Jamie Oliver
- Profession: Celebrity chef
- Place/Date of Birth: Clavering, Essex, 27 May 2020
"These guys have gone in armed with a hammer, scared the customers, scared the staff and pushed an elderly member of staff to the floor. He’s offering £150,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any of these people responsible.
"He’s disappointed and shocked that this kind of thing happens in a small
Oliver talks about growing up at the pub on his website, where he describes The Cricketers as "lovely".
His father has appeared with him on television food programmes.
"My dad runs a lovely pub-restaurant, The Cricketers, in Clavering, Essex, where I grew up," writes the chef. "I remember being fascinated by what went on in the kitchen. It just seemed such a cool place, everyone working together to make this lovely stuff and having a laugh doing it."
Jamie’s school dinner lady quits - April 4 2007
The dinner lady who led Jamie Oliver’s TV crusade for healthy school meals has quit her job.
Nora Sands is leaving
She starred alongside the celebrity chef in Jamie’s School Dinners, the Channel 4 show which campaigned to ban food such as Turkey Twizzlers from the menu.
Education chiefs said she was going for "personal and health-related" reasons - denying reports she has resigned in frustration at a lack of Government cash to improve school meals.
A friend of Nora told the Daily Mirror: "Nora is passionate about this campaign. To see nothing change despite all the problems has been heartbreaking.
"She became increasingly frustrated at trying to provide a healthy menu with none of the extra money or training for staff promised by the Government."
But Greenwich Council leader Chris Roberts said: "There is absolutely no truth in the suggestion that Nora is leaving due to concerns over budget issues.
"She has made clear to us that her reasons are personal and health-related.
"The council is very grateful for all that Nora and all our school meals staff have done to create healthy and nutritious food for the children at Kidbrooke over many years."
Irish-born Nora became the star of Jamie’s School Dinners with her no-nonsense approach.
Celebrity chef Jamie told the Daily Mirror he was bitterly disappointed that she was leaving.
"It’s a great shame. Nora has made incredible changes at Kidbrooke and really struggled over the past four years without support."
Jamie offers recipe to Prince - Feb 16 2007
Jamie Oliver offered the Prince of Wales one of his recipes for Charles’ Duchy Originals range.
The Prince hosted a reception at Clarence House for cooks and headteachers from 60 schools to stress the importance of giving pupils healthy meals.
Jamie, known for his crusade to banish unhealthy school dinners, was among the guests who mingled with Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.
The celebrity chef told the Prince he could use a gingerbread recipe he developed recently for a new Duchy Originals product.
Charles and Camilla revealed they were fans of the star’s TV series Jamie’s School Dinners, in which he campaigned to improve the quality of food served in schools.
Jamie said he was "very much in awe" of the good work done by the Prince’s Trust charity, which receives the profits of sales of Duchy Originals produce.
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The young person’s, modern day Delia, Jamie Oliver catapulted himself to fame following a chance meeting at the River Café, he now commands millions for advertisements, has created a socially aware restaurant empire and influenced what our children eat at school.
Despite his slightly grating, ‘cockney’ accent, our Jamie’s actually a born and bred Essex boy. Having been raised to landlord parents he started working in a professional kitchen at the tender age of 11, when he used to peel the veg for the Sunday Roast at the pub.
He trained at Westminster Catering College and spent some time studying in France. On his return to London he bagged himself a job as head pastry chef at the Antonio Carluccio restaurant on Neal Street, before heading over to Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers gastro-delight The River Café. It was here that he was apparently ‘spotted’, whilst a television crew were in doing a dash of filming, and the result was ‘Naked Chef’ in 1998.
His new, fresh and relaxed approach to presenting and food in general went down a storm with the British public and another series followed shortly after in 1999. Over the years his stake in primetime television has grown with a number of successful programmes, including Jamie’s Kitchen, Jamie’s Great Italian Escape and Oliver Twist.
In 2000 Jamie became the ‘face of Sainsburys’, which saw the chef earn a reputed £1.2 million per year, whilst appearing in rather cringe worthy ads left, right and centre of the television scheduling programme. His over exposure led to a bit of a backlash with caricatures of him springing up on the comedy circuit; think big lips, wads of cash, ‘mockney’ accent and floppy wife.
If the Sainsburys deal signalled a temporary fall from grace for the Essex boy, then the series Jamie’s Kitchen saw him return from the back of the pack to take gold. The programme followed the chef as he launched his flagship Fifteen restaurant in London. Part of a charitable foundation, the business offers training for underprivileged kids and branches have gone on to be launched in Newquay, the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Melbourne.
Jamie’s social conscious doesn’t end there either – in 2005 the geeza chef took on the British education system, with a good, long, hard look at what we were feeding the minds of tomorrow – fat, salt and sugar being the main ingredients. The series signalled a social crisis in parliament and forced the Government to reassess school dinners around the country, with the aim of educating our kids about food and it’s origins, whilst providing them with a well-rounded diet.
In 2003 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
He married Juliette Norton in 2000 and the couple have two daughters.
November 2007