jamie oliver
| In brief Jamie Oliver is a phenomenon in the world of food. He is one of the world’s best-loved television personalities and one of Britain’s most famous exports. Jamie has had huge success with television series The Naked Chef (BBC), Jamie’s Kitchen, Jamie’s School Dinners, Jamie’s Great Italian Escape, Return to School Dinners, Jamie’s Chef, and more recently, Jamie At Home as well as the one-off specials Jamie’s Fowl Dinners and Eat To Save Your Life (all for Channel 4). Jamie has inspired people to spend more time enjoying being in the kitchen – and even start growing their own food! His programmes have now been broadcast in over 60 countries including the USA, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, Japan and Iceland to name but a few. Having been translated into 26 languages, the accompanying cookbooks are bestsellers not only in the UK but across the world. Jamie lives in London and Essex with his wife, Jools and two daughters, Poppy and Daisy. In detail Born on 27 May 1975, Jamie took an early interest in food. He grew up in Essex, where his parents run their own highly respected pub/ restaurant The Cricketers in Clavering and was frequently found helping out in the kitchens. His fascination for food continued to grow and at 16 Jamie left school and completed his training at Westminster Catering College. After spending some time working in France, followed by Antonio Carluccio’s Neal Street Restaurant, London Jamie joined the acclaimed River Café where he worked for three and a half years alongside Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers. In 1997, Jamie was featured in a television documentary about the River Café. Soon after the documentary was aired, Jamie was offered his own television show and The Naked Chef was born. The concept behind The Naked Chef was to strip food down to its bare essentials and Jamie’s hands-on style and general laid back outlook was like a breath of fresh air, inspiring everyone to cook and winning himself a BAFTA Award for the best television series in the Features Category in 2000. The Naked Chef book, published by Penguin Books accompanied the first television series and it became an instant bestseller. A second and then a third television series were commissioned, along with the second and third tie-in books: The Return of the Naked Chef and Happy Days with the Naked Chef, with Happy Days with the Naked Chef becoming the official Christmas No.1 in 2001 in the non-fiction chart. Jamie spent the autumn of 2001 taking his cookery show on the road – the Happy Days Tour was a huge success with over 17,000 people packing theatres in the UK. The tour then took in Australia and New Zealand, where Jamie played to sold out crowds in seven cities. He had become a phenomenon. 2001 also saw Jamie cooking for the Italian Prime Minister at Tony Blair’s invitation at Downing St and also writing various columns in magazines including GQ and The Saturday Times magazine, bringing his recipes to another eager audience. By the end of 2001 Jamie needed a new challenge; he wanted to ‘give something back’ to the catering industry, so he decided to open a training restaurant for young people who were not in full time education or employment. Followed by cameras that documented his every move he spent the year setting up a training scheme, the restaurant and the charity into which all the profits would be channelled. The series, Jamie’s Kitchen, broadcast by Channel 4, became one of the biggest hit shows of the year in the UK. It has now been shown in over 35 countries and the tie-in book, also called Jamie’s Kitchen, became a runaway success. The triumph of the restaurant was shown when it won Tatler Best Restaurant Award 2003 and the Academy Award of Excellence at the Tio Pepe Carlton London Restaurant Awards in the same year. Jamie was awarded an MBE in 2003 for his contribution to the hospitality industry. The Fifteen Foundation charity now owns Fifteen London and continues its work, recently recruiting the sixth year of students for training in London. The first Fifteen franchise opened in Amsterdam in 2004 and subsequent Fifteens have opened in Cornwall, UK and Melbourne, Australia in 2006. In 2004, motivated by the poor state of school dinners in UK schools, Jamie embarked on one of his most ambitious ventures to date. He went back to school with the aim of educating and motivating the kids and dinner ladies to enjoy cooking and eating healthy, nutritious lunches rather than the processed foods that they were used to. Jamie launched a national campaign called Feed Me Better (www.feedmebetter.com) and launched an online petition for better school meals. As a result of the 271,677 signatures on the petition, which Jamie took to 10 Downing Street on 30th March 2005, the government pledged £280 million to improve the standard of school meals, to provide training for dinner ladies and equipment for schools. Over seven months of hard work and constant filming culminated in the award-winning series Jamie’s School Dinners, shown on Channel 4. The series prompted a public outcry for change to the school meals system and was awarded Best Factual programme at the UK National TV Awards. Jamie also received a special award for his contribution to television at the National TV awards. |
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| A follow-up documentary, Jamie’s return To School Dinners aired on Channel 4 in September 2006 and as a result of Jamie’s new findings the British government made further investment in school meals and food education for school children. Between these two documentaries, in 2005, Jamie took a break from schools with Jamie’s Great Italian Escape, a series based on his travels around Italy and his love of Italian food. This was accompanied by Jamie’s sixth book, Jamie’s Italy which instantly went to number one in the UK and sold more copies in the week before Christmas than any other non-fiction book has ever done. The book was nominated for the British Book Award ‘Book of the Year’ in the UK. In addition to Jamie’s television programmes and books, Jamie works with top UK supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, advising them on how to further improve the quality and variety of supermarket food. He has also designed a number of ranges of quality tableware and serveware with Royal Worcester, including the most recent range, Simply Blue. Working with Tefal (T-Fal), Jamie has launched three ranges of cookware under the Jamie Oliver Professional Series label. Jamie has also launched an Italian food range and has a wide range of gift foods, which are distributed internationally. Jamie has also turned inventor and developed a great kitchen gadget called the Flavour ShakerTM, which launched in the UK in 2005 and is now being rolled out internationally. Jamie also writes regular magazine columns. Over the years, these have included columns for GQ, Delicious, Easy Living, the Sunday Telegraph magazine, Stella, and the News of The World Fabulous magazine. These columns are then syndicated to international publications. Jamie’s seventh book, Cook With Jamie was published in the UK in October 2006 and quickly became a massive best-seller. All of Jamie’s profits from this book are going to the Fifteen Foundation to help more young people to start a career in the catering industry. Through 2006 and early 2007, Jamie filmed a series and wrote a book both called ‘Jamie At Home’. He had been successfully growing fruit and vegetables and herbs at his Essex farmhouse since 2004 and the book and series reflected his new love of gardening organically as well as featuring delicious recipes inspired by the produce of his garden. The series ‘Jamie At Home’ quickly became a hit in the UK and international markets, while the accompanying book ‘Jamie At Home’ is proving to be one of Jamie’s biggest sellers both in the UK and overseas. In autumn 2007 Jamie announced a new chain of “high street” Italian restaurants called ‘Jamie’s Italian’, the first of which opened in Oxford in May 2008. Further Jamie’s Italians are planned for Bath and Kingston (both late 2008), Cambridge, Brighton and Cardiff (2009). Jamie began 2008 with a burst of activity fronting two major TV programmes in the UK. Eat To Save Your Life used expert analysis as well as an autopsy by Dr Gunther von Hagens on a 25-stone man who literally “ate himself to death” to try to change the dietary habits of a group of malnourished Brits. Meanwhile Jamie’s Fowl Dinners was an in-depth and challenging look at the British poultry industry with a message that unless British consumers were prepared to trade up to a higher welfare chicken and egg, the British poultry industry would suffer irreparably. Groups ranging from the RSPCA to farmers’ organisations praised the programme and the result has been an increase in sales of free-range and organic chicken of up to 50%. In 2008, Jamie is as usual working on a number of exciting future projects including a new international TV series called Ministry of Food as well as appearing in The Big Give, the prime-time Oprah Winfrey-fronted hit show on ABC in the States which aired in the spring. Jamie’s Ministry of Food book will be published this autumn. For more information please go to www.jamieoliver.com |
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