Jamie Oliver Doesn’t Listen To The Skeptics

Despite being the best-selling nonfiction author in UK history, Jamie Oliver didn't read a whole book until he was 38. He's dyslexic, and writes by dictation. Growing up, school was a huge struggle for him.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Pashman?

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• 0:42Dan Pashman?

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• 1:27Dan Pashman?

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• 1:34Dan Pashman?

  This episode contains explicit language.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  The perfect toasted cheese sandwich is a thing of beauty. It is as gastronomic as any Michelin star.

• 1:44Dan Pashman?

  This is celebrity chef and cookbook author Jamie Oliver. Tell me about your perfect toasted cheese sandwich.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  Okay, so, first of all, as much as I'm into artisan breads and love, care, attention, rare-breed grains of flour, and, you know, you want really rubbish white bread. You want something spongy. I think some good cheddar's kinda cool, something oozy, but pick your cheese as long as it's oozy. You don't have to go OTT because... Once you have the perfect toasty, you take it out, then you get a grater on the fine side and you grate some cheese into the pan.

• 2:18Dan Pashman?

  Oh.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Almost like what we would call a doily, you know, those funny little paper things you get.

• 2:22Dan Pashman?

  Yes, yes.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  So, and then you let that just start to catch, right, thirty seconds and you put the sandwich back in it.

• 2:28Dan Pashman?

  Whoa.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Okay. And then if you can be bothered, like, like a little pinch of like KN or a tiny, tiny shake of Tabasco, believe you me, it works. And then when you kind of push the cheese and it kind of moves as a kind of object, pick it up.

• 2:42Dan Pashman?

  So Jamie says you take a spatula and pick up the sandwich and cheese doily so the edges of the cheese doily hang straight down on all sides. You hold it in the air like that and you let it cool for a few seconds so the cheese doily solidifies, then you flip it upside down so now the cheese is sticking up and it's like a crown. Point of all this?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  Simple can be beautiful.

• 3:09Dan Pashman?

  This is the Sporkful. It's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show, we obsess about food to learn more about people.

• 3:18Dan Pashman?

  So a few years ago, if you asked me who Jamie Oliver is, I'd have said, British celebrity chef, really into healthy school lunches. He had that show on ABC years ago where he showed kids what chicken nuggets are made of. But the thing that happened to him that really got my attention, got me to read more about him, well, that happened about five years ago and it was the worst moment of Jamie's entire career. We'll get to that later. The more I read about him, the more I realized how incredible his whole story is. I mean, he grew up in his parents' pub, cooking there at age eight. He was discovered by a TV producer when he was twenty-three and quickly became a massive star in the UK and has remained one now for twenty-five years. One fun fact you often hear in profiles of Jamie, he is the best-selling nonfiction author of all time in the UK in terms of revenue.

• 4:02Dan Pashman?

  He's written twenty-eight bestselling books and perhaps most impressive, he's dyslexic. He was thirty-eight before he read a whole book for the first time. He writes books by dictating them. And next week, he's releasing the American version of his latest cookbook, Simply Jamie, Fast and Simple Food. Now, this backstory of his, well, it begins in Essex, about fifty miles north of London, at his parents' pub, The Cricketers.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  My dad was one of the first pioneers of what we would call gastro pubs. So what does that mean? It means, okay, we got a pub, we got booze, we got barrels, we got spirits. We've got locals of all shapes and sizes. It's the most democratic place in the world. Fact. Everyone's welcome, from a ninety year old to sort of, you know, families, right? So it is an amazing place. But dad put a real kitchen in. He was formally trained in France. He had a French regimental kitchen. Six guys in the kitchen. Pastry section, all pastries made, all meat butchered. Fish only Tuesdays and Thursday, like flapping. I thought that was normal because that was my daddy and that was my house. So my house was upstairs.

• 5:02Dan Pashman?

  Yeah, you lived above the pub.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so when you wake up in the morning, go downstairs, it was a wash up area. Commercial wash, no, that was my home. So I just thought that was normal. It wasn't until I went to primary school, I went, oh, everyone doesn't have a pub. Really? Um, but, uh, but no, dad was like a pioneer, but it took me twenty years to know it.

• 5:19Dan Pashman?

  And so I know you started cooking there at age eight.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:22Dan Pashman?

  I mean, so what kinds of things were you cooking?

• 5:24Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you'd start off in the wash up and then like you'd be peeling vegetables. You go from prepping vegetables to kind of like prepping basic fish, gutting, scaling. And then you'd go up and you'd be on salad department. So you'd be getting the starters.

• 5:37Dan Pashman?

  So it's not like your dad jumped you to the front of the line. You didn't get any special treatment.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  No, no, because I used to work weekends and then in summer holidays. But, you know, what was amazing for me was like, I wanted stuff like wicked sneakers. Um, and I also wanted independence. So my independence was one pound twenty an hour.

• 5:54Dan Pashman?

  Jamie's desire for stuff and independence leads him to find even more ways of making money at a young age. When he's eleven, he comes across his first food business opportunity.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Because I used to go to cash and carry with my dad, which is where you'd buy all the dry stores and stuff.

• 6:09Dan Pashman?

  For the, for his restaurant?

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I kind of like hide like big tubs of like, you know, cola cubes and kind of all these sweets.

• 6:15Dan Pashman?

  Candy.

• 6:16Speaker 01

  That you could never get. And we couldn't get access to that stuff back in the day. So as people, I used to like rent lockers off a friend and I had like the Jamie Oliver sweet shop, which is kind of like, I was my own enemy there, you know, I was my own nightmare back in the day. But I guess it was like basic commerce really, you know, um, you know, you'd weigh two ounces of, you know, sweets and then you'd count them. So you didn't have scales, obviously, and you'd, you know, you'd open up at fifteen minutes for every break and you were busy.

• 6:42Dan Pashman?

  But you were kind of always an entrepreneur.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Guess so, yeah, absolutely. And I think like the food always captured my imagination, you know? Because I think as a child, I. I really couldn't express any type of pleasure or I was terrible at school. I couldn't fit into what the educators had invented as a structure and as a syllabus. What they thought I should learn, I just, it was so boring to me.

• 7:07Dan Pashman?

  Well, so speaking of that, I, I saw this quote of yours, and this was a quote from years ago. I've got my own issues with regard to how my brain works. I'm quite hyperactive. I can't go on holiday and sunbathe. I'm bored. Give me a jet ski or something.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:22Dan Pashman?

  How does your brain work?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, interestingly, that quote was absolutely correct at the time.

• 7:27Dan Pashman?

  Is it still correct?

• 7:28Speaker 01

  No, if you take me on holiday now and give me a hammock, I'll sleep. You don't need to give me a jet ski anymore, you know? So I think that might have been my.

• 7:36Dan Pashman?

  So you've mellowed with age?

• 7:38Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I think I've learnt to embrace relaxation and quiet.

• 7:42Dan Pashman?

  It's interesting to me, but so, I mean, you're dyslexic, as you've talked about many times. You describe yourself as hyperactive. You were a drummer, like working off nervous energy as a drummer. I've talked to a number of chefs who have said to me, man, if ADD was a diagnosis when I was a kid, believe me, they would have given it to me.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:00Dan Pashman?

  And then there's something about getting into a kitchen and cooking that locked them in with a level of focus that they had never experienced before. Is there something about cooking that works for people with that personality type? And what is it?

• 8:14Speaker 01

  I think it's lots of simple chores that add up to a bigger whole. The fact that there's feel, touch, smell, taste, sense. And like for me, being sort of dyslexic and I was in special needs all my secondary school life, you know, kind of, you know, finding pleasure in cooking and, and sort of processes and a structure that you're part of, um, that you can slowly but surely work up. You know, if I wasn't a chef, I would love to be a carpenter, to find and source wood. And everyone does a different thing and they age differently and they bend and knot differently. And then you can kind of turn it and like to something, you know? It's like when you put flour and water together or flour and eggs, like, you know, you can do tagliatelle, tagliatelle, papadelli, lasagna, lasagnetti.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  You can kind of then fill it ravioli, capolacchi. You know, what, what do you want to do or, you know, the million things you, but the idea that you take something wet and then you take some flour and. The star's the limit. You've just got to set that spark off. I mean, for me, I remember the the spark for me when I was about eleven and I'm I was given permission to make the family's Sunday lunch. And like in England, like the Sunday lunch is kind of a thing, you know, whether it's lamb, beef or chicken, which everyone loves. You roast it, you baste it, herbs, salt, pepper, cook it till it's crispy skin, like loads of veggies, roast potato gravy, you know, maybe Yorkshire puddings. Like, there's a bunch of stuff going on and I remember doing it when I was about eleven. And my dad thanked me sincerely and I remember I remember the feeling.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Like hairs back a neck. It was just like, I'm good at something. You know, because I remember like literally a month before I'd gone to like parents' evening at school and it was basically, it was basically like.

• 9:52Dan Pashman?

  It was not not good.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Cute kid, but like, you know, his work's like a bag of shit. So, um, um, and then of course, and it was so unsubtle in those days. Because like, they wouldn't even do it like one on one, like, you know, there'd be some kid next to you, he was the brain box getting complimented. And everyone's works out and it's like one out of ten and they're like nine out of ten, ten out of ten. So it was just dis disheartening. So for me, like the roast dinner saved the day and I think that was the moment when I knew that I I got to keep this food thing up.

• 10:28Dan Pashman?

  At age sixteen, Jamie transfers to a catering school in London. He begins cooking in restaurants. Soon after, he moves in with his then girlfriend, now wife, Jules. They share an apartment, him cooking, her waitressing. They don't see a whole lot of each other. Jamie says they're like ships passing in the night.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  In those days, it was like eighty to a hundred hours a week. My wage just about covered the bills and the rent. And Jules didn't get a wage, she just got tips. So she couldn't really cook. Um, so I used to sort of do like these foil. Envelopes, so you could take any kind, you know, think protein, so like could be salmon, a bit of cod, it could be like a chicken breast, it could be like, like a little hunk of meat. And then I used to kind of just put combos together. So, you know, you could take cannellini beans and sort of like, you know, some herbs and, you know, you could take, you could go Asian, you could kind of go like salmon, put some noodles in, like smash up some garlic, ginger, chili, little bit of soy sauce, lime juice, a bit of herb, you know, wrap up these little envelopes. And then, of course, she couldn't cook, I just put, you know, four

• 11:29Speaker 01

  hundred Fahrenheit for twenty minutes and then put lots of love and, and, and, and obviously at that point in my life, I was new and partial to a little bit of jiggy jiggy. So, you know, maybe there'd be a few naughty messages and dirty, you know, anything that would give me a higher percentage chance of getting a bunk up, as we would call it in England.

• 11:49Dan Pashman?

  And it's, it's funny because, so my wife, like, she does, we, we roughly split the cooking, but I'm more passionate about cooking. I sort of more get pleasure out of it. So when we're both home, usually I'll cook. Sometimes when I'm working from home, I'll make her lunch without her even asking. And she does appreciate it, but I also think it's kind of funny to me, like, like if she's stressed, I will cook something, you know, and I'll be like, here's how I'm gonna like, help her try to feel better is to cook something. But she doesn't really care much about food in general. And she'll be like, oh, thanks, this is nice, like, thanks, but like, I would rather have had you fold the laundry.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. But you know what, here's the thing, you know, like anything in life, you can take it for granted. Like, you know, the amount of times I cook for my missus, she never says, thank you. You know, just cracks on and duh duh duh duh, you know. So I think like, it's when you're not there. Like now I'm here and not at home. Like, you know, she's cooking her own dinners. So I get quite a lot of love when I get back. It's like, no, thank you so much, lovely.

• 12:46Dan Pashman?

  Is that, is that the only reason why you released this book in America, Jamie?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Just so I could go away and kind of treat them mean, keep them keen.

• 12:55Dan Pashman?

  Okay, back to the story. Young Jamie is working at the River Cafe, a fancy Italian place in London. One day, a TV crew comes in to shoot a special about Christmas at the restaurant. Now Jamie's just a sous chef, but he ends up in a few scenes cooking in the kitchen.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  It's boiling away quite smoothly. I'm gonna pull it out now. I've got three orders on, so I've gotta really move it.

• 13:17Dan Pashman?

  Jamie would later say the thing he did in that special that stood out was that he could explain cooking steps clearly, quickly, and with some personality, which made him a TV producer's dream.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  So we're gonna get a good handful in there for one serve. In a minute or so, I'm gonna put a little bit of butter in it to give it a nice shine, nice flavour.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  And a touch of lemon juice at the last minute, just to give it a bit of a twang at the end. This biscuit has been rubbed with garlic. Lovely job, Lee.

• 13:46Dan Pashman?

  So a producer spots him in that special, and pretty soon Jamie's first TV show launches on the BBC. It's 1999, he's 23 years old, and the show is called The Naked Chef.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  Naked is what I call my way of cooking. What I cook in the restaurant isn't what I cook at home. Cooking's gotta be a laugh. It's gotta be simple, it's gotta be tasty, it's gotta be fun.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  I suppose you could say it's stripping down the recipe to its bare essentials. No way, it's not meat, it's food.

• 14:19Dan Pashman?

  The idea of The Naked Chef is to focus on simple recipes and quality ingredients. Jamie's not yet comfortable looking at the camera, so he talks to a producer off to the side who feeds him questions. The show is not beautiful or glossy, but it's intimate. You really feel like you're in the kitchen with this kid. I mean, he's so baby-faced, he's 23, but he could pass for 16. In one episode, he's cooking up a curry for his buddies who are gonna come back to his apartment later that night after an evening of drinking. Jamie made it cool for young British men who had never watched a cooking show, let alone cooked anything, to get into the kitchen. The Naked Chef was quickly picked up in the US by the Food Network, which wanted a poster boy for its transition from low-budget instructional cooking shows to flashy celebrity chefs.

• 15:05Dan Pashman?

  A Naked Chef cookbook soon followed. It became an instant bestseller.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  It exploded in the UK. You know, within months, months. It it was literally like being in in my own boy band. You know, I mean, and I remember I just my my shitty little bank balance. Just going from negative like one hundred and fifty quid to actually having money in it for the first time. And it's, by the way, it took a while to get any money because you don't get paid like in in a book. I think it's like six months before you get paid or maybe longer. I can't remember, but I remember being famous and still being skinned.

• 15:34Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Um, the bit that I couldn't get my head around was like literally within a blink of a year. We were already broadcasting in thirty countries. And it was like every day there was like kind of, yeah, yeah, we've got, you know, we're going to South Africa now. Yeah, yeah, the Aussies have taken it. Yeah, I remember I remember the day and the place I was when I was phoned up and told that that America had bought my book.

• 15:55Dan Pashman?

  You you had this quote in in two thousand and three, you said this, which was this is just, this is a couple of years after that initial explosion. But still, you're still in your twenties at this point. The only reason celebrity is remotely cool is that you can do things that interest you. Otherwise, it's pretty soul destroying.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:11Dan Pashman?

  In what way is it soul destroying?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Well, I think I think then as well, I mean, I think things have changed a little bit. I mean, I think obviously fame being recognized is one thing at that particular, because I was very young and there was sort of an energy about my age as well as what I did. You know, it was a bit more boy bandy because it was quite raucous and nothing was simple. So popping down the pub for a pint just became impossible. Once you've got over that, you really had to start using the the gift of what fame could give you to do things that opened your mind and inspired you and and and could, yeah, take you on that journey.

• 16:51Dan Pashman?

  Coming up, Jamie does start trying to use his fame to do some good. And that choice is met with skepticism from the press and his parents. Then later, the centerpiece of his restaurant empire crumbles. Stick around.

• 17:21Speaker 03

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• 17:28Dan Pashman?

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• 18:58Dan Pashman?

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• 19:27Dan Pashman?

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• 20:11Dan Pashman?

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• 20:36Dan Pashman?

  Welcome back to The Sporkful. I'm Dan Pashman, and I am getting ready to pack my bags. In just a couple of weeks, I am headed to do my first-ever live Sporkful taping in Memphis, western Tennessee. Come on out. Maybe even middle Tennessee will be there. Maybe eastern Tennessee will make the drive. I learned when I was in Nashville, because I would have thought that the middle part of the state would be called central Tennessee. But no, it's middle Tennessee. Of course, Memphis, western Tennessee. And hey, Arkansas, Mississippi, I'm expecting to see you there, too, at the Buckman Art Center as I talk with local Memphis restaurateur and artist Karen Blockman Carrier. She owns a restaurant called The Beauty Shop that is actually a converted salon. She's a real character and a local food legend. I can't wait for this conversation. This is Thursday, January 16th. Tickets are going fast. Get yours at sporkful.com/events.

• 21:23Dan Pashman?

  Now, back to Jamie Oliver. So in about a year, Jamie goes from being an unknown sous chef to a household name. He's 26. He has offers coming at him from all directions for TV shows, books, restaurants. People are expecting him to cash in. But instead, he does something so surprising that a lot of people don't believe it's genuine. They think it's a vanity project. He launches something called the 15 Foundation with the goal of helping young people from underprivileged backgrounds get a foothold in the food industry. Each year, the program will take in 15 students. The centerpiece of the project will be a restaurant called 15, where the students will work. And in a real stroke of genius, Jamie films the whole process for a TV show.

• 22:09Dan Pashman?

  His inspiration for the 15 project came from that first positive experience he had cooking Sunday dinner for his family.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Positive reinforcement, being good at something, you know, is a basic need, a basic want. So if you fall through the gaps, if you never get patted on the back for doing anything right, the idea of finding some form of satisfaction in school or life is the challenge. So I've gone to London and then, and somehow come up with the idea is let's take the most hard to reach kids and let's inspire them with what inspired me. If you take a drug dealer or a car thief and say, okay, do you want to become a craftsman or a chef? Let me show you how to source wild salmon versus farm salmon. Let's break it down. Then you start getting their fantasy and then, right, let's cook it, let's steam it, let's roast it, let's grill it, taste the difference, wow. Try this, try that herb, try that acid.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Then it becomes like a painter with paint and a palette. And I think what I'm really proud of is they were all trained the same, they were all loved the same, they were all mentored the same, they all went on the same trips. And yet they've all come out as individuals. Some have gone off into like, you know, I've got, I've got like a dude who is now running one of the best sushi restaurants in Spain, getting amazing Spanish fish. Right, you know, he comes from a really rough council estate in Hackney. Do you know, it's like amazing. So I think what I like, some are in delis, some are doing like just noodle bars, some are going back to their roots doing Jamaican food. So I think I love the idea that, you know, train them in a way where you kind of allow them to then go on their own journey because that's the only one that really matters.

• 23:44Dan Pashman?

  Right. I gather your father was skeptical.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, my dad, as any restaurateur out there that might be listening, is like, you know, even if you're good and even if you're busy, like, making a good living, as in making money out of the restaurant game, is really hard. So even though dad had always, you know, he built this business from nothing, every pound was a hard pound. So when his son had kind of gone out to the big city, exploded as this what, a naked chef? Well, he's got a book, what? What's my son got, a book? Uh, and then like we'd sold a million copies, like boom.

• 24:18Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Right? And like, all of a sudden I turn up in sort of like a new car or and he's like, all right, dad. He, yeah, he was kind of like, mm, and then everything I had, I spent on this restaurant, which was set up as a charity. So not only this weird thing happened, but then I was gonna essentially throw it away. So he was very, very not happy with the scenario. But I think that I was well-meaning, but just stupid enough. I was green, enthusiastic and stupid enough to do the most brilliant, beautiful thing I've ever done. You know, uh, if you're more conservative, if you're more grown up, if you're more kind of business minded, you never would have done it.

• 24:58Dan Pashman?

  Well, and also your dad was skeptical because he thought that you can't change these ne'er do wells.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  For sure, for sure. He said to me, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. And I fundamentally disagreed. I think ultimately the, the concept of rehabilitation fascinates me.

• 25:17Dan Pashman?

  Why?

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Because I, I think the simple conversation in media and the simple conversation to oneself and one's family is us. Are we all right, Jack? Like, are you, is my kid all right? Is my daughter all right?

• 25:31Dan Pashman?

  The immediate concerns.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  And I get that because that's human and, and that's, that's the most powerful visceral thing that all of us have. But. If you truly care about that us, then you have to step back from your house and your street and maybe even beyond your town, maybe to your district and go, what does bad look like? How bad is bad? And for me, fifteen was like, well, let's take the kids that have slipped through the net. And by the way, most of those kids were single parent families.

• 25:58Dan Pashman?

  And when you, when you started fifteen, I mean, your dad wasn't the only one who was skeptical. One of the things that fascinated me is, is how much skepticism there was from the public.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, not the public, the media.

• 26:09Dan Pashman?

  Right. There was actually a journalist who posed as one of the

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Students.

• 26:14Dan Pashman?

  Students, because they were convinced they were going to uncover some sort of

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Like fake foe.

• 26:18Dan Pashman?

  Right. Turns out he's not actually helping anyone. Turns out he's a sleaze.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  We broke her. Like she was on the course for seven months. She fessed up to it. She didn't just leave. She fessed up to it and, and, and she wrote the story. It was a big story and the story was, it's real. But then of course, it was hard for them to publish because they'd wasted someone's place. They, they'd taken opportunity for a young person that should have got it and a journalist got it instead and they got seven months of love.

• 26:45Dan Pashman?

  And what do you make of that skepticism?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  I think it's very human.

• 26:50Dan Pashman?

  Like, like it's human to not think that someone might actually just be doing something

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Nice. Yeah, I think, I think, I think, and, and, and so I think, you know, in some, in some respects, like, cause fifteen had such a pure heart and because it was real, because it was registered as a charity, because I never took a wage, because we did what we did and carried on doing what we did for many, many years. Like after about four years, all the journalists globally got bored of being cynical because I'm like, well, I'm still doing it. What are you doing?

• 27:27Dan Pashman?

  Fifteen, the restaurant becomes a mainstay and a TV show about its creation airs on Channel Four in the UK and gets picked up by Food Network. On the BBC show, the food program last year, Jamie said even his dad came around to the idea.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  It was the first time, and dad would tell you this, that we had the moment as son and father where I was right and he learned from me. And the only way I could get him to understand was to send Aaron, one of the students to his pub and work a summer.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  And then over the course of him baking bread at five in the morning with my dad, you get to know a kid and you you hear about what happened and you give him five more students and you you hear about lives of crime, what it was like in the neighborhood, alcoholic parents.

• 28:11Dan Pashman?

  Jamie says eventually his dad became a passionate advocate for Fifteen. In the years after opening that restaurant, Jamie builds a full-on empire. He opens a chain of Italian restaurants, writes more books, works with British supermarket chains, launches lines of kitchenware, and he becomes an activist for healthier school lunches. He lobbies the British Prime Minister and wins a substantial increase in spending for healthier food in UK schools. Then he makes another big splash in the US with a show called Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, where he brings that school activism to America. In the famous scene I mentioned earlier, he shows kids how chicken nuggets are made. He puts all the least desirable parts of a chicken and a bunch of other additives into a blender.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  You wanna learn a lesson that's gonna change your life?

• 28:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Who knows what this is?

• 28:59Speaker 04

  Chicken. A chicken.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  I showed them where all the nice cuts of meat came off the chicken and then you're left with a carcass with all the ribs and the little bits of giblets and blood and skin and stuff like that.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  You've got to put loads of stuff in it, you know, flavoring in there to make it taste of something nice instead of something horrible. And there you go, ladies and gentlemen, our very own Patty.

• 29:25Dan Pashman?

  As big as Jamie got with all his TV shows and cookbooks and healthy eating campaigns, his work with Fifteen always stayed special to him.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  I'm really proud of what we've done and it worked. It worked for seventeen years. We got just under five hundred students through the program, eighty percent of them graduated. We had the best of the best.

• 29:44Dan Pashman?

  But in the volatile restaurant business, sometimes even the best of the best isn't good enough. Several years back, even as Jamie's international restaurants were doing well, his UK places fell in hard times. He says a lot of factors contributed. He had expensive leases on a lot of big spaces and prime shopping areas, and as people started buying more online, foot traffic plummeted. Also, when he started, he was one of the few people doing high-quality mid-market dining. Now, it's everywhere. Jamie also blames Brexit, which he says created a lack of investor confidence, and which industry experts blame for a shrinking pool of workers and more expensive ingredients.

• 30:19Speaker 05

  He injected his celebrity personality along with millions of pounds of his own and investors' money, but in the end, it simply wasn't enough. Today, from the south coast through to Scotland, the closed signs went up. A chain carrying just one name now leaving a thousand out of work.

• 30:37Dan Pashman?

  In the end, Jamie spent $15 million of his own money trying to save his restaurants. But in 2019, his UK operation declared bankruptcy. 22 restaurants closed. For Jamie, the one that hurt most of all was closing 15.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  It's... It's really eerie, and I don't like it. It's weird, isn't it?

• 30:56Dan Pashman?

  A TV crew filmed him as he walked through the restaurant one last time. Empty glasses on the bar, dirty dishes in the sink.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  I don't know. It's like when the film's when the bomb's gone off and everyone has to leave and everything's just left.

• 31:09Dan Pashman?

  Looking around, Jamie tears up more than once.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  My god.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Over on the pillar there

• 31:20Speaker 01

  was, um, two plaques from students that died.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  There's a lot of history here, isn't there?

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  It was more than just a business, it had soul. So, look, I'm grateful for the 17 years that we had. I know I did the best version of bad. You know, even from a personal point of view, I made sure my staff were all paid up to the day personally. And as painful as it was, I'm weirdly grateful because I finally feel rounded as a restaurateur.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  I think I'm young enough to sort of reflect and I know I'm gonna do something interesting going forward and I know I won't make the same. I mean, really, the reason we died was because my model, my business model, wasn't bendy enough. There's no magic in business. The government, whether it's the States or the UK, treats you no differently if you care about the ingredients or the environment or the staff than if you couldn't give two shits. So to make money, stack it high, sell it cheap, is the easiest way to make a lot of cash in food. Right? And your risk is gonna be way lower. The concept of even caring, which is on the same terms, is really hard. So should I ever do it again, it would be in a different way, in a

• 32:46Speaker 01

  different structure. You know, in contrast to that, you know, I still, to this day, have seventy restaurants in twenty-three countries around the world that are happy, well-run and profitable.

• 32:58Dan Pashman?

  Even as Jamie's restaurants in the UK were going under, he launched a new initiative, the Twenty Thirty Project. Its mission is to cut childhood obesity in the UK in half by twenty thirty. So far, they've made strides like restricting the placement and timing of junk food ads and fighting for free school meals in London. Another part of reaching that goal is convincing people to eat less meat and more veggies. That's why Jamie put out a book in twenty twenty called Ultimate Veg, which is all vegetarian.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  In my opinion, the concept of true democracy is to have a place where everyone has at least the capacity to reach for the stars, right? I mean, that's the American dream, right? But what we know from hard data is that if you're poor, you're gonna be heavier, more unhealthy, do less well at school, get paid less money, have more days off sick, die younger. And the conversation that I'm having is a global one, not a British one. You'd be amazed how similar the worries and the excitement around food is globally.

• 33:56Dan Pashman?

  And in Ultimate Veg, Jamie takes a soft approach to all this.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  So I didn't like go, oh, all of a sudden, as a meat eater, I'm gonna dedicate a whole year to just, just veg.

• 34:05Dan Pashman?

  But this is the kind of book that like I feel like you are uniquely, maybe not uniquely, but one of the few people who could, who has the sort of broad appeal and understanding of sort of mass communication to take the idea of cooking more vegetables and bring it to people.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Make it more mainstream.

• 34:22Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:23Dan Pashman?

  What's the, what's the key to that?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Partly the key to that was simplicity, but excitement. So give people enough of what we know they want. So whether it's mac and cheese, you know, noodle rice dishes, you know, I mean, I think also the fact that it's even the conversation is weird because to real true foodies, blindfolded, good food's good food regardless of what it is. So the conversation we're having would be really odd in Portugal or Spain because they just go, well, it's food. It's not vegetarian food. It's just food. It just happens to be. So I think that's the vibe I went of. I think also timing, like for many Western countries, the idea of taking something away is like divisive, really divisive.

• 35:00Dan Pashman?

  People want to feel like they're healthier without feeling like they're giving anything up.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  And that was exactly the point of the book. So, you know, we wanted comfort food dishes in there, but we wanted to teach people how to get massive flavor out of veggies. And also because I'm not a vegetarian, I eat meat and I love meat. It's really the concept of really like, guys, let's push the veg because there's only good to be had from it, whether it's your wallet, your health, or the planet, you know, it's all good, good, good, good, good. You know, if someone just goes veggie once a week and they're like massive carnivores, like that's success.

• 35:33Dan Pashman?

  You have had the unique opportunity, I mean, you've met with prime ministers and major political figures, I mean, people who really have the power to change some of the policies that you've been pushing for for decades now. I understand that some of the resistance is just, there are big corporations that make a lot of money off the status quo and they have power. But is there some other source of resistance? Because this seems like the kind of thing that should cut across political lines, like certainly anyone with kids. No matter what your political opinions are on other issues, you would think that everyone would agree that kids should be eating at least a base level of nutrition. And there's now, there's now plenty of studies that show that you, that when schools follow

• 36:17Dan Pashman?

  your program, that the students are healthier, that they do better academically.

• 36:21Speaker 01

  For sure they do.

• 36:22Dan Pashman?

  What's the deal?

• 36:23Speaker 01

  I think the deal is, these are people that are career politicians. They require and want to be going up the scale, getting more power. And when you get into the realms of that, I'm constantly largely disappointed. Because we would think that, well, clearly you have something in your heart that defines you to have a care culture that would allow you to take care of these people, this district, this place, and represent them, and be balanced and intelligent and rounded about how you would love all, not one section. And that just doesn't seem to happen very often, mainly because, once you're in the political game, it's amazing, but consistently, they don't want to make much change. So they all, regardless of country, say, "Make me and we will."

• 37:08Dan Pashman?

  When Jamie says "make me and we will," he means, "You have to make this such a big issue, you have to create so much political pressure, that I, as a politician, have no choice but to act."

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Make a documentary, make a campaign, make the papers talk about it, make them ask us, and then I can go to my lot and say, "Let's do something appropriate," and then try and get a few hundred people to sign a bit of paper.

• 37:29Dan Pashman?

  Right.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  And I guess, the interesting thing is, I will do it, but it's not my job. That, I thought, was their job.

• 37:45Dan Pashman?

  That's Jamie Oliver. His latest book is Simply Jamie: Fast and Simple Food. It's out January 7th, but you can preorder it right now, wherever books are sold. You can also try to win a copy. Sign up for our newsletter by January 20th, and you'll be entered to win a giveaway of Jamie's new book. Just go to sporkful.com/newsletter to sign up today. And you know, you may have noticed that we do a lot of cool giveaways through our newsletter. So if you're on the list and you don't win Jamie's book, you might win the next book. Just get on the list. Open to US and Canada addresses only. Again, you can sign up at sporkful.com/newsletter.

• 38:17Dan Pashman?

  Next week on The Sporkful, we take you to Abbeville, Louisiana, to eat a giant omelet, and we hear the secret history of the Meyer lemon. We'll team up with our friends from Atlas Obscura for that one. Check it out next week. While you're waiting, we've put out a bunch of great episodes this month, including a salad spinner, looking back at the biggest food stories of 2024, and the stories of two cookbook authors who made huge career switches to get there. Those are in your feed now. Check them out. And hey, did you know you can listen to The Sporkful on the SiriusXM app? Yes, the SiriusXM app, it has all your favorite podcasts, plus over 200 ad-free music channels curated by genre and era, plus live sports coverage. Does your podcasting app have that? And there's interviews with A-list stars and so much more. It's everything you want in a podcast app and music app all rolled into one. And right now, Sporkful listeners can get three

• 39:02Dan Pashman?

  months free of the SiriusXM app by going to siriusxm.com/sportful. This episode is produced by me, along with managing producer Emma Morgenstern. Senior producer Andres O'Hara. And producer Harry Huggins. It was edited by Tracy Samuelson. The show is mixed by Jared O'Connell. Music help from Black Label Music. The Sporkful is a production of Stitcher Studios. Our executive producers are Nora Ritchie and Colin Anderson. Until next time, I'm Dan Paschmann.

• 39:27Speaker 06

  And I'm James Velitas in Essex, England, reminding you to eat more, eat better, and eat more better.

• 39:44Dan Pashman?

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