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
Jamie never allowed his dyslexia to become an excuse. He acknowledges that he does not really have the patience or the concentration to become a great reader.
In fact, Jamie admits to an affection for The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13¾, but insists now the book he has read most often is ‘The Naked Chef, but only because I wrote it and had to check everything so many times’.
When he was younger, he struggled to sit still long enough to spend as long in front of the television as his classmates, but as a young child Jamie never missed The Flumps. Now he has grown up, his favourite Star Wars character is Chewbacca because ‘he makes funny noises and is really hairy’. To this day, Jamie has a very active imagination and loves well-crafted cartoons and slapstick comedy.
Schoolfriends recall Jamie as a very peace-loving guy, but confirm that he is no softie. ‘He was not so much a brave guy as completely fearless,’ says David Stevens, a boy in the year below Jamie at school. ‘I once saw him stand up to three much older boys who were punching one of the juniors in the toilets. It wasn’t desperately vicious, but this young kid was having a hard time.
‘He was a friend of mine and I was standing in the background kind of hoping not to get involved but not wanting to be so cowardly as to actually run away. Jamie came in and saw what was happening straight away. He just walked in front of my friend and looked the biggest guy in the face and said, “That’s enough of that.” And they stopped. There was something in the way he spoke, kind of quiet but confident, that gave the impression that underneath the smiley exterior he might be quite hard. I think the big guy knew him or something and he turned it into a joke and tried to make out it was one big laugh. Jamie laughed as well, but not with his eyes. Me and my mate scarpered but Jamie was our hero after that. He didn’t have to do or say anything and I reckon most people would not have got involved.’
Jamie is convinced that somewhere deep inside him he has the ability to kill someone in extreme circumstances, if someone was attacking him or his family. It was years later when he admitted as much. He cannot remember his valiant schoolboy deeds in standing up to bullies but on a more general theme he is honest enough to admit that if he really had to he could use violence to protect himself and his family.
‘I think everyone has the capacity to kill,’ Jamie said frankly. ‘I think that as you get older and you have a family and kids, you develop a sort of inner love that means you’d do anything to protect them. It would be easy to kill someone if they really threatened the ones you loved.’
Jamie started driving as soon as he could and he loved the freedom of movement that came with passing his test. In a sequence of flashy cars, he quickly became a familiar figure on the lanes and roads around Clavering. His flamboyant style behind the wheel soon earned him the attention of the local constabulary and, as a young driver in Essex, he was nabbed twice for speeding. Only he insists to this day that he wasn’t speeding at all. He believes that the police just haven’t got that much to do out there in the country, so they fill in their time slowing down anyone who looks like a potential speeder.
Jamie and his sister Anna-Marie have always been very close throughout their lives. But they are very different characters. Anna-Marie is famously together and down-to-earth, while Jamie admits he is far and away the more theatrical member of the family. He smiles as he admits, ‘The first day I went to playschool I cried my eyes out and wanted my mummy. On her first day, she got straight in there and started organising people. Some things never change.’
Jamie’s teachers were generally hard pressed to contain his irrepressible sense of mischief and not one of them predicted fame and fortune for the boy who could never ever be persuaded to sit still. Mrs Chris Murphy knew Jamie even before he arrived in her class at Newport Free Grammar School. She remembers, ‘I first met Jamie when he was only three years old and we used to sit in the lovely gardens of his family pub in Clavering with our own children enjoying a relaxing drink in the sunshine.
‘A few years later, I had him as a pupil and taught him on and off for five years after he started in my class in Year Seven. He was 11 years old by then. He was very lively and enthusiastic with an infectious laugh, very much as he is now. I’m a Geography teacher but I also did some reading. To be honest, I never thought he would go far, especially not as far as he has.
‘I knew from The Cricketers where he grew up what a hard worker he was and of his interest in working in the kitchens. But we didn’t do any cookery at school. And I am afraid the truth is that he did not excel at his lessons at all. He was much more interested in the band and in cooking. Jamie was music mad then and I always thought he might do well in that line. But it is very nice when former pupils succeed in whatever field of activity they choose to follow. It’s lovely when you see former pupils do well. Jamie wasn’t very good at spelling. He was in a group where we did puzzles and spelling games to try and improve his spelling. I look at his books and think his spelling is certainly all right now.
‘Then it was an all-boys school. The school has gone mixed since then. And they have food technology now. It was an old traditional grammar school which went comprehensive towards the end of the Seventies. Jamie was a very nice boy and he was always very popular.’
Mrs Murphy is very proud of her old pupil and one of her most treasured possessions is a copy of his first book personally inscribed ‘To Mrs Murphy, all my love, Jamie Oliver’. Mrs Murphy sought out her old pupil at a book-signing session in June 1999.
‘Remember me?’ I asked. “Of course I do,” he laughed as he flung his arms round me. ‘I’ve come for you to sign my book,’ I said. “I still can’t spell,” he admitted.
‘That doesn’t seem to matter very much,’ I replied. My street cred with my present pupils is high as I often use Jamie as a role model for what hard work can do for you in life. And I smile every time I see him on television, which is pretty often. What better motivation can there be for a teacher than a successful pupil, even one who can’t spell?’
As a boy, Jamie used to go and watch his local football team, Cambridge United, but he was never a football fanatic. He loves the comradeship of being in a gang of mates going to a game, but he always used to make sure that they ate before they went because he reckoned the pies were seriously dodgy. Now he is based in London he follows Arsenal, but he does not intend to let it rule his life. And these days, he rarely finds time to go. As he says, ‘Since I have been a professional chef, I don’t get much time to go to matches.’
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