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Jamie Oliver

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This article is about the TV chef. For the member of the Alternative Rock band lostprophets, see Jamie Oliver (musician).

Jamie Oliver <tr><td colspan="2" style="font-size: smaller; text-align: center;">
Jamie Oliver on Jamie's School Dinners
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Born May 27 1975 (age 34)
Clavering, Essex, England

<tr><th>Cooking style</th><td>Fresh and Organic</td></tr><tr><th>Education</th><td>Westminster Catering College</td></tr><tr><th>Restaurants</th><td>Fifteen (London)</td></tr><tr><th>TV Show(s)</th><td>Oliver's Twist, Jamie's School Dinners, Jamie's Great Italian Escape, Naked Chef, Jamie's Kitchen</td></tr>

James Trevor Oliver, MBE (born May 27, 1975), better known as Jamie Oliver and The Naked Chef, is an English celebrity chef. He is well known for his use of organic food and for his recent work in changing eating habits in British schools. Since his early years, his Essex accent has become infamous - particularly the use of the hindi word "pukka" (meaning "brilliant").

Contents

[edit] Biography

Oliver was born in May 1975, and grew up in in Clavering, Essex, where his parents owned a pub-restaurant, The Cricketers. From an early age, Oliver helped in the pub kitchen; by the time he was 11, he was adept at vegetable prep and could chop "like a demon". In 1989, Oliver formed the band Scarlet Division with best friend Leigh Haggerwood, and dreamed of pop stardom. However, by age 16, Oliver knew he wanted to be a chef, so he attended Westminster Catering College and then studied in France, learning as much as he could, before returning to London to work as head pastry chef for Antonio Carluccio at The Neal Street Restaurant. After The Neal Street Restaurant, Oliver worked for Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers at the River Café for three and a half years; Oliver credits Gray and Rogers with teaching him to create the fresh, simple, delicious food which would become his signature.

It was at the River Café that Oliver debuted in front of a TV camera. A television documentary about the restaurant was being filmed; Oliver's personality caught the attention of editors and he was featured prominently in the finished product. The day after the programme aired, Oliver was contacted by multiple production companies wanting to discuss a possible show of his own.

The result was "The Naked Chef", a cooking programme. Two highly successful seasons of "The Naked Chef" were filmed in 1998 and 1999. The popular series brought Oliver worldwide fame, and more television programmes and book deals followed. As of 2007, Oliver had six additional television series and eight books under his belt.

On June 24, 2000, Oliver married Juliette Norton, also known as "Jules". The couple met in 1993 and have two daughters: Poppy Honey (born in March 2002) and Daisy Boo (born in April 2003).

After a brief appearance on "The Naked Chef", Oliver's band, Scarlet Division, was offered a record deal by Sony. Its debut single "Sundial" reached 42 in the UK charts, but, in spite of having been together for ten years, the band had trouble being taken seriously due to Oliver's fame as a chef, and was dropped by Sony. Soon after, Oliver asked Haggerwood to write the music for his new show, "Oliver's Twist". The series, a massive worldwide success, featured Haggerwood's popular theme song "Just The Start".

Wanting to create something positive using his wealth and fame, Oliver conceived and established the Fifteen charity restaurant where he trains 15 disadvantaged young people to work in the hospitality industry. Following the success of the original restaurant in London, more Fifteens have opened around the globe: Fifteen Amsterdam opened in December, 2004, Fifteen Cornwall in Newquay opened in May, 2006, and Fifteen Melbourne opened in September, 2006, with Australian friend and fellow chef, Tobie Puttock. The process of creating and opening the original Fifteen was documented in the series "Jamie's Kitchen".

Next, Oliver began a formal campaign to ban unhealthy food in British schools and get kids eating fresh, tasty, nutritious food instead. Oliver's efforts to bring radical change to the school meals system, chronicled in the series "Jamie's School Dinners", challenged the junk food culture by showing schools they could serve healthy, cost-efficient meals that kids enjoyed eating.

In June, 2003, Oliver was appointed an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. Reputedly a multimillionaire, he has also written columns for The Times. A great proponent of fresh organic foods, in May, 2005, Oliver was named the most influential person in the UK hospitality industry when he topped the inaugural CatererSearch 100. The list saw Oliver beating out Sir Francis Mackay, the then-chairman of the contract catering giant, Compass Group, which Oliver had soundly criticised in "Jamie's School Dinners". In 2006, Oliver dropped to 2nd on the list behind fellow celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay.

[edit] Advertising

From 2000, Jamie Oliver was the public face of the Sainsbury's supermarket chain in the UK, appearing on television and radio advertisements and in-store promotional material. The deal earned him an estimated £1.2 million every year. In the first two years these advertisements were estimated to have given Sainsbury's an extra £1 billion of sales or £200 million gross profit. [1] By 2004, the company had made 65 adverts with Oliver.

In February 2002, the BBC broke off contract negotiations with Oliver after failing to come to terms. Reports suggested that the corporation was unhappy with his increasing association with Sainsbury's. A proposed series, "Oliver's Army", in which Oliver would train 15 unemployed young people to cook, was cancelled. Channel 4 quickly seized the moment and produced the series, retitled "Jamie's Kitchen".

In 2003, fellow chef Clarissa Dickson-Wright called Oliver a "whore" for endorsing Sainsbury's Scottish farmed salmon and accused him of "selling his soul" to the company. [2]

In 2005, Oliver fronted Sainsbury's new advertising slogan which encouraged customers to try something different by suggesting recipe ideas. In October, the company claimed sales of some featured products had more than doubled. [3]

In New Zealand, Jamie Oliver starred in a series of television adverts for the Pam's brand belonging to Foodstuffs. These advertisements featured Oliver as the cheeky next door neighbour able to produce the finest food from Pam's ingredients. In Australia, he also promoted Yalumba wine in a series of advertisements that bore a similar look and feel to his television shows. In North America, Australia, and the UK, Oliver markets his own line of Tefal cookware (T-Fal in North America) as well as a line of high end flatware.

[edit] Television shows

The first series that featured Jamie Oliver was The Naked Chef on BBC Television. The title was a reference to the simplicity of Oliver's recipes, and has nothing to do with nudity. Oliver has frequently admitted that he wasn't entirely happy with the title, which was devised by producer Patricia Llewellyn. (In the UK edit of the show, the opening titles include a clip of him telling an unseen questioner "No way! It's not me, it's the food!") The success of the programme led to the books Return of the Naked Chef and Happy Days with the Naked Chef. His work on the Fifteen restaurant was shown as Jamie's Kitchen and Return to Jamie's Kitchen on Channel Four. His programmes are shown in over 40 countries, including the USA's Food Network, where he is the second most popular presenter. Oliver's Twist and "Pukka Tukka" picked up where "The Naked Chef" left off. Jamie's Great Escape (also known as Jamie's Great Italian Escape), a travelogue series, was first broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK in October 2005.

In 2005 Channel 4 screened Jamie's School Dinners, in which Oliver took over responsibility for running the kitchen meals in Kidbrooke School, Greenwich, (the UK's first comprehensive) for a year. Disgusted by the unhealthy fare being served to schoolchildren and the lack of healthy alternatives on offer, Oliver began a campaign to improve the standard of Britain’s school meals. Public awareness was raised, and, subsequent to Oliver's efforts, the UK Government pledged to spend £280m on school dinners (spread over three years). Tony Blair himself acknowledged that this was a result of Oliver's campaign. Following the success of the campaign, Oliver was named "Most Inspiring Political Figure of 2005" in the Channel 4 Political Awards 2006.

[edit] Live Shows

The Happy Days Live tour was Oliver's first live show in 2001 and included several dates in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Performing to sold-out venues, he cooked on stage and interacted with the audiences with competitions, music and special effects only usually seen in pop concerts. He took the audiences by surprise by singing and drumming to a song written by his longtime friend Haggerwood. Oliver appears at the BBC good food show each year and took to the road once more in 2006 on an Australian tour where he performed in Sydney and Melbourne. Following the entertaining format of his first live show, and featuring special guests, including mentor Gennaro Contaldo, and students from Fifteen London, the shows were a success.

[edit] Controversy and Criticism

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Despite (or perhaps partly as a consequence of) his high profile successes, Oliver has frequently been the subject of ridicule by other celebrities and a significant section of the British public. His "laddish" manner and a near-synonymous association with the mockney phenomenon of the mid to late 1990s has resulted in him becoming something of a minor hate figure, and the butt of many email jokes. Another source of criticism derives from Oliver's seemingly ubiquitous presence in the British media — see Advertising deals, Television Shows and Books.

In 2003, Oliver was ranked number 28 in Channel 4's poll of "100 Worst Britons". The poll was inspired by the BBC series 100 Greatest Britons, though it was less serious in nature. The aim was to discover the 100 Worst Britons We Love To Hate. The poll specified that the nominees had to be British, alive, and not currently in prison or pending trial.

In 2005, Oliver was slammed by journalists, animal welfare campaigners, and some members of the public, who were shocked to see him slaughtering a lamb on his TV show, "Jamie's Great Escape". Millions of viewers watched as Oliver cut the animal's throat. In the scene, which took place in Italy, a lamb, which had not first been stunned, was hung upside down by its legs. Oliver then slit its throat and helped skin it for a feast. Oliver was in violation of EU laws which protect animals from this method of slaughter. There were calls for Oliver to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals.

While Oliver is extremely outspoken on his campaign on school dinners, some journalists and mothers have criticised Oliver for openly swearing at mothers (using words such as "arseholes" <ref name="rawmarshsun">"Sinner ladies sell kids junk food", The Sun, 2006-09-16. Retrieved on [[2006-12-01]].</ref>) for putting unhealthy meals in their children's lunchboxes, while he fails to criticise supermarkets. Since the availability of only healthy meals in many schools' dinner menus is widely attributed to Oliver's campaign against unhealthy foods, some critics believe that he is guilty of promoting a nanny state. Some further point out that traditionally unhealthy foods are not necessarily harmful when consumed occasionally, rather than reguarly.

Indeed, in September, 2006, Jamie Oliver and Rawmarsh Community School, South Yorkshire, UK, made front page headlines after a group of parents revolted against Oliver's lunch scheme, in which all 1100 pupils on site were fed two portions of fruit and three vegetables every day. The parents, declaring, "Our kids have the right to eat what they like," took orders over the school fence for nearby sandwich and fast-food outlets. The food was then delivered over the fence to the waiting pupils.<ref name="rawmarshsun"/>

[edit] Books

Cookbooks

Biographies

[edit] Trivia

  • Oliver is reportedly a friend of Brad Pitt who, when married to Jennifer Aniston, asked Oliver and his wife Jools to their Los Angeles home to cook for them. Pitt, in particular, has watched Oliver's cooking programmes for a number of years. The two have often been pictured together at film premieres.
  • During the school dinners program, Oliver's Fifteen London was visited by Bill Clinton. Clinton asked to see Oliver; however, Oliver refused, as Clinton's party had asked for other diners to be removed to make room for their larger-than-agreed-upon group.

[edit] References

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[edit] External links

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