Jamie Oliver

James Trevor Oliver, MBE (born May 27, 1975), better known as Jamie Oliver and The Naked Chef, is a British celebrity chef.

Biography

Jamie grew up in a small Essex village called Clavering. His parents own a pub called "The Cricketers". He formed the band Scarlet Division with Leigh Haggerwood in 1989. He had some difficulties in school due to dyslexia, and left school with no qualifications. He attended Westminster Catering College when he was 16. He spent several years working alongside the London chef, Gennaro Contaldo, whom he regards as one of his culinary mentors. His first TV break came in 1996 when he was "discovered" by television producer Patricia Llewellyn while working at The River Café in London. She saw him on a documentary called Christmas at The River Café and recognised his star potential immediately. Two highly successful series of The Naked Chef were filmed in 1998 and 1999.

On June 24, 2000 he married Juliette Norton, also known as Jools. The couple met in 1993 and currently have two daughters. The daughters are named Poppy Honey (born in March 2002) and Daisy Boo (born in April 2003).

After a brief appearance on The Naked Chef, Jamie's band Scarlet Division were offered a record deal by Sony. The debut single "Sundial" reached 42 in the UK charts. But the band could not be taken seriously due to Jamie's fame as a chef — despite having been together for ten years. So the band were promptly dropped by Sony. Soon after, Jamie asked one of his best friends and composer Leigh Haggerwood to write the music for his new show Oliver's Twist. The series was a massive worldwide success and now airs in over 50 counties, with the theme song "Just The Start" proving very popular.

He set up the Fifteen charity restaurant where he trains 15 disadvantaged young people to work in the hospitality industry. Plans for similar restaurants are underway around the globe: Fifteen Amsterdam was opened in December 2004, Fifteen Cornwall in Newquay opened in May 2006 and Fifteen Melbourne is scheduled for opening in Summer 2006.

In June 2003 he was appointed an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List. He has also written columns for The Times. He is reputedly a multimillionaire. He is also a great proponent of fresh organic foods. In May 2005 Jamie Oliver was named as the most influential person in the UK hospitality industry when he topped the inaugural CatererSearch 100. The list was compiled by the website of the hospitality magazine Caterer and Hotelkeeper, and saw Jamie beating Sir Francis Mackay, the then chairman of the contract catering giant Compass Group which Oliver had criticised in his Jamie's School Dinners show.

Advertising deals

Since 2000, Jamie Oliver has been 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 earns him an estimated £1.2 million every year. In the first two years these advertisements are estimated to have given Sainsbury's an extra £1 billion of sales or £200 million gross profit. ^* 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. The proposed series called Oliver's Army, where he would train 16 unemployed young people to cook, was cancelled. Channel 4 quickly seized the moment and produced the series, known as 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. ^*

In 2005, Oliver fronted Sainsbury's new advertising slogan urging customers to try something different by suggesting recipe ideas. In October the company claimed sales of some featured products had more than doubled. Sainsburys' competitors also noticed a substantial increase in these products.^*

In New Zealand, Jamie Oliver starred in a series of television adverts for the Pam's brand belonging to Foodstuffs. These adverts featured Jamie as the cheeky next door neighbour able to produce the finest food from Pam's ingredients. In Australia, Jamie Oliver also promoted Yalumba wine in a series of advertisements that bore a similar look and feel to his television shows. In North America and the UK, Oliver markets his own line of Tefal cookware as well as a line of high end flatware.

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. His latest show in the United States is Oliver's Twist. 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 up 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 following on from the campaign the UK Government pledged to spend £280m on school dinners (spread over three years). Tony Blair himself accepted that this was a result of Jamie's campaign. Following the success of the campaign, Oliver was named "Most Inspiring Political Figure of 2005" in the Channel 4 Political Awards 2006.

Controversy and criticism

In 2005, Oliver was slammed by journalists, animal welfare campaigners as well as the public, who were shocked to see him killing a live lamb on his TV show. Millions of viewers saw the chef cut the animal's throat in the program "Jamie's Great Escape". The scene took place in Italy. The lamb was hung upside down by its legs, but it was not stunned first. Oliver then slit its throat and skinned it for a feast. Oliver was in violation of EU laws which protect animals from this method of slaughter - all animals must be stunned before slaughter. There were calls for Oliver to be prosecuted for cruelty to animals.

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 nineties 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 above.

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.

Books

He has written several successful cookbooks. These include:

The Naked Chef, ISBN 0786866179
The Return of the Naked Chef, ISBN 0718144392
Happy Days with the Naked Chef, ISBN 078686852X
The Naked Chef Takes Off, ISBN 0786867558
Jamie's Kitchen, ISBN 1401300227
Jamie's Dinners, ISBN 1401301940
Jamie's Italy, ISBN 0718147707

References

Walker, Andrew. Profile: Jamie Oliver, BBC News Profiles. March 30, 2005. Retrieved January 20, 2006.

External links