Inside Jamie Oliver’s rollercoaster life from being millionaire at 24 to restaurant chain collapse as he celebrates 50th
IT’S been 26 years since The Naked Chef zipped on to the world stage aboard his Vespa – riding on a whirlwind of Britpop and Cool Britannia.
Within months, scooter-loving Essex boy Jamie Oliver became a millionaire and one of Britain’s first true celebrity cooks.
A model girlfriend, rock star mates and a Prime Minister among his clients meant he was unquestionably the most hip, too.
Now, as he prepares to turn 50 next month, he leads a landmark Netflix documentary chronicling a career which, he openly admits, has been “a culinary rollercoaster”.
In Chef’s Table: Legends, which drops on the streaming service next week, Jamie looks back at how he wanted to revolutionise the rather stuffy world of cuisine back in 1999.
He said: “The Naked Chef was supposed to be the punk of cookery — cooking was for girls, and what the naked chef had to do was show you that cooking could get you girls.
“I got really famous, really fast.
“My life changed overnight.
“It was extraordinary, chaotic, bonkers.
‘I wanted to hide’
“It felt like everything was happening in hyperdrive. Interviews, red carpets, magazines.
“It was like being in a boyband.
“To go from flashing red on your credit card to being a young millionaire.
“I was plucked out of obscurity at 24.
“I had no agent, no manager, I had no media training.
“I was totally out of my depth.”
Jamie dived into a career that began with books and cookery shows, where his mission to strip normal kitchen processes down to the bare essentials earned him “The Naked Chef” moniker.
In the Noughties, he married girlfriend Jools, became a campaigner for better food and launched a worldwide restaurant chain.
Jamie was even asked to cook for the Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair, who is seen gushing about him in the documentary.
The former PM says: “No one had ever thought cooking could be like that.
“He was a guy in his early twenties.
“He didn’t look like a chef, he didn’t talk like a chef.
“He personified a societal change.
“Jamie is much, much more than a chef.
“His legacy is multi- faceted.
“He made cooking cool and he also linked food at a very early stage to nutrition and to health.
“He’s one of these guys who just wakes every morning and thinks, ‘What am I going to do to change things?’.”
But after two decades at the top, Jamie’s Icarus moment came in 2019, when all of his 45 UK restaurants were forced into liquidation with debts of £72million.
In the documentary, he recalls: “The success had happened so quickly.
“We had 4,500 staff and the wage bill was £75,000 a day — we just couldn’t afford it.
“It was a massive, ‘oh s**t!’ moment.
“I thought, ‘How can I save this?’.
“I tried everything.
“We ended up losing all the restaurants — everything that I’d built over 20 years.
“And it cut deep, the embarrassment and shame.
“Everything felt like I’d f****d up.”
After hitting rock bottom, Jamie considered climbing off the culinary rollercoaster and stepping back from being a celebrity chef altogether.
He said: “I wanted to disappear, run off and hide away.
“I was thinking, ‘F**k, how has this all been for nothing? Maybe now we wind it up’.
“But I didn’t feel it was my time to do that yet.
“As bad and as dark as this was, I’m still employing 150 people.
“This was definitely not the time for me to quit.”
Jamie also says in the programme that his determination was born from a childhood in rural Essex, where his dyslexia always held him back at school.
He said: “I never got the right kind of help.
“If you looked at my reports, they said ‘fail, fail, dunce’.
It was like being in a boyband. To go from flashing red on your credit card to being a young millionaire.
Jamie Oliver
“When you spend the first chunk of your life feeling like you’re not bright and you’ve nothing to offer the world, that could have demoralised me a lot.”
However, Jamie said working at The Cricketers pub in Clavering, Essex — which his parents, Sally and Trevor, owned — gave him encouragement, support and a taste of cookery that set him up for life.
He cut his professional teeth as a pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio’s London restaurant making Italian food, then started as a sous chef at the River Cafe in West London.
It was while a documentary was being filmed there in 1997 that producers spotted his potential.
Two years later, his own show, The Naked Chef, debuted on BBC Two, along with a best-selling cookbook of the same name.
His bish-bash-bosh style of “home cooking” and presentation seemed radical in a world where Delia Smith had previously been the yardstick for such shows.
Turkey twizzlers
He recalls: “TV cookery at that stage wasn’t that cool.
“It was very studio based, old fashioned — chef whites and all a bit well-to-do.”
The book and show were the first of many encapsulating his distinctly British style, that is still hugely popular around the world.
Which is why, despite only having one UK restaurant now, he still has 62 abroad, including 17 opening this year.
Jamie’s career has always been gently guided by his wife, Jools.
The couple share five children and live in a 16th century mansion in Essex.
She was the first to suggest he should create positive change using his high profile, which also brought unwanted attention and unwarranted criticism.
He said: “The fame thing had been fun, but it really wasn’t fun anymore.
“It was uncomfortable, fame.
“It was something not quite right.
“Like a stomach ache.
“I just started thinking, ‘How do I start using my voice, my fame, whatever you call it? Can it go beyond culinary enthusiasm on a plate?’.
“I guess that’s where I went from being more than a TV chef to standing for something.
“Me and Jools had a conversation and we decided if we’re going to do this thing in the public eye, can we do something positive that makes a difference?”
The fame thing had been fun, but it really wasn’t fun anymore. It was uncomfortable, fame. It was something not quite right.
Jamie Oliver
The result was Fifteen, a London eatery where 15 unemployed youngsters were trained in the hope that they would end up working full-time in the restaurant.
It formed part of a Channel 4 documentary in 2002, and gradually the number of restaurants grew.
It was probably no coincidence that, a year later, Jamie was awarded an MBE for services to the hospitality industry.
But, to his horror, the 2019 implosion of the UK business followed later.
In the documentary, Jamie said: “The hardest bit to swallow was I lost Fifteen.
“It was like losing my heart.
“The kids at Fifteeen were my north star.”
Jamie had longer lasting success with his school dinners campaign, which again took the form of a Channel 4 documentary.
The drive to improve the daily offering to schoolchildren was initially a struggle, but Jamie managed to win over PM Tony Blair, who pledged an extra £280million to the cause.
However, the money was just part of the battle.
Even though he was willing to go into schools and cook healthy grub, kids didn’t exactly go crazy for meals that weren’t chips and turkey twizzlers.
Jamie said: “I used to look in the bins at the end of each service of the school and it was full of my food, because they f*****g hated it.
“It was probably the most miserable 18 months of my life.
“I remember laying in bed at night going, ‘Why wont they f*****g eat it?’.
“But to get kids to try stuff, they need encouragement, they need love, they need nurturing.
“So you do that every day and you start seeing your harshest critics turning and, slowly but surely, the bins got less full.”
Positive ripples
Although his school dinner campaign was one of his most famous successes, Jamie’s failed restaurant business in the UK made him realise his focus shouldn’t always be on making a huge “splash”.
He said: “I never realised it was all about the ripples.
“Like, if I give a recipe or a little hack or a little tip, that could have positive ripples in your home for years and years.”
Jamie has also raised awareness of dyslexia, with a Channel 4 show set to air on the subject this year, plus campaigned for free meals and proper food education in schools.
His 10 Cooking Skills For Life plan gives teachers free resources to educate 11 to 14-year-olds on food prep. He also has two cookery schools in the UK.
Jamie is a massive backer of the Good School Food Awards, a scheme supported by The Sun.
He also supports The Sun’s Who Cares Wins Awards, celebrating the country’s healthcare heroes.
And he’s still fighting junk food, calling for innovations such as mandatory labelling and price promotions on healthy grub.
He continues to make Channel 4 cookery shows on how to whip up delicious food cheaply, quickly and with minimal fuss.
All his innovations make up the little ripples which, as he reaches his milestone birthday, he now sees as playing a crucial part in the Naked Chef legacy.
Jamie said: “One small thing can make beautiful things happen.
“I had a job and a purpose to guide as many people towards the joy of food and cooking.
“My voice, our voice, can make positive change, and I’m going to give it my best shot.”
- Chef’s Table: Legends drops on Netflix on Monday.
- You can still nominate for a food hero with this link: https://www.jamieoliver.com/schoolfoodawards/apply/ Teachers can apply for the 10 Lessons via school.jamieoliver.com