Jamie Oliver
The Naked Chef
Jamie Oliver is the youngest start of TV cooking, with no-nonsense, ultra-tasty recipes.
Jamie grew up surrounded by good food: his parents ran the Cricketers pub in Essex and, from the age of eight, he started cooking and helping the chefs. The use of quality fresh produce at the pub gave young Jamie a love of good ingredients. After an undistinguished school career, he decided he wanted to cook and went on to study at Westminster Catering College. It was around this time that he met Jools and they started dating. After college, he traveled to learn more about his trade in France.
Jamie's apprenticeship to restaurant cooking came under some of the best chefs in London. To begin with there was Antonio Carluccio at the Neal Street Restaurant. Then, he moved on to the River Café under Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers. The Italian influence on his cooking is strong, with its use of herbs and simple, full-flavoured recipes. It was while he was working at the River Café that he was spotted by a television producer and his life changed.
The first series that featured Jamie's cooking was the Naked Chef. Viewers were treated to a glimpse into his world, zipping about London on a scooter and hosting parties for all of his friends, all to a rock and roll soundtrack. The food was reassuringly hearty, but not too fiddly and Jamie always seemed to have his hands full of fresh herbs and olive oil. It was an overnight success, attracting the kind of audience that wouldn't normally watch food programs. The book that accompanied the series became a bestseller and the young chef, always fully clothed, was catapulted into the limelight.
Fast on the heels of the first series came the Return of the Naked Chef. Again, it was packed full of the same stylish food and London partygoers, but we also saw more of Jamie's domestic side, at home with girlfriend Jools and cooking on a smaller scale. The second time around, people loved the show and the book, forcing Jamie into a whirlwind schedule of travelling round the world to promote the Naked Chef.
After taking some time off to get married to Jools, Jamie worked on his third series, Happy Days with the Naked Chef. The series and book had a slightly different feel as Jamie had had some time to listen to what people wanted. There are different moods and ideas in the last outing but the cheeky grin and wisecracks are still there.
In 2002 Jamie embarked on his most ambitious project yet. He took 15 under-privileged youngsters who had never been anywhere near a restaurant kitchen and turned (most of) them into professional chefs to work under him at his new restaurant Fifteen in London. The restaurant and its accompanying TV series have both been huge successes. Jamie now plans to repeat the formula elsewhere in the UK and in Sydney and New York.
Before leaving to set up Fifteen, Jamie was consultant chef at Monte's in Knightsbridge, working with his close friend Ben O'Donoghue, star of BBC TWO's The Best. He writes for newspapers and magazines and has a number of long-term projects on the go.