In his own words, Jamie was hopeless at school and he insists with a grin that whenever he put his hand up in English to make a contribution, the whole class used to chant mercilessly ‘special needs’. It never bothered him in the slightest. ‘I love a joke and I enjoy larking about,’ he says, ‘and if you dish it out you have got to be prepared to take it. My schooldays were a really happy time. I have to confess I took the mickey out of other people a lot of the time so I honestly did not mind the jibes. So long as there was at least a hint of humour about them. Perhaps if I had not been enjoying myself quite so much, I might have done better in class.’
But just before he was about to leave Newport Free Grammar School, his schooldays were considerably brightened by the arrival of one Juliette Norton. Jamie met ‘Jools’ at the school and his life was never quite the same again. He was just about to leave to go to college when she arrived to join the sixth form. He has never forgotten that first glimpse. At 16, she was already stunningly beautiful and Jamie always gives the same flip answer as to what first attracted him to Jools, ‘She was very pretty and very clumsy in a sexy way. She had very long legs – and a great set of Bristol Cities.’
A schoolfriend recalls, ‘He was totally dumbstruck when he first saw her. He often has his mouth open at the best of times, but that day you could have driven a bus in, a double-decker at that. He was totally transfixed by her and he stared at her so much I think she thought he was a bit slow. We could all see she was a cracker, of course. Any bloke who couldn’t would need a guide dog, pronto. In the flesh, she has this sort of amazing quality of somehow glowing with a remarkable sexuality. Then she was so young it was mixed up with a wonderful coy innocence that definitely made her the pin-up of her year. But she didn’t seem that interested in boys at all, really, and particularly not interested in Jamie. I think she liked him as a person because once he managed to pick his jaw up off the floor he resumed being the usual lively joker.’
There was competition for Jools’s affections but she never seemed that interested in any of the early admirers who virtually queued up to ask her out. She smiled politely that she was busy, or washing her hair, or working and almost always the would-be suitors got the message.
For the first time in his life, Jamie’s natural confidence let him down. He knew right from the first time he saw her that she was really special. He had had brief flirtations with girls before, but none of them had made his heart pound the way a glance from Jools did. She only had to catch his eye in the early days for him to blush crimson and be subjected to another round of mickey-taking.
They were friends for a long time before there was any hint of romance. Jamie was forced to worship from a distance but he gradually became more and more besotted. Friends recall that he would talk about her endlessly and always be trying to come up with new ways to make her laugh and notice him. He thought she was playing hard to get but Jools was simply in no hurry. Jamie was popular with other girls but that never worried her. Somewhere, deep down inside, she knew that they would be together, though it was Jamie’s music and his ear-shattering stage presence on drums that first drove her to consider having him as something more than just another schoolfriend.
‘She thought I was an idiot at first,’ says Jamie. ‘I know she did because she told me so herself. The first time she really liked me was when we did a big gig with the band. There were loads of people there and she liked the way I was drumming. After two years of just being friends, that was what finally did it. You can make of that what you will. To tell you the truth, I didn’t ask any questions, I just thought, Thanks very much, Jools.’
But once they were together, they both knew it was serious. Jamie has a naturally sunny disposition, but once he was properly installed as Jools’s boyfriend he felt his life was, in many ways, so much more complete. The young lovers were inseparable and friends use to tease them, ‘Stop smiling at each other, you two, you’re sickening.’ Jamie used to pinch himself to make sure it was all really happening. He simply never looked at another girl once he was with Jools.
One of his happiest memories of their long and happy relationship is one of their first holidays together. It took some negotiating with both sets of parents to get away together, but Jools’s mother and father were ultimately just as wise and understanding as Trevor and Sally Oliver. They could see before their eyes that something was happening to Jamie and Jools and they had enough trust and romance in their souls not to stop the young lovers going off together.
Jamie recalls fondly, ‘When I was 17, I went to Crete with Jools. We saved up our money and rented an apartment overlooking the sea in a little village called Stalis. It is just a quiet family place with a few tavernas and a couple of bars, nothing mad. I was already working in restaurants then so I was knackered. The best part of that holiday was just falling asleep on the beach next to Jools in the beautiful late afternoon sunshine.’
Jamie was very anxious that their first trip away together should be a success. He wanted everything to be perfect with Jools and, in fact, at first he was guilty of trying too hard to ensure that they had the best meal, the best bit of beach to sunbathe on and the best bar to sit in and gaze into each other’s eyes every evening. It was not until Jools gently calmed him down by assuring him that he only had to relax and be himself to make her happy that the holiday really took off. They talked and giggled into the night and discovered that they had so much in common in their attitudes about life and family and, one day, children, that everything seemed perfect.
Jamie started a catering course at Westminster College in 1992 at the age of 17. He felt it was his only viable option for the future. ‘I had done so badly at school that there was no point in staying on,’ he says frankly. ‘Basically, I buggered about too much. The way my brain worked, I needed to see, touch and smell things. I enjoyed the practical side of learning and I did all right at Art and Geology because they were very touchy-feely subjects, but Maths and English were a nightmare.
‘I came out of school at 16 with an A in Art and a C in Geology. It seemed like all I could be was an artistic geologist! Instead, I chose catering because it was the only thing I was any good at. In the pub I had grown up with professional chefs doing everything from scratch. I had been cooking since I was eight and, to be honest, I never really seriously considered doing anything else. I knew I didn’t just want to stay at The Cricketers and work for my father, which was certainly one option. But that is his place and I think we both understood that there was only ever going to be one boss of that place while he was around and it certainly wasn’t me. Dad wanted me to get a proper training and earn good qualifications. He is a great one for being as professional as you can, whatever it is you happen to be doing.’
The arrival of Jools on the scene made Jamie grow up very quickly. All of a sudden he wanted to do more than simply hang out with his mates and drink too much. He still had a wide and lively circle of friends, of course, but with Jools he was instantly part of a couple.
Some of his friends were disappointed that wild man Jamie was slowing down, but he did not see it like that at all. ‘I still clowned around after meeting Jools,’ said Jamie. ‘And I hope I always will. But often I do it with her. Jools has a great sense of humour and I really love making her laugh. I still have nights out with the boys and trips away with the boys but they are not the main thing any more.’
Some people said he was married long before the ceremony, that the partying stopped when Jools came on the scene, but that is not the case. It is the fun side of Jamie that Jools was first attracted to and she has a horror of ever turning into the sort of battleaxe-type wife who is forever waiting at the door with a rolling pin for her drunken husband.
‘It’s just not like that,’ says a friend. ‘It never was. Our generation doesn’t live like those stereotype figures of our parents’ generation. Boys and girls have friends of both sexes they can have a laugh with and they have lovers that really do share all sides of their life.’
But Jamie still wanted to look after Jools and, to do that, he needed to kick-start a career of some sort. His love of food and experience in catering made it a pretty obvious choice. Westminster’s catering department had a very good reputation which was why Jamie chose it, but as he was reluctant to leave home it meant a gruelling two-and-a-quarter-hour journey into college every day from deepest Essex.
It was not an easy life, but he did have help. Jamie used to get up at 5.30am in order to get to London soon after 8.00am and every morning his mother would make sure his day started with a full cooked breakfast. Even today, he insists that breakfast is his favourite meal of the day. And his mum Sally believed that her son deserved the best possible beginning to every morning. She rose early for the three years he was at college to prepare either the traditional full English breakfast or his other favourite, scrambled eggs, or an omelette made with left-over sausages, sliced up and fried and then folded inside the eggs. Served with lashings of tomato ketchup, Jamie felt about six years old as he tore into the first comfort food of the day. Jamie says he always knew he had the best mum in the world, but those early-morning feasts before he took on a day in London proved it to him.
He had a head start on the catering front but everything else was a terrible shock to the country boy. ‘College was so cosmopolitan. Coming from a village where there were only white people, on my first day at college I thought I was in New York,’ he said. ‘I had never really been to London before and I was really pent up about it. I had one of those leather pouches hidden under my shirt with my money in it. Every day I thought I was going to get mugged.’
Jamie was terrified when he spotted one student with dreadlocks, which were not normally sighted in the tranquil villages around Saffron Walden.
‘Later, I found that quite cool,’ said Jamie, ‘but at the time I thought, Oh my God!’
He tried not to admit quite the extent of his shyness to Jools and his family when he got home but he did find those early weeks commuting to college very difficult. Gradually, he took to wandering around London a little and slowly his aversion to cities and his desperation to get back to his familiar safe and reliable countryside receded. ‘I started to find London exciting instead of simply terrifying,’ says Jamie. ‘I loved the parks and the wonderful old buildings and, of course, I was entranced by the endless variety of famous restaurants. Not that I could afford to go in them, of course, but I loved looking at the impressive menus and dreaming that one day the all-powerful head chef would be me.’
At first, Jamie was less than delighted to discover that the course included a fairly large element of science at a higher level than the school syllabus, which had already had him struggling badly. ‘It was a lot harder, but because I could now see the point of it and it clearly had relevance to what we were doing in the kitchen, it made sense to me,’ he says. So instead of bunking off to the nearest pub and keeping out of the way, he buckled down and struggled with the subjects that had completely defeated him at school. Jools was proud of this new mature attitude and encouraged Jamie to work hard.
With his experience at the sharp end, Jamie’s confidence grew as he discovered he could chop vegetables much faster than any of his lecturers. On his first day at college, his classmates watched his blade whirring with awe. And to their own later regret, they tried to copy his technique and rival his speed. By the end of the first week, his fellow students all had their fingers covered in blue plasters. So he earned a reputation as something of a cocky member of class. ‘Oh, I am cocky,’ smiles Jamie, ‘but in the nicest possible way, I hope.’
Jamie surprised his closest friends and himself and worked very hard indeed, even though the concentration of the course on classic French cuisine did leave him deeply unimpressed.
‘The public’s requirements are definitely a lot simpler nowadays and more global,’ he says. ‘But I remember spending what seemed like months being taught how to make the perfect Béchamel sauce. I have never made it since and I have worked in Michelin star restaurants and even in France.’
Jamie scarcely clowned at all in class. He realised that this time the lessons really were worth listening to and he became an enthusiastic and model student. ‘I realised that I was very privileged to be there,’ he says. ‘I knew one kid who couldn’t afford to stay because his family went bust in the first term. He had to leave and I thought that was desperately unfair at the time. Mind you, I still do.’
After work, Jamie and his few friends on the course took an interest in exploring London and all its attractions. After one birthday party, they began a pub crawl that took in some of Soho’s seedier night-spots and young Jamie found himself quite shocked at the sales techniques of some of the ladies of the night. They were so blatant and so young he was appalled at the danger they were facing as they earned their living.
But much of the time was spent working on the wide-ranging course and Jamie passed his exams with flying colours and gained his NVQs 1 and 2, national diploma and City and Guilds 1 and 2. He is very grateful for the grounding he received at Westminster and believes such courses are essential to provide the basic techniques and grammar of cookery in a wide range of styles and settings.
‘It sounds a bit stuffy when you say it,’ he observed later. ‘But education can really open doors for you, and even someone like me, who basically messes up at school, can get his life together if he gets on the right course.’
Jamie’s parents encouraged their son but they did not spoil him with large amounts of money to live on and he was forced to work to earn extra to help pay his way as he studied. He did all sorts of strange jobs. ‘At college I used to earn extra money by washing cars,’ says Jamie. ‘I have never minded hard work so I put a board up offering to wash your car for three quid, which was loads of money then. And I got plenty of takers.
‘Westminster is the best catering college in England and by the time I got there I was pretty good at all the technical stuff, and I finally settled down to the academic side. When I left, I got my diplomas and distinctions in my exams.’
Jamie did not quite know what had hit him when he arrived at the gates of the imposing Château Tilques. He was just 18 years old and the grand old building surrounded by sweeping lawns and carefully cultivated countryside had certainly been around for an awful lot longer than that. A helpful lecturer at Westminster College had pulled a few strings to land the would-be young chef some work experience at this elegant, up-market French hotel. Jamie was instantly awe-struck by the nineteenth-century splendour of the stylish hotel which was built on the site of a seventeenth-century manor house. Years later, in the run-up to the 1998 World Cup, Glenn Hoddle and the hopeful England players were not too relaxed either as they used the hotel to prepare themselves for their luckless campaign in the finals.
But, for young Jamie, it was very much more of a culture shock. Château Tilques is less than an hour’s drive from the Channel port of Calais, but Jamie’s nervousness grew with every unfamiliar mile. Today, the stylish conference hotel has a framed cover of Jamie’s book in its reception area with the passage praising Château Tilques’ role in his education as a chef carefully highlighted. But on Jamie’s first visit, he was completely unknown and frequently very unhappy.
The elegant housekeeper Edith Boisseau, who still supervises breakfast at Chateâu Tilques, remembers young Jamie very well indeed. ‘He looked so young and so lonely when he arrived and my English is not so good, but I knew he was missing his home and family from the start,’ she said. ‘Myself, I tried to make him welcome and to feel at home, but I know that in the kitchens they gave him a hard time. It is part of the training. And they teased him a lot at first. But, in the end, the chef told the others to leave him alone. The chef couldn’t understand a word he said but he knew Jamie loved the work. He said that he treated food with respect, which was good.’
Jamie did not mind the long hours but some of the elaborate dishes he helped to prepare at Château Tilques shocked him. The hotel prides itself on top-quality, traditional French cooking and some of the sauces and many of the dishes took hours of intricate work to prepare. This was definitely The Fully-Clothed Chef. But Jamie did not dare to criticise. He was there to learn and he marvelled at the ancient skills the chef and his senior staff employed. And, in turn, when they saw the speed with which the young Englishman wielded his vegetable knife, they gave him a grudging nod of approval. Jamie worked extra hours because he found little to do in his time off.
But Elaine Fournier, from nearby Saint Omer, was a part-time waitress at the time and she liked the look of the shy young English boy. ‘Jamie was so sweet,’ she recalls. ‘We were the same age and I have quite good English so I used to chat to him when we finished work. He was so missing his home and his family. He had photos of his family and his home, the pub in the country, and he showed them to me. He used to say he wished he was there. And I tried to make him feel welcome in France. I invited him to my home but he was so shy it never happened. He told me he had a beautiful girlfriend. Just when I was hoping he might take some interest in me, he started telling me all about this Juliette. He showed me her photo and my heart sank because she really was beautiful. In a way, it was better after that and we could just be friends. I did hope before that he would like me because he was very sexy, with long hair and strange clothes and always this smile. But after he made it clear about Juliette we relaxed and he told me of his other passion for a restaurant of his own. He told me how his father had built up this fantastic business with hard work over a long time and he wanted to do the same. He would say all that and then run to the telephone to talk again with Juliette or his family. He was a very nice boy and now I see him on television I tell my husband and my daughter that Jamie was my friend.’
The ghosts of the original aristocratic owners of Château Tilques are said to haunt the grounds. The hotel warns visitors: ‘Our dear friends and guests, do not be surprised if late one evening, at the edge of the garden, in the tranquillity of the sleeping waters, you spy reflected in the moonlight the shadows of the knights who once upon a time occupied these premises.’
Jamie walked the grounds endlessly as he counted the days until his three-month spell in France was over. But he never saw any French noblemen. He was lonely and cut off and several times he considered heading for the ferry to go back to a land where people understood him. But he knew his father would feel he had failed, so he was determined to see his time out. Edith noted, ‘He always knew how long it was before he went home. I would ask him how many days and he knew because he used to count them off one by one. But, by then, I think he liked us a little. The chef said he would work well, which is great praise from him. Now we all wish he would come back to see us again one day.’
Jamie was deeply relieved to be back in England and he had an emotional reunion with Jools. By then, they were very much a couple and they spent hours together dreaming about their future. She was going to make it as a top model and he was going to open this magnificent restaurant with diners fighting among themselves to get a table because the food was so wonderful. After he had formally left college, Jamie went to work in Antonio Carluccio’s Neal Street restaurant because he was keen to learn from the legendary Gennaro Contaldo. The wise and experienced chef took enthusiastic young Jamie under his wing from the start and taught him his ways of making bread, sauces and fresh pasta.
Gennaro recalled fondly that Jamie would even come in at four in the morning to help him make the focaccio. ‘He wasn’t supposed to be there at that time but he wanted to learn so much,’ said Gennaro, the Italian master of the kitchen. ‘My God, he really was a help. And then I started to love him. What he made was so good, so colourful, so fresh. I used to eat it myself and the chef never eats his own food. I used to think, This is good. Bloody hell, he does it better than me.’
Jamie will always be grateful to Gennaro. He says, ‘I worked my arse off to get his techniques. The recipe for his bread is in my book.’
Working with Gennaro had long been a strongly-held ambition of Jamie’s. And he was not happy when anyone laughed at his ambitions. ‘When I left Westminster, the lecturer said, “I want to see what everyone’s ambition is and what you all want to do,”’ recalls Jamie. ‘Everyone else was saying that they wanted to go to work in exotic establishments like Le Manoir and the Ritz. I just put my hand up and said, “I want to learn how to make really good bread and pasta.” Everyone took the piss out of me as though I was some boring little housewife. Now, looking back, I think it was quite an honest thing to say, really. I had an Italian friend who said, “If you want to make good bread, go and see Gennaro,” so I did. And I went to work at the Neal Street restaurant as the pastry chef. I used to help him out by getting all his stuff out. I managed to start working with him in the middle of the night quite regularly. Gennaro is a fantastic guy and I loved watching him work. He has this brilliantly positive attitude to every single thing he does. He always wants it to taste perfect and he never tires of trying to improve things. I loved working with him and I learned so much about cooking. He was like my second father.’
Gennaro eventually moved on to work at Passione in London’s Charlotte Street, which is very much Jamie’s idea of an ideal restaurant. ‘Italian food, really good value, really authentic, won’t put you out of pocket.’
The boulangers in France had impressed the young Jamie with their speed and dexterity at making bread, but the experienced Gennaro taught Jamie to slow down his hands. He insisted that the real skill was as delicate and difficult to perform as making love to a beautiful woman. Jamie was quick to take the advice and adapted his bread-making accordingly.
Jamie actually began writing what was to become his first best-seller while he was working at Neal Street. He bought a typewriter and told Jools that he was going to write a cookbook. She laughed that he could not even spell, but he wasn’t joking. Long before The Naked Chef was ever even dreamed of Jamie would tap away to record his thoughts on food and his favourite recipes. Putting them down on paper made them seem like real recipes and whenever he had settled on a particular new dish he was always keen to tell people about it.
‘He always liked to communicate,’ said a friend. ‘Jamie is the most unsecretive person I know. He is so open. He always has been.’
Jamie never dreamed that his typed jottings would reach such an incredible worldwide audience, but when the offer came for a book to follow his TV series he had around one third of it written already in typewritten notes prepared five years earlier.
But writing the original notes that were to form the starting point of the book was very much a labour of love for Jamie. The enthusiasm that has made him such a popular television star is genuine and it comes from a natural passion for food and the positive role it can play in all our lives.
‘A good meal can be a wonderful thing,’ said Jamie. ‘It can repair feuds, seal firm friendships and spark wonderful romances. I think the Italians are among the people who understand this most deeply. And the French, I suppose. Here in Britain, you can still be considered a bit of an oddball if you go on and on about cooking. And I should know. But I don’t care if some people think I am strange. So long as I enthuse and interest others, that is fine.’