Jamie Oliver
- Profession: Celebrity chef
- Place/Date of Birth: Clavering, Essex, 27 May 2020
The chef, who wore a grey suit, was accompanied by Nora Sands, a dinner lady featured on Jamie’s School Dinners.
Jamie said he was currently in a "stage of observing" how Government pledges to improve school meals were working.
"In a year or so we will review what’s happened," he said.
"We will study where the money’s gone. As usual with politics there’s a lot of detail involved.
"It has captured the public’s imagination and lots of good stuff’s happened."
The chef indicated there would probably be another series of Jamie’s School Dinners "in the next few years", when it was "relevant".
Jamie discusses dinners with Charles - Feb 15 2007
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver and more than 60 school cooks will meet the Prince of Wales today.
Charles is hosting a reception at Clarence House to stress the importance of providing pupils with healthy meals.
Jamie is well known for his crusade to banish unhealthy school dinners.
The Prince will also meet representatives of The School Food Trust, which oversees the Government’s school food reforms.
It was set up after the TV chef’s Feed Me Better campaign two years ago.
School cooks from across the country, along with their headteachers, will chat to Charles about the standard of food being offered to youngsters.
The Trust is aiming to increase the uptake of school meals and improve food skills through education.
Prue Leith, the Government’s new school meals adviser and chair of the Trust, said last month that parents should ration children’s pocket money to stop them buying sweets and fizzy drinks on the way to school.
The food writer and broadcaster warned that the decline in traditional family meal times meant growing numbers of children could not use a knife and fork.
Jamie stalls on running restaurant - Jan 24 2007
Jamie Oliver might be a veteran when it comes to campaigning for healthier meals, but it seems the TV chef is still not ready to run his own restaurant.
Although the 31-year-old owns
He told the paper that one day he will be old and wise enough to open and run his own "exclusive" place.
"I’ve got plenty of time for all that and maybe one day I will open a place of my own," he said.
"If I do, it’ll be somewhere a bit exclusive, somewhere that enables me to fulfil my love of food. I’ve still got a long way to go as a chef, that’s for sure."
Jamie, well-known for his crusade against turkey twizzlers and other unhealthy school grub, is proud of his success on the small screen.
"As for TV, I don’t have any strategic marketing plan about what’s next. Besides, how can I improve on School Dinners? That’s probably the pinnacle of my career."
Jamie plays ’prank’ on gran - Dec 20 2006
Cheeky chef Jamie Oliver has revealed that he plays jokes on his gran - including giving her Viagra.
Luckily for Jamie’s gran - the packet just contained sweets.
Speaking on his Christmas podcast, the 31-year-old said: "I absolutely love getting crackers. You can be ridiculous and put anything in them.
"I went into a pharmacy and got a packet of Viagra. I filled it up with Smarties and put it in my gran’s cracker. She looked let down when she found out it was Smarties.
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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