BBC Radio 4 - Radio 4 in Four - What we've learnt from 20 years of Jamie Oliver (2024)

Jamie Oliver first appeared in The Naked Chef 20 years ago. Since then, Jamie, arguably the UK's most successful food entrepreneur, has spent two controversial decades dominating food on our TV screens and online, our home cooking, and dining out.

In The Food Programme two-part special, he takes us through his Life Through Food, and opens up about everything from his time spent campaigning, to the collapse of Jamie's Italian. Here's what we've learnt from the highest grossing British food writer of all time.

Cooking is cool

Whether it’s cooking a hungover fry up for your mates after a night out, or a romantic meal in for two to woo your girlfriend, The Naked Chef showed that cooking for your friend will improve your social life.

Netflix chef, and author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, Samin Nosrat says, “One of my very favourite shows of all time was those early seasons of The Naked Chef because I'd never seen anything like it. He made it feel like anyone could do this.”

Men can cook too

Even though it was only 20 years ago, and men and women were working similar hours, Jamie says it was still sexist two decades ago. That in the late 90s, many men arrived home expecting their partners to have done the home cooking. Jamie changed that forever and showed young men they could step up.

Your hands are the best kitchen utensil

And the second best kitchen utensil is the pestle and mortar. At the beginning of being in the public eye, Jamie received bags of letters complaining about how he used his hands to bash things, to squeeze lemons, to pull apart vegetables on The Naked Chef. Since then, he’s taught us all we don’t need to master cheffy julienne cuts to be a demon in the kitchen.

Grow your own herbs

Jamie says he has always grown his own herbs. Even before The Naked Chef, he was growing herbs on his windowsill. Years after the show, he found out that one of his neighbours would always pass his flat after a night out and stop and wee in his herbs!

Eat better meat

Two words: turkey twizzler. The famous MRM (mechanically recovered meat) turkey product which Jamie Oliver picked on during his Channel 4 series Jamie’s School Dinners. Since then, Jamie has been vocal about spending a bit more money sourcing meat from local butchers rather than the supermarket. His newest book focuses on vegetarian recipes.

Be a perfectionist

Within his inner circle, Jamie has always been known to be fussy about the ingredients he uses. His head food stylist Ginny Rolfe says Jamie would often stop filming on the set of The Naked Chef if she hadn’t procured the ripest peaches, or prepared the pasta dish just so.

Perhaps it has something to do with cutting his teeth at The River Café, considered to be one of the best Italian restaurants in London, where ingredients like olive oil and vinegar were hand selected.

Learn from your failures

The first episode of The Naked Chef was in Jamie’s words “tedious, boring and dull”. Jamie says they learnt from the failings, added music, cine film montage and kitchen banter to create the iconic look and feel of the eventual series. Jamie says it’s taught him to learn from his failings.

Since the collapse of his restaurant chain Jamie’s Italian He says he’s sitting back, taking some time to “learn some stuff, be humbled, try and deal with the mess and move on”. He says he doesn’t know what he’ll do next, but he doesn’t want to see his name all over the high street again. He’d rather invest in talented young chefs’ restaurants.

Change the system

Jamie asks himself what makes him annoyed and angry. “It’s around forms of bullying or things that blight populations”. As he’s been exposed to inequalities in the food system – whether it’s child poverty or the nutritional content of school meals or fizzy drinks – Jamie has changed his aims and ambitions. Of his campaigning work he says it’s “not comfortable. It’s rarely enjoyable and it only ever divides”.

Food can blow your mind

When he set up his training restaurant for troubled young chefs, Fifteen, Jamie Oliver was known to take his students back to the farms to meet the producers who’d grown the produce coming into the restaurant kitchen. Jamie says it was the only thing he could do to keep the students hooked on food and cooking, and stop them from defaulting back to their former lives.

Listen to Jamie Oliver's Life Through Food on The Food Programme two-part special.