Jamie Oliver: King of the Kitchen - The biography of the man who revolutionised the way Britain eats. Stafford Hildred
Jamie Oliver: King of the Kitchen - The biography of the man who revolutionised the way Britain eats
children from their early days that there was a clear link in life between effort and reward.
‘I wanted to have some pocket money to spend and Dad told me that I had to earn it,’ said Jamie. ‘I thought washing up was perhaps not macho enough for a cool and sophisticated eight-year-old. I decided that most of the hardcore action was in the kitchen with the real men and that is where I wanted to be.’
The principle of the paramount importance of hard work on the way to a happy and successful life was thus instilled in Jamie at a very early age. His father made sure both Jamie and his sister Anna-Marie worked for their pocket money because he was convinced it would teach them the value of things.
Jamie has been fascinated by food for as long as he can remember. When he was only eight years old he would find regular employment podding peas, peeling and chipping potatoes and pestering the chefs for more responsible jobs at The Cricketers. He was paid £7.50 for two afternoons’ work and he was delighted. ‘Think how many penny chews you can buy with that.’
Trevor Oliver recalls, ‘Jamie wangled his way into the kitchen, and by the time he was 12 years old or so he was getting to be pretty useful.’ Not that he praised him too highly at the time, for Trevor was always a hard taskmaster when it came to supervising his workers and Jamie was no exception, just because he happened to be his son. But Jamie worked hard and learned aspects of working in the kitchen. His proud father Trevor later noted, ‘When he was still only 14, it was quite usual for him and another chef to cook 100 or 120 meals on a Sunday night.’
Jamie has different memories of his learning curve. He reckons that by the time he was 11 years old he could julienne vegetables like a professional, and when he was only 15, the head chef at the Star in nearby Great Dunmow was confident enough of his culinary abilities that he put him in charge of a section.
Jamie spent a great deal of his boyhood helping out in his father’s pub. Living above the business is not always easy, but Jamie revelled in having his home right at the hub of the village. He loved it always being busy and people coming and going all the time. Jamie is not a solitary person and happily admits that he can quickly tire of his own company if left alone too long. His parents had moved in and took over the inn soon after Jamie was born, so his total childhood was spent in the most social surroundings.
Being brought up on licensed premises has helped to give him a natural ease with people from all walks of life and of all ages. ‘It was quite an amazing experience growing up in a country pub with all these different characters coming in every day,’ he said. ‘There was always something going on and always something happening. We were always taught to smile and be polite to people and make them welcome. So many of my dad’s ways were right, that I find myself following them even now. “People want to feel pleased to be here,” he used to say and I suppose it sounds so obvious. But over the years I’ve seen loads of restaurants where people plainly did not feel pleased to be there. Dad loved his job and he reckoned it was because he was interested in people. “Sometimes it only takes a smile to brighten up a customer’s day,” my dad used to say and many’s the time nowadays that I think how right he was.’
Jamie cannot bear rudeness and slackness in any catering establishment. He seethes when Britain is accused of being second-rate in this department and always speaks up passionately on the country’s behalf.
Jamie loved working in a place where other people were relaxing. His father taught him the importance of listening as well as talking and regulars in Clavering always found young Jamie to be a genial and attentive companion. ‘I would be sitting there talking to old men who would give me a mini-glass of Guinness and I would feel really grown up.’
Jamie was taught early on that customers need to be made to feel comfortable as soon as they enter an eating establishment. ‘If they’ve never been inside before, they might feel a little unsure or awkward and the sooner you can put them at their ease, the sooner they are going to sit down and start enjoying themselves,’ says Jamie. ‘It sounds blindingly obvious, I know. But you can walk into a lot of restaurants and be left standing there like a lemon and it sets completely the wrong tone for the evening. Eating out should be a special experience. My dad drilled into me that people came to The Cricketers to be entertained. Often they were celebrating a birthday or a promotion or an anniversary and if you make that celebration a bit more enjoyable, they are all the more likely to come back again and tell their friends.
‘I suppose I’m lucky because I do genuinely like people, which I have found is a huge help in life,’ says Jamie. ‘Most people have a nice side or something interesting to tell you, if only you take the trouble to find out what it is. And food is such a great leveller. Everyone likes to eat good food, so if you can serve that up to people you are half-way there.’
Customers remember Jamie as an attentive presence around the pub. Bryan Stephenson, a regular who used to drive over from a neighbouring village for supper a couple of times a week, said, ‘Even as a young boy, he was very polite and helpful to the customers. He would come up and ask what we thought of our meal or if we wanted some more pepper or another drink, as if he was really interested in whether or not we were enjoying the meal. He would have a laugh as well but even as a young boy in his early teens he was just like his dad. He had that keenness to please and attention to detail. Lots of people are surprised he has become so famous but I always thought he would do well. He stood out even as a youngster. Good luck to him, I say.’
And Neil Weekes, who played football for Clavering as a young man, remembers Jamie ‘always with a smile on his face. We would go to the pub after the game and Jamie would be helping to serve us our scampi and chips even though he was only about 11 or 12. He was a really nice, friendly lad. The pub had a great family atmosphere. But then, it had a great family running it.’
Jamie’s parents worked very long hours to build up the business but they always tried to cover for each other so one of them was available for the children. Even though they lived above a busy pub, Trevor and Sally were always careful to preserve some privacy and they made sure there was always some special family time scheduled into every day. And they recognised the benefit of having regular family breaks.
‘Being a publican is incredibly hard work,’ says Jamie. ‘You can be on call 24 hours a day and it is hard to ever properly relax. So Dad always made sure that he made the time for us to have proper family holidays. He took us away every single year to the Canary Islands, Cyprus or Madeira just to relax and get spoilt.
‘But the place we always went back to every year was the Norfolk Broads. We used to hire a motor cruiser and go all over the place. Norfolk was fantastic. We would wake up early and there would be mist across the water and it was incredibly peaceful. We would take Nan and Grandad or an uncle or two. It was always good fun. And the boats were cool with pull-out beds, pull-out telly, pull-out oven, pull-out seats, pull-out everything. I found it fascinating. In the mornings Mum would do really good fry-ups for breakfast. Then we would pull back the big roof. It was always a convertible. And I would sit on Dad’s lap and help drive the boat. We would stop at little beaten-up old sheds for free-range eggs “fresh this morning”. The farm would be a mile up the track and they would trust you to put your money in the little pot and everyone always did. Then we’d explore little villages along the way and anchor in a broad, which was like a huge lake, for lunch. We would muck about in the dinghy and swim off the side of the boat and fish for little perch, roach and eels. At the end of each day, we would drop anchor and set up a barbecue in fields by the river. It was great.’
The freedom of the great outdoors has long appealed to Jamie. He loves to have plenty of space and as a boy he would walk for miles around Clavering, building dens, exploring woods and damning up streams. The gang would meet at Jamie’s house to pick up as many supplies as they could snaffle and then set off into the country. Sometimes there would just be two or three, although on occasions there were as many as a dozen of them roaming the countryside. The local farmers knew them all by first names, kept a protective eye on them and gave them their freedom so long as they kept away from the machinery. The link between the people and the land is still strong in a place like Clavering and to this day Jamie is determined to return when he finally tires of the city.
Jamie