Tasty Tuesday Jamie Oliver

Full Name: Jamie Trevor Oliver
Birthdate: May 27, 1975
Birthplace: Clavering, Essex, England, UK
Spouse: Juliette (Jools) Norton
Children: Poppy Honey and Daisy Boo
Visit Jamie's web site here



"Restaurants and cooking are in Jamie Oliver's blood, having grown up around the successful pub/restaurant owned and operated by his parents in Cambridge, England. At 8 years old, Jamie was peeling potatoes and podding peas with the rest of The Cricketers staff and by 11, he could julienne vegetables as fast as any of them. At 16, Jamie completed his formal training at Westminster Catering College.

A fresh face in the culinary world, Jamie Oliver began work at the critically acclaimed River Cafe in London for three years. After appearing on television as part of a documentary on the River Cafe, Jamie was called the next morning by five of the top production companies in England. Jamie went with Optomen Television to produce the first series of the enormously successful Naked Chef. He has since gone on to produce Oliver's Twist and multiple specials.



In addition to his TV shows in Britian and America, Jamie has writen the bestselling The Naked Chef (Hyperion), The Naked Chef Takes Off, Happy Days, and Jamie's Kitchen. He's also food editor for British GQ magazine, a columnist with the Saturday Times Magazine, and monthly food editor for Marie Claire magazine in the UK.

Now 27, Jamie continues his work as consultant chef at Monte's, an advisor for top British supermarket chain Sainsbury's, and design consultant for quality cook and tableware for Royal Worcester. In 2001, Jamie took his live cookery show on the road: His Happy Days Tour packed theatres in Cambridge, Bournemouth and London as well as in seven cities in Australia and New Zealand. Jamie's cooking is even in demand by the British government: In 1999, Jamie was invited to 10 Downing Street to prepare a lunch for the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who was entertaining the Italian Prime Minister.

Most recently Jamie opened a not-for-profit restaurant, Fifteen, with the goal of training young unemployeds to work in the kitchen and on the floor. The London restaurant has become a hit.

Jamie's passions are pasta and breadmaking. He still travels through London on motorbike and plays drums with his high school mates in the band Scarlet Division, whose sound Jamie likens to a mixture of "Catatonia and Texas with a harder edge."

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has been credited with getting the Government to increase funding for school meals - something that many parents have been trying to do for years.



The hottest young star of TV cookery programmes, Jamie Oliver has wowed all generations of food lovers with his fresh, no-nonsense cooking style and his inspiring recipes.

Jamie grew up surrounded by good food: his parents ran the Cricketers pub in Essex and, from the age of eight, he started cooking and helping the chefs.

The use of quality fresh produce at the pub gave Jamie a love of good ingredients. After an undistinguished school career, he decided he wanted to cook for a living and went on to study at Westminster Catering College. It was around this time that he met Jools and they started dating. After college, he travelled to France to learn more about his trade.



Jamie's apprenticeship to restaurant cooking came under some of the best chefs in London. To begin with, there was Antonio Carluccio at the Neal Street Restaurant, then he moved on to the River Café under Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers. The Italian influence on his cooking is strong, with its use of herbs and simple, full-flavoured recipes. It was while he was working at the River Café that he was spotted by a TV producer and his life changed.

The first series featuring Jamie cooking was the Naked Chef. Viewers were treated to a glimpse into his world, zipping about London on a scooter and hosting parties for all of his friends, all to a rock'n'roll soundtrack. The food was reassuringly hearty, but not too fiddly, and Jamie always seemed to have his hands full of fresh herbs and olive oil. It was an overnight success, attracting an audience that wouldn't normally watch food programmes. The book that accompanied the series became a bestseller and the young chef, always fully clothed, was catapulted into the limelight.


Boots made a booboo, showing an image of Jamie Oliver in the Boots Christmas Gift Guide - the catalogue is now being hastily withdrawn.
Oliver graces the cover of the calender, but some peoples imagination went haywire, and to them it looked like someone had crudely appended a penis onto the picture of the naked chef.
Alas, the offending item between Olivers legs is an innocent bag of fruit. It's when the image is scaled down things get bit fuzzy....

Fast on the heels of the first series came the Return of the Naked Chef. Again, it was packed full of the same stylish food and London partygoers, but we also saw more of Jamie's domestic side, at home with girlfriend Jools and cooking on a smaller scale. The second time around, viewers loved the show and the book, forcing Jamie into a whirlwind schedule of travelling around the world to promote the Naked Chef.

After taking some time off to marry Jools, Jamie worked on his third series, Happy Days with the Naked Chef. The series and book had a slightly different feel as Jamie had taken into account what viewers wanted. There were different moods and ideas in the last outing, but the cheeky grin and wisecracks were still there.

In 2002, Jamie embarked on his most ambitious project yet. He took 15 under-privileged youngsters who had never been anywhere near a restaurant kitchen and turned (most of) them into professional chefs to work under him at his new restaurant Fifteen in London. The restaurant and its accompanying TV series have both been huge successes. Jamie now plans to repeat the formula elsewhere in the UK and in Sydney and New York.

Before leaving to set up Fifteen, Jamie was consultant chef at Monte's in Knightsbridge, working with his close friend Ben O'Donoghue, star of BBC Two's The Best. He has written for The Times, as well as for GQ and Marie Claire magazines. He currently writes for Delicious magazine in the UK and Australia.



Jamie also started, and continues to be involved with, the charity Cheeky Chops, which provides training and mentoring for disadvantaged young people - allowing them to follow their dreams and become chefs. Jamie lives in London with his wife, Jools and their daughters, Poppy and Daisy.