Jamie Oliver on The Great Cookbook Challenge and how a bin liner changed his life

Despite his depth of experience in writing cookbooks, his knowledge of the industry and his love of mentoring (his restaurants Fifteen London and Fifteen Cornwall, both now closed, trained disadvantaged young people), his participation in the show wasn’t a given. “I was very cynical about this series but, as we started to meet, I realised it’s about the underdog and about the sort of people who would never get a go at publishing.”

The cooks were pushed hard by both the judges and Oliver. “We put them through a lot. They had to write a lot, cook a lot, and we thrashed through tasks which are normal in the process of creating a book. We did ask quite a lot of them.

“Louise is a publisher, so she has to sell them at the end of the day,” he adds. “It’s not a game – she could look a complete idiot and lose a shedload of money. The fight is to break even, which is probably 20,000 book sales.” In recognition of the literary battleground that awaits the winning chef, his involvement won’t end after the credits have rolled. “We’ll carry on the mentorship and make sure what’s released is quality. I don’t switch off at the end of the competition, there’s a duty of care.”

That attitude is characteristic of Oliver, no doubt as a result of his own experiences. He reflects that “the kid who moved to London at 18 shouldn’t be the thing that sits in front of you now. It’s been a rollercoaster, and I never thought I’d be an author.”

In the past, the 46-year-old has spoken about his dyslexia and has even credited it for allowing him to approach problem-solving from an unconventional angle. “If I was a horse in a race, you never would have put a bet on me all those years ago. I was a special needs kid from school and I never thought I’d write a book. I came from a little village in Essex and I just wanted to work in a pub,” he says. “If you want an example of hope, look at me then.”

Oliver was first spotted in the BBC Two restaurant documentary Italian Christmas: Recipes from the River Café in 1996. He wasn’t meant to be working the night of the filming, but fortuitously ended up in the kitchen. However, his breakthrough series The Naked Chef didn’t air until 1999.

When there was interest in his fronting his own show, Channel 4, according to Oliver, sat on developing the programme for nine months. Future BBC director-general Mark Thompson, then controller of BBC Two, snapped him up. “The BBC commissioned it in a week, out of nowhere. There are all these tales about who commissioned me, but it was Mark Thompson.” Then, a snag. “Someone said, ‘Oh, it’s a shame. Normally we do a cookbook with a series.’ I said, ‘I’ve got one. I’ve written down all my recipes for the last five years and they’re in a bin liner.’”

Few could trace two decades of success back to a bin bag, but, Oliver says, there were “hundreds” of recipes stuffed away “on the back of fag packs, beer mats and order checks” in the flat he lived in with his wife Jools. “What’s hilarious is that she cleans a lot. We only lived in a studio flat and the bag was jammed under the staircase. I thought she’d thrown it away,” Oliver laughs. “I did have a few hours where I was really scared that I didn’t have the book.”

Fear was soon eclipsed by another emotion, which drove him to learn more about publishing. “When I got my first book deal, I was in such shock I had this opportunity, I learnt about the whole industry. I lived in [the offices of his publishers] Penguin. People thought I was a delivery person because I had no desk, but I worked in every department.” He wrote his first three books on a dictaphone – “That’s how my ‘voice’ was created, because it was my voice” – and personally dressed bookshop windows to promote them. You might have walked past Oliver hanging up chillies and artichokes. Luck might have been why he was in the River Café that first night, but his work ethic has been the driver ever since.

“Weirdly, I think I’m best placed to do this job because, theoretically, I shouldn’t have been publishable,” he offers. “But I’m the second best-selling author in the country. If, through me, they can’t see that you don’t have to be born with these attributes, and what can happen if you expose yourself to going on a journey in life – wake up early, leave late, be nice, build relationships, learn – then God knows.”

His desire to help people enjoy their food, as well as nurture and educate, stems from his own childhood, having grown up in a pub where he learnt to cook. It’s also something he has passed on to his own five children (Poppy, 19, Daisy, 18, Petal, 12, Buddy, 11 and River, five), who are often seen cooking alongside him. “If I had a wish for every child in Britain, it would be that every 16-year-old would leave school knowing how to cook ten recipes to save their life – they would know the basics of nutrition, where food comes from, and how it affects their body.”

Oliver’s campaigns for better food standards for school meals and improving food education to encourage healthier lifestyles
pre-dated concerns that have come under sharp focus during the pandemic. His 2005 series Jamie’s School Dinners marked the start of his Feed Me Better campaign against child food poverty, and his Food Revolution continues to fight for children’s right to access nutritious food, aiming to halve child obesity by 2030. COVID-19 has underlined how food and health are inextricably linked and he cites last November’s National Child Measurement Programme report, which detailed a rise in childhood obesity during 2020–21, which he describes as “unacceptable”.

“I think everything, socially and technologically, is driving our kids away from taking a pile of ingredients and making a plate of food,” he argues. “Cooking is a rare breed and it’s still under threat. We’ve been under an illusion over the last 18 months because we’ve been making banana bread and sourdough – there was a spike in cooking, but it was because we were forced,” he says, before outlining a current issue that bothers him.

“The reality is a whole load of digitisation and delivery solutions. It’s never been easier to order dinner on that [gestures to a phone]. Those companies, none of them cares yet. There’s no proof you can give me that they care. There’s no proof that they care about you, your family, and the patterns of what you do. Convenience is the big driver and even cheap takeaways are expensive when you compare them to cooking.”

The need for a basic school education in cookery and nutrition, he believes, ties into long-standing societal issues: ones that have suffered from decades of neglect. “I think it has everything to do with everything we talk about right now, culturally and historically. Happiness, depression, mental health, health cost to the NHS, benefit or cost to the Government, productivity, absenteeism from illness, educational attainment… Honestly, I know I’m biased, but 10 recipes could save your life. The poorest communities die seven to 10 years younger than the rich a mile down the road.”

This series must have caused him to reflect on his own career and those who inspired him, so which were the first cookbooks he owned that made an impression?

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“The first one I remember buying was a pasta book by Antonio Carluccio, where he had taken the top off a parmesan and was tossing some pasta in it. I later worked for him and for Gennaro Contaldo, his sidekick, and he became my mentor. When I was 14 years old and becoming more cheffy, there was Raymond Blanc’s Recipes from Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons.

“Marco Pierre White was this extraordinary talent and the youngest two-star Michelin chef on the planet. Cool as hell. The professional industry was quite staid and he reimagined that beautifully.” A brief pause. “But never meet your heroes. Very sadly we don’t get on. It’s a shame, but he was definitely very inspirational to me as a young chef.”

It’s Delia Smith, however, who has the throne. “The first book I was given was by Delia, who is obviously the queen and we love her very much. Delia wore the crown for a long time and rightfully so. She knew there’s a logic between simplicity, accessibility and aspiration. There’s a really fine line between them.”

Are simplicity, accessibility, and aspiration the ingredients for a good cookbook? “Yes, you have to have the balance right. I think tone and timing are everything – you can be genius and too early, or genius and too late, and you’ve screwed it up. It’s quite exhausting having done it for 25 years,” he concludes. “But I love it with a passion.”

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This edition of The Big RT Interview originally appeared in the Radio Times magazine. For the biggest interviews and the best TV listings subscribe to Radio Times now and never miss a copy.