Overall ranking: 2 (1)

Chef ranking: 2 (1)

Jamie Oliver - Snapshot
Celebrity TV chef and professional “cheeky chappie” Jamie Oliver is one of Britain’s most famous exports. His award-winning TV series have been seen in 50 countries and the accompanying best-selling books have been translated into 16 languages.

He has earned respect through his campaigns on behalf of young people.

In 2002, he opened his first Fifteen restaurant, which employs disadvantaged youngsters whom Oliver trains from scratch.

His Bafta-winning 2005 TV series, Jamie’s School Dinners and ensuing campaign to improve the quality of school meals sent shock waves through the school catering sector. It is seen as the catalyst that spurred the Government into ploughing an extra £280m into school meals over the following three years and pledging a further £240m for the following three years up to 2011.

Jamie Oliver - Career guide
Born in May 1975, Oliver showed an early passion for food and by the age of eight, was working in the kitchens of his parents’ pub-restaurant, the Cricketers in the Essex village of Clavering. He racked up some outside experience at the Star in Great Dunmow before enrolling at Westminster Catering College at 16.

After a stint in France, Oliver landed the role of head pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio’s Neal Streat restaurant for a year. He then worked as senior sous chef at the River Café for three-and-a-half years, where he was “discovered” in 1997 in a TV documentary on the London restaurant.

So began a successful career in the public spotlight as a TV chef, author, and a columnist for GQ and the Saturday Times magazine – not to mention an ongoing advertising deal that made Oliver the public face of supermarket giant Sainsbury.

Back on the shop floor, Oliver acted as a chef-consultant for London private members club Monte’s for two-and-a-half years until mid-2002. In November of the same year he opened his first training restaurant, Fifteen, in London’s Hoxton region. It was followed by more venues in Amsterdam (in 2004) and in Newquay, Cornwall, and Melbourne, Australia, this autumn.

Jamie Oliver - What we think
Oliver’s star quality was spotted when he was just 21 in a documentary on London’s River Café. The day after it was televised, Oliver was deluged with calls from five production companies and thus was born the Naked Chef.

His informal and hands-on approach, which stripped food down to its bare essentials, made cooking fun and accessible to millions. A 2004 report from Mintel named Oliver, along with Delia Smith and Nigella Lawson, as the most significant influences on the nation’s cooking habits.

However, three series of the Naked Chef in tandem with years of Sainsbury’s ads threatened to jade the public’s appetite for Oliver. But his currency as a ratings-booster was revived with his next project, Jamie’s Kitchen, which charted his six-month struggle to convert a derelict building in Hoxton into a 70-seat restaurant manned by 15 unemployed youngsters who had taken a crash course in cooking.

The Jamie Oliver Fifteen charitable venture attracted an avalanche of accolades in 2003, including a Catey Special Award and an MBE.

Fifteen was not to make a profit (of around £400,000) until 2004 but Oliver’s media work, along with the tableware and cookware lines he helped develop with Royal Worcester and Tefal, helped him double his personal fortune to £20m in the same year. In 2006, the Independent named him as Britain’s second richest chef with an estimated value of £58m.

An outspoken critic of outsourced school dinners – which he once described as “terrible” and “rubbish”, Oliver backed up his pronouncements with action and worked with Kidbrooke Secondary School in the London borough of Greenwich to wean pupils onto a healthier diet. By July of 2005, nearly all the 80 schools in Greenwich using the council’s catering team were serving Jamie’s meals.

This March, he called upon the Government to treble the amount spent on school meals and to develop a 10 to 15 year strategy to raise standards.

He has now turned his wrath on the 70% of parents he believes send their children to school with junk food in a one-off Channel 4 programme aired in September 2006, Jamie’s Return to School Dinners where he suggested the Government should allow teachers to confiscate nutritionally-dubious packed lunches. Earlier in the month, the Government pledged to spend another £240m on school meals between 2008 and 2011.

Oliver is also taking a green stance by seeking to build two wind turbines that would halve power consumption at the new Fifteen in Cornwall.

In 2004, Oliver was appointed an honorary vice-chairman for Hospitality Action’s Ark Foundation, which addresses alcohol and drug problems in the hospitality industry.

Jamie Oliver - Further Information

Jamie Oliver website >>

More about Jamie Oliver Fifteen restaurants >>

The Fifteen Foundation >>

Feed Me Better – Jamie Oliver’s school meals campaign >>

Jamie Oliver recipes >>

Jamie Oliver’s recipe books on Amazon >>

Jamie Oliver profile on Wikipedia >>

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