Jamie Oliver

He started helping out in the kitchen of his father’s restaurant when he was just a schoolboy and by the age of 16, Jamie Oliver knew he wanted to be a chef. He found his way to television completely by chance. While he was working at The River Café one day, a crew came in to shoot a documentary about the famous London restaurant, and Oliver’s natural communicating skills were quickly discovered by TV producers.

In his many TV shows, his cookbooks, his blogs on his website and his magazine, he displays a natural talent for connecting with the audience and sharing his passion for food. But he has done more than teach chopping and sautéing techniques—he helps drive home the importance of healthy eating, in particular for families with children. He has made a crusade out of improving school meals and has even set up the charitable Fifteen Foundation where, alongside operating his Fifteen restaurant franchise, he teaches disadvantaged youngsters. Distributed by FremantleMedia Enterprises, Oliver’s programs, which highlight his outgoing personality, have resonated with audiences around the world.

TV REAL: There are many cooking and food shows. What do you want to offer viewers that is different and that they can’t find elsewhere? 
OLIVER: I always try to make my shows different because I know the public would get bored of seeing the same thing over and over again. So I did The Naked Chef and then followed that with the documentary about setting up Fifteen (Jamie’s Kitchen) and then the travel series about Italy [Jamie’s Great Italian Escape] and then School Dinners and so on. I try to shake it up and keep it fresh. So with this American Road Trip series, for example, I’ve not gone for the obvious places or the typical types of American food. I’ve dug under the surface and found some amazing food and some amazing people and it’s a wonderful, fascinating series.

TV REAL: You have taken on a number of issues—from animal welfare to supporting local farmers to school dinners—why has this been important to you? 
OLIVER: Each of those issues was important for different reasons.  With the animal welfare programs, it wasn’t so much about campaigning, but it was simply about saying to the viewer: “This is what happens with your meat, now you decide whether you still want to eat this type of food or instead buy this other type of food.” I think that people are pretty smart and if they have a bit of knowledge, they’ll use it wisely. With school dinners, I simply felt that this was a major problem in the U.K. and no one was doing anything about it. So I did something about it.

TV REAL: What other issues would you like to bring to the audience’s attention?
OLIVER: Well, I think we still have a long way to go on school dinners, it’s far from finished, but if I made a program about school dinners every year, people would soon get tired of it.

TV REAL: You say that Jamie’s Ministry of Food is the most important show you ever worked on. Why is that?
OLIVER: When I was doing School Dinners, I went into a lot of the kids’ homes and I saw them eating such rubbish. I realized that there’s a whole generation who can’t cook and so their kids aren’t eating any home-cooked food. So it’s important because if we’ve got people growing up eating rubbish every day and never learning to cook for themselves, the situation can only get worse over the next generation and the one after. But there’s a real desire for people to learn to cook—you can tell because the Ministry of Food centre in Rotherham is booked up months in advance with people wanting to attend classes. And now Bradford is opening its own Ministry of Food centre, so I think councils all over Britain are starting to realize that there’s a real need for this type of thing.

TV REAL: What can you tell us about Jamie’s American Road Trip?
OLIVER: It’s not like any series you’ve ever seen about America because it goes deep into the heart of what America’s about. I visited six different parts of the country and met some incredible people and ate some incredible food. Just to give you a couple of examples, I did a show in New York, not in Manhattan where I normally stay, but in the boroughs, at the end of the subway, places where immigrant communities arrive and make their homes. I met loads of fantastic people, but probably the most amazing guy was a Colombian bus driver called Jorge—every night, without fail, he and his mum cook a load of food and take it down to where the local homeless people hang out and he feeds about 75 to 80 of them. Every night. What a guy! And then a few weeks after that, I was in Louisiana shooting alligators!

TV REAL: Everything on your website—from your diary to the recipes—has a very personal feel, as if you were speaking directly to your fans. Is having that personal connection important to you?
OLIVER: Absolutely. The website and Twitter are very important in keeping people informed about what I’m up to. But I also like dipping into the website forums and seeing what other people are up to. It’s like we’re all friends, even though some of us have never met.

TV REAL: Do you think the personal approach you have in your shows is more effective than some of the loud, screaming personalities on other cooking reality shows?
OLIVER: I think everyone has their own style and there’s enough room on TV for all those different approaches.

TV REAL: What was it like cooking for world leaders at the G20 earlier this year?
OLIVER: Incredible. It was a bit of a worry because early April is not the best time of the year to be cooking an important dinner when you’ve decided to use British seasonal ingredients. I was going to ask if they could move it to September when I’d have had more seasonal stuff to choose from, but it all went well. I cooked with some of the graduates from Fifteen London, plus one apprentice who hasn’t even graduated yet, and they were just superb—a real testament to the great training that Fifteen provides. Afterwards, I got to meet many of the leaders and their partners, including President Obama and his wife. It was such a brilliant night, and I’m so grateful to the Prime Minister [Gordon Brown] and Sarah for letting me do it.  Then about 24 hours later, I became a father again.

TV REAL: What upcoming projects are you working on?
OLIVER: I’m just starting a Ministry of Food/School Dinners program for ABC in America, so that’s going to be a challenge, and I’m starting to think about a Christmas program I’m doing for the U.K.