The young person’s, modern day Delia, Jamie Oliver catapulted himself to fame following a chance meeting at the River Café, he now commands millions for advertisements, has created a socially aware restaurant empire and influenced what our children eat at school.

Despite his slightly grating, ‘cockney’ accent, our Jamie’s actually a born and bred Essex boy. Having been raised to landlord parents he started working in a professional kitchen at the tender age of 11, when he used to peel the veg for the Sunday Roast at the pub.

He trained at Westminster Catering College and spent some time studying in France. On his return to London he bagged himself a job as head pastry chef at the Antonio Carluccio restaurant on Neal Street, before heading over to Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers gastro-delight The River Café. It was here that he was apparently ‘spotted’, whilst a television crew were in doing a dash of filming, and the result was ‘Naked Chef’ in 1998.

His new, fresh and relaxed approach to presenting and food in general went down a storm with the British public and another series followed shortly after in 1999. Over the years his stake in primetime television has grown with a number of successful programmes, including Jamie’s Kitchen, Jamie’s Great Italian Escape and Oliver Twist.

In 2000 Jamie became the ‘face of Sainsburys’, which saw the chef earn a reputed £1.2 million per year, whilst appearing in rather cringe worthy ads left, right and centre of the television scheduling programme. His over exposure led to a bit of a backlash with caricatures of him springing up on the comedy circuit; think big lips, wads of cash, ‘mockney’ accent and floppy wife.

If the Sainsburys deal signalled a temporary fall from grace for the Essex boy, then the series Jamie’s Kitchen saw him return from the back of the pack to take gold. The programme followed the chef as he launched his flagship Fifteen restaurant in London. Part of a charitable foundation, the business offers training for underprivileged kids and branches have gone on to be launched in Newquay, the Netherlands, Amsterdam and Melbourne.

Jamie’s social conscious doesn’t end there either – in 2005 the geeza chef took on the British education system, with a good, long, hard look at what we were feeding the minds of tomorrow – fat, salt and sugar being the main ingredients. The series signalled a social crisis in parliament and forced the Government to reassess school dinners around the country, with the aim of educating our kids about food and it’s origins, whilst providing them with a well-rounded diet.

In 2003 he was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

He married Juliette Norton in 2000 and the couple have two daughters.