also to help this cause that Nora finally agreed to write a recipe book, albeit a little reluctantly. The publishers had to ask her three times, before she graciously acquiesced.

"Do you think that if I couldn't cook I was going to start thinking of writing a book?" she says, laughing. "No, I didn't think of it. I would never have thought of it. The publishers got in touch with me. And in the end, I spoke to them, and I got loads of help, from everyone.

I wouldn't have known what to do, without the help."

Much of her inspiration for the recipes came from her Irish childhood. Her initial draft of the book, which was full of potatobased dishes, was rejected by the publishers.

"I would have had loads of stews and potatoes in it, but every recipe I did originally had potatoes in it, " she says, shrugging. "They said they didn't want all the potato dishes. But all of the simple recipes come from my childhood too, like the roast, and scrambled egg and the egg toast. That's the Irish in me."

Nora started life in the little village of Killeen in Co Kilkenny, amongst four siblings and parents who, like many parents at the time, were struggling to simply get by.

"Everything we ate came from the garden, " she says. "Before dinner, we'd go outside and dig up the spuds or whatever it is we were having. That's how we were in our house. We all took part in the cooking. That's what I wanted to get into the book, that sense of happiness.

Of course, it wasn't always so nice washing spuds out the back in the cold winter. Or having to get all our water from the well.

"But still. We just didn't know how lucky we were. Like in the spring, we had the onions and all the fresh vegetables. And in the winter we'd have beetroot sandwiches going to school, and we used to hate it when she'd put onions in the sandwiches, because we'd have them in our bags and there was an awful strong smell coming from them, and the teacher just made you so embarrassed in the classroom saying, 'Who's got onion sandwiches. Get those sandwiches out.' We were frightened of the teachers then. They're not frightened of the teachers now."

Nora's Dinners is a simple recipe book, full of colour and pictures and easy step-by-step instructions. It's designed to make cooking easy for children. It's also designed to help parents learn.

"I'm hoping the children will actually teach the parents, and they can learn together, " says Nora. "You wouldn't believe it, but there's a whole generation of young parents now who can't cook at all." She pauses, waiting for the appropriate expressions of shock. They are dutifully provided. Satisfied, she continues.

"So hopefully with this, the whole family can do it together. Even if it's just banana on toast instead of a bag of chips, I'd be happy. Or having bowls of nuts or chopped carrots around the kitchen for snacks, instead of crisps. I'm so pleased at what's come out of it. I didn't want it perfect, because children don't do perfect. Just a bit of mess and a bit of fun, and some good, healthy food."

So far, Nora's book has been very well received. Things have never looked better for the dinner lady, who just turned 50 in January. "I feel alive now, and there's just so much to do and so many lovely people out there that you just would never expect to find, " she says. "But I've tried to keep it exactly the same.

I love me own home and me own family."

This prompts a question about Nora's husband Tony, who also featured in the School Dinners series. Tony won the hearts of viewers with his obvious devotion to Nora. What does he think of her success?

She actually blushes a little before she talks about him. "Oh, he's just my biggest fan, you know?" she says, giggling like a schoolgirl. "He'd talk to anyone if he thought they wanted to talk about me. I wouldn't swop him for nobody. He would just support me in everything. Like even this morning, when I was getting up at 6am he was fussing around me, giving me my phone and my bits and pieces. He's just smashing."

Her two children are also delighted, and she's hoping for grandchildren to share her joy sometime soon. "My daughter will kill me for saying that, " she says, and she's off again. Laughing with her entire body and her very distinctive voice. A few diners glance in our direction. It seems Nora has just been recognised.