By early 2001, the relentless rise and rise of Jamie Oliver the television sensation was beginning to take its toll on our hero. The very thought of getting stale and repetitive horrified the energetic chef. He and Jools talked long into the night about the pressure on their lives and their lack of time alone and they decided together that Jamie needed to move on and develop his talents more widely. There would be just one more series of The Naked Chef for the BBC they decided, and then they would take much more control of their lives.
With characteristic openness, Jamie revealed he would complete the third series and no more. He said frankly, ‘I have had an amazing two-and-a-half years, but I need to take some time off and step back from the spotlight for a bit. I think I am in danger of people getting sick of me.’
Jamie was not surprised that his distinctive style of show was being copied by many other people and was honest enough to admit that his programmes were no longer quite so special.
The vast commercial potential of Jamie Oliver was thrown into the sharpest focus when the charismatic chef decided it was time he took more control of his own future. After a huge bidding war, Jamie announced in April 2001 that he would be leaving the BBC to set up his own production company, Fresh Productions. He struck a multi-million-pound deal with Pearson TV, the television giant behind screen favourites like The Bill and Neighbours. Jamie owned 75 per cent of the new company with Pearson holding the rest.
Jamie was keen to take care of his long-term financial future and also to develop his own talents behind as well as in front of the cameras. The tabloids announced that Jamie would be ‘the new Chris Evans’, which had the chef remarking that he hoped they were referring to the Evans business success rather than his colourfully unconventional private life. Jamie said he was over the moon and could not wait to get started on the new phase of his life. ‘This is a great opportunity for me to be really creative and explore television cookery. I can’t wait to get started.’
Jamie was buzzing with ideas for new cutting-edge and original shows and Jools was closely involved with the plan. ‘The more it enables us to work together, the better,’ said Jamie. ‘We want to get involved with new areas of television like music, nature and fashion, not just cookery.’
In February 2001, the papers reported that Jamie and Jools were to move to the United States for at least six months. He was grabbed at the British Book Awards in London and advised reporters that he was keen to satisfy the American hunger for a taste of the Naked Chef. He was quoted as saying, ‘There are not enough hours in the day to satisfy the Americans, so I have got to go there for half a year.’
Reports that Jamie was going to live in the United States for six months were wrong. ‘No, it was just that journalists kept asking me what I was doing in America and I said everything was going very well,’ said Jamie. ‘I am out there once a month as I have got a show out there. I said that if I wanted it to work really well out there, I would have to move out there for six months, but I didn’t exactly say I was going to move there.’
Whichever way it goes, it is unlikely that Jamie will ever start taking himself too seriously with his campaign of global domination. The American series has an audience of 11 million and is growing all the time. Jamie laughed, ‘They are mad for the show. The only trouble is that they don’t understand a word that I say.’
Fame does tend to breed jealousy and Jamie has been the subject of some unkind rumours. A suspicion began to emerge that his accent might not be entirely his own, that he might be a public school boy slumming it. That’s rubbish. For most of Jamie’s childhood, he lived above a pub, The Cricketers, and he went to the local state school.
Round his neck Jamie wears a silver chain inscribed with the words ‘Jamie – Love You Always’, a gift from his Jools that he treasures. Jamie Oliver is not a secret toff. What you see is what you get.
‘I think I’m pretty much the same geezer as I am on telly,’ he insists. ‘My parents come from Southend. They speak quite well, but they are nowhere near posh. My mates came from West Ham, Chingford, and two of them were gyppos from the village.’
And now he really seems to have become the new Delia Smith. Is he still a fan? Although her food might not be Jamie’s sort of thing, he still has a mighty high regard for her work. ‘Any woman who can sustain her career for 25 years has got to be a genius,’ he says. ‘Her food is the kind of food my mum cooks and, most importantly, she writes recipes that are accessible at the supermarket.’
Jamie is modest about his own achievements. Of his television work, he says, ‘I just open my mouth and out it comes. Y’know,’ he adds, ‘I was walking along Hatton Garden when this dirty-looking builder yelled out to me, “Oi, Jamie, I made that risotto and it was brilliant.” That sort of thing’s amazing. I’m chuffed. Over the moon.’
As far as relaxing at home goes, Jamie and Jools seem to have found the perfect blend for a happy marriage – compromise. ‘My wife Jools and I have very different tastes in movies, so we tend to squabble over the video. She likes chick flicks and tacky ’80s romances, while I prefer sci-fi and gangster films. My favourites are definitely the Star Wars and Alien films. We did both enjoy Woody Allen’s Small-timeCrooks and Guy Ritchie’s Snatch. Brad Pitt is such a professional. He had his Irish accent down pat and some of the people who worked with him told me that he didn’t expect any special Hollywood treatment.’
Jamie keeps pretty unsocial hours so he watches a lot of TV on video. ‘On a night off, it is bliss to veg out on the sofa in front of Alan Partridge or Ali G. I have a penchant for Open University programmes as well, and Jools often catches me on the sofa at two in the morning glued to a programme about internal combustion engines.’
It is not easy to balance family life with the pressures of such a busy working schedule. ‘I don’t know how I work it out really,’ says Jamie. ‘I just get on with it. I think everyone thinks I am on television quite a lot but really apart from the adverts it is only about four hours a year. Because the books are so popular and I get asked to do things like The Brits, it seems like I do more than I do. I get on with a normal life really and the nice thing is that I am known for being myself so people are quite nice when I meet them.’
Jamie has met lots of interesting people but he takes people at face value and is never impressed simply by fame and reputation. He says, ‘The writer Richard Curtis is probably the most interesting person I have met so far. I am not sure why, he is just an interesting bloke. He is the guy who wrote Blackadder and Notting Hill among other things. You can’t help but respect him, especially for his involvement in Comic Relief which is so important to him he puts it before offers from Hollywood sometimes.’
And Jamie’s not averse to building a reputation as a culinary agony-uncle to the rich and famous. He got a real kick when Fatboy Slim phoned to ask if it was all right to use shark instead of tuna in one of his recipes. ‘And it is – it sounded like he was doing a good job,’ said Jamie.
But as for his own Hollywood aspirations, Jamie is philosophical – and dismissive of ‘hype’ generally. ‘People tend not to recognise me in the street that much because, basically, I am just a scruffy git,’ says Jamie.
But some strange incidents have marked his short but heady spell of fame. ‘One of the weirdest was getting knickers sent through the post,’ says Jamie. He’s also had to adjust to such eventualities as ‘going to the supermarket and finding every other person looking round the corner and through gaps in the shelves to see what I have got in my trolley. And trying not to be shocked when hairy middle-aged women think it is all right to give you a kiss!’
Jamie was delighted to be asked with Jools to present an award at The Brits. ‘Jools was excited and I thought it was pretty cool. I am in a band and have been since I was 13 so it was nice to be at the big awards. I presented one of the first awards and by the time I got out, the event was nearly over so viewers probably had a better view at home.
‘Personality-wise, I don’t think fame has affected me but I do think that as soon as you realise you are bit of a commodity, you have to become a bit of a businessman quite quickly.’
But the pressure on Jamie to do more and more things is relentless. On Christmas Day 2000, Jamie and Jools split themselves in two. Jools said that they both had new nephews and they wanted to see them open their presents but they all got together later. She did say that Jamie was so busy working that she had to book a table at the restaurant to get to see him. ‘Jamie is working harder than ever,’ she said. ‘I am so proud of him but I do miss him.’
Jools tries hard to keep her husband sane and to protect him from the endless demands on his time. It is a constant battle and occasionally she puts her pretty foot down. Jamie tried to explain, ‘Look, darling, it’s for our future,’ but she said she had had enough. ‘So now I do everything I can to make sure we have at least every Sunday together. We just chill out and that day is like an oasis of peace in my crazy life.’
Jamie knows the fame is not going to last for ever at this level and he is delighted about that. The spotlight can become permanently dazzling if you stay in it for too long. In six years, he plans to be off to the country where he will ‘open a pub, grow my own food, have a donkey and some chickens and close at the weekends’.
Jamie Oliver did not set out to be a star. Growing up, he and his friends were all the ‘thick bastards’ at school. After he became a success, he felt like writing his English teacher a letter and getting all the spelling wrong. ‘When I am an old geezer, I might consider opening up a cookery school. I am too busy at the moment,’ says the international TV star, bestselling author – and pukka cook.