Me and Dad had a plan.
The plan was to get another pub.
And I thought, "I'm gonna go to London for three years,
learn as much as possible,
and come back and run this beautiful pub."
That never happened.
Something else got in the way.
Jamie, on here, please, pal. Jamie.
Yes, mate.
But it was uncomfortable.
-Jamie! -What's up?
Fame…
Look this way.
It was like something not quite right.
Like a stomachache.
Jamie Oliver.
-Jamie Oliver. -Jamie Oliver.
I just started thinking,
"How do I use my voice, or fame, or whatever you wanna call it?"
"Can it be more than just culinary enthusiasm on a plate?"
"Can it go deeper than that?"
And I guess that's where I went from being just a TV chef
to standing for something.
Let's face it. The British are not great chefs.
British cuisine is not known as the best in the world.
Jamie Oliver came along.
He said, "We can do something different, and we can do something better."
You cannot ever underestimate how important that is.
Just turn it around.
Making beautiful things out of simple, cheap things.
There's hardly a person in Britain who doesn't have an opinion
about Jamie Oliver.
Best-selling author,
charming TV chef.
He's entered into all of our lives.
When Jamie appeared on The Naked Chef,
sliding down the banisters and riding his Vespa,
he spoke to an entire generation.
Jamie said, "Cook!"
"Chuck a bit of this in, and chuck a bit of that in. It's fun."
Now we just gotta bash it all out and start again.
All right, I'm just gonna get a tin.
No one had ever thought cooking could be like that.
He was a guy in his early twenties.
He didn't look like a chef, talk like a chef.
That's what it's all about. No pretty business.
He personified a societal change.
Because he was this star,
he was able to say, "We have to change things,"
to outrage people.
That is a really bad version of mechanically reclaimed meat.
To be the agent for social change.
Ugh!
It's put me off chicken nuggets.
There'd never been anything quite like it.
Jamie Oliver changed the landscape of what was possible in Britain.
He brought food into the mainstream.
He's changed the way people think about food in this country.
You already did.
-Budds, you ready? -You can't cut his head off.
-Don't. -How do I…
You wanna see his pretty face.
Okay.
-So, Budds… -So, hi, guys. I'm Buddy.
Tell 'em what you're doing, tell 'em why you're excited about it.
And welcome everyone to Cooking Buddies. Go for it.
Hi, guys. I'm Buddy.
And today I'm gonna be showing you a super easy and amazing recipe.
Fillet of fish.
-Mum, you can't do that. -It's okay.
-It's a bumblebee. Go with it. -Quite big… I know. Right, go on.
Sorry, can we just cut and start again? This is gonna kill the editor.
-Okay, ready? -Go.
-I haven't pressed record yet. -Okay, go.
Okay, Buddy, and… action.
So I'm gonna be filleting a mackerel, a whole mackerel, that's been gutted.
I'm gonna be showing you how to do it. Super easy, super simple.
This is the fish I learnt how to fillet on. So let's get started.
When The Naked Chef was born,
the general vibe on cooking was cooking was for losers.
But I knew there was a whole world of joy, fantasy, entertaining
by cooking and bringing cooking into your life.
So I had to find ways to get people to join the gang,
and part of that was, like, "What would stop you?"
Long shopping lists, that's a blocker.
Long cooking times, you've gotta be able to justify that,
otherwise that's a blocker.
Multiple pans to washing up, that's a blocker.
So if you take fish pie,
the great, much-loved British dish.
You would traditionally take your fish, poach it.
Then you'd have a béchamel.
Flour, butter,
make a roux.
You'd have another pan with simmering infused milk.
We're on three pans, we haven't even started.
A whole load of mess to make a humble dish.
I ain't doing none of that.
My equation is get a tray,
chop up fresh fish.
Crème fraîche instead of white sauce.
Lemon juice, mustard, herbs.
Mashed potato on top.
This idea that you've got a recipe, you got a principle,
there's less washing up, everyone can do it, there's no excuses,
but you can put your own little kind of stamp on it,
that's what I try and do.
Let's have a little move here.
What I love to do is always put a little wet bit of paper underneath.
-So it… -And that stops it. You've got your thing.
Working from left to right like a ninja.
You've got your spices. Look at that! So what are you chopping next?
I'm probably going to chop sweet potatoes.
Yeah.
I'm hoping to see some style on the wok frying.
When I was young,
I struggled at school.
That's it.
I've got dyslexia,
and I never got the right kind of help that I needed.
Spice up your life.
And if you looked at my reports, they said, "Fail, fail, dunce."
Yes! That's it.
That's the sizzle you want, sister.
That's the sizzle that you want.
I had a resentment, a fear towards education,
to the written word.
Words empower people and enrich people
and take them on journeys and tap into their imagination.
I never had any of that.
It was my enemy.
I went to special needs,
but that was more like torture than help.
When you spend the first chunk of your life
feeling like you're not bright and you've got nothing to offer the world,
that could have demoralized me quite a lot,
but it actually never did,
because of my job at the weekend.
Mum and Dad ran this pub.
I lived upstairs, and then downstairs was the business.
I started collecting glasses and the ashtrays.
Then we went to the wash-up, and then eventually the kitchen.
Cooking on the line when checks are comin' in
and it's orders away
was like this cool, mad, crazy Tetris game,
but all around beautiful, delicious food.
And I remember cooking a roast dinner on my own once.
I remember my dad patting me on the back, and my hairs went…
And I'm like, "Oh, I like that feeling."
I felt empowered.
I felt free.
"I'm gonna keep cooking."
Here she is.
So are we ready,
you lovely people?
In the pub, sometimes we would have beef Wellington,
which would always sell out, but it's so expensive.
So Dad just wanted to make a dish that had that feeling of total luxury,
but make it much more affordable.
And there born was Trevor's Chicken.
It's a beautiful free-range chicken,
stuffed with this mushroom duxelles, a blend of farmed mushrooms.
We start frying garlic and shallots in olive oil and butter
until just going sweet,
and then in with the fresh mushrooms.
Once all the moisture's gone, then you can add the dried mushrooms,
because they add a whole load of flavor.
At that point, go in with a little white wine.
Not too much, just enough to kind of give it a fragrance,
and then cook that away.
Stuff it into the chicken breast,
and then just close it up.
Get a nice little strip of puff pastry.
Roll up the chicken,
encapsulating that chicken breast.
And if you do it well, beautiful.
If you do it badly, it's also beautiful,
because the nice thing about that pastry is it fixes itself in the oven.
And some lovely egg wash
to make it go golden.
You get this golden, crisp pastry, then the pearly white chicken,
and then this hit of dark…
What is it? Ah, it's mushrooms.
My weekends were spent wrapping 30 or 40 of those a shift.
Trevor's Chicken is a really important side of me and where I come from.
And obviously, Trevor's my dad.
I'm just gonna guess it. Two kilos.
-Yeah. Two kilo is right. -Yeah.
-You grab that jug behind you. -Just 'cause… Yeah.
We use cold water for this one instead of…
-Really? -Yeah.
-Not tepid? -Just tepid.
-Oh, yeah, I mean, when I say cold… -Why do you not want, um…
Well, because yeast.
You can actually… Yeast, you can have a North Pole and still will prove.
-Because it's alive. -Yeah, but we want it to get going.
Yeah, that is good. Look. That… Do you want to touch it?
-Touch the jar. -Beautiful.
-Yeah, that is good. -Right.
I was living in London, and I was working for the Neal Street Restaurant,
which was owned by a very famous chef called Antonio Carluccio.
And his right-hand man was Gennaro Contaldo.
Little bit of honey.
Now, the yeast starts to grab. It start to go…
Learning bread and pasta from Gennaro
was a very visceral experience.
You see how I'm completely tuned into you.
-Yeah. -I… I know what's going in.
Oh, you remember the oil, eh?
I can second-guess you. Only a little bit.
The Italians, they're not fighting over the macro detail.
It's the heart and the soul and the passion
and really the touch and the feel.
They're after burnt bits and mushed bits and chunky bits.
And I was learning that through Gennaro, where he was tearing and not chopping.
You're bashin' it and using it as a… a receptacle.
That's the whole point.
That kind of physical, visceral connection.
And for my personality and for the way my brain learns,
it was everything.
That's where true cooking lies.
Look, you dropped me flour everywhere!
-Messy! -Ah!
That connection with food,
Gennaro really fired that up for me.
I am excited to make this for you.
Aw.
'Cause it's one of my favorite things.
Just wash my hands.
Budds, can you drizzle a little oil in for me, sweetheart?
Yep.
Just a couple of tablespoons.
Got that here.
It's lovely watching you two working together.
-I love cooking with Buddy. -Aw.
Beats playing rugby, doesn't it?
No!
-That's-- -Joking!
-He'd sack us all off for rugby. -Aw.
I was living with my girlfriend, Jools.
Renting our first tiny flat.
We were skint, but life was really exciting.
I was working at a restaurant called the River Café.
It was the coolest place to work in London.
One day, I was off.
I had a phone call from the River Café,
and they said, "Look, someone's called in sick."
"Can you please come in?"
So I went to pick up the shift,
and there's a bloody TV crew there.
One polenta with truffles.
They were doing a special for the BBC.
…one chanterelle. No garlic on the chanterelle.
They just kept asking me loads of annoying questions.
"What are you doing? What's this? What's that?" I'd just tell 'em.
The risotto's there,
and you put a touch of mascarpone in.
Go in with the Parmesan.
I had to make a rotolo, which isn't the easiest pasta to make.
And you just go and get wild greens.
You scatter that on this large sheet of pasta.
Chunks of beautiful ricotta.
Roasted pumpkin or squash.
And then you start to roll up.
So I was putting all these things together,
and they were just following me all night.
And I never thought it would come to anything. And then it went out on TV,
and then the phone calls started.
Bernie, can you do me a risotto, mate?
Three companies phoned up.
They just said, "Look, we saw you on TV last night."
"We wanna do a cooking show about getting boys in the kitchen."
Bit of parsley.
I went home and talked to Jools and Mum and Dad.
Mum and Dad were like, "Really? Seriously?"
It was just exciting and weird.
I was as green as green could be.
But I had my lucky break.
So, look. No oil, no seasoning.
And I'll give it a shake halfway through.
-So this goes in at 200 for ten minutes. -Just re-set that.
Just bring that back out. Thank you so much.
So what I have is 125 grams of butter,
cold from the fridge.
So a nice seasoning of salt in your pastry.
We're gonna take the cold butter, and we're just gonna dice it up.
-Sorry, can we do a quick pick-up? -Audio.
Um, it's audio.
I was plucked out of obscurity.
I was 24.
I had no agent, no manager. I had no media training.
I was totally out of my depth.
But, funnily, I'd written down,
"I just wanna strip down restaurant food to its bare essentials."
And from the words "strip" and "bare," The Naked Chef was born.
I'm gonna make you some focaccia bread with semolina and flour.
I'm gonna bake some fish, or sea bass, in a bag.
And I'm gonna make a salad. Quite simple. Nothing to it.
TV cookery, at that stage, wasn't that cool.
It was very studio-based, old-fashioned.
Chef whites and all a bit well-to-do.
So the first show we ever did,
they uncomfortably filmed me and Jools cooking a meal.
I was talking to camera, and it was really boring.
It just didn't feel like me.
Just got lemon in my eye.
And it's absolutely killing me, and I'm trying to act really cool,
and it's not actually pulling off very well.
The Naked Chef was supposed to be the punk of cookery.
Cooking was for girls.
And what The Naked Chef had to do
was show you that cooking could get you girls.
I really, really like roast lamb.
I mean, I like roast anything, but I love roast lamb.
My mum used to do it a lot, as well.
We started filming it like documentary crews.
All right.
You wanna get 'em coated.
I was looking off-camera, talking to Pat, my producer.
I was passing her things. "Try that."
Could you use different herbs or flavorings in that butter?
Oh God, yeah.
And cut-in music from my own record collection that felt like me.
It was like, "This is how we're gonna do it."
Essentially, "Let me just be me."
"And have my friends turn up and basically just get pissed and eat good food."
That was The Naked Chef, and… and that's how we rolled.
So… like, we're kind of getting there, aren't we?
-We've got the "Quick and Easy" chapter. -Yeah.
We've got the "Store Cupboard Heroes" chapter.
-Yeah. -"Tasty Traybakes."
-We've got our "Weekend Wins." -Yeah.
Yeah, look at that.
That's quite cool.
Yeah.
So, from risottos…
So let me get rid of that.
If you had a cooking show, you'd have a book.
I still had this terrible relationship with words.
When I left school, I'm like, "Thank you and fuck you."
"I'm off to London. I'm cooking. I'm just gonna cook, cook, cook, cook."
Fast-forward, I'm being asked to write a book.
The concept of getting work done as a project was my idea of hell.
I had all my recipes on the back of, like, order checks, beer mats.
Not formally written out, 'cause I couldn't write,
I couldn't type, and I couldn't spell.
I had to find different ways to get my thoughts on paper.
Trying to work it out.
I did it all on Dictaphone.
Every chapter, a different cassette.
And we created this first book.
I was so proud of it.
Then I started having this new relationship with words.
The book comes out, like, a month before the show,
and it went into the top ten.
And then The Naked Chef came out,
and it exploded straight away.
One, two, three, four!
Here we go.
Whoo!
All the things you said That you're gonna be…
When I got really famous really fast,
my life changed overnight.
It was extraordinary, chaotic, bonkers.
It felt like everything was happening in hyperdrive.
Interviews, red carpets, magazines.
Like being in a boy band.
To go from being flashing red on your credit card
to becoming a very young millionaire,
I had this freedom normally 24-year-olds wouldn't have.
To give you up
Just one, just one…
But after about two and a half years,
the journalists and paparazzi started turning on me.
"You're fake. You're mock Cockney."
It was shell-shocking for me and Jools.
The fame thing was fun, but it's not much fun anymore.
Some horrible, disgusting, evil journalist…
…and a newspaper have, like, tried to ruin, tried to…
Can you shut up?
I'm doing…
-Me and Jools had a conversation. -You're so annoying.
I'm just…
We decided, "If we're gonna do this thing in the public eye,
could we do something positive?"
"Something that makes a difference?"
I just said, "I wanna open a restaurant."
"And I want my first restaurant to be powered by young people
that have been let down or forgotten."
"Kids that struggled at school."
'Cause I was that kid.
So Fifteen was born.
Jamie Oliver has set himself a new challenge.
Can he make top chefs out of 15 unemployed young Londoners
who've never cooked a thing in a restaurant?
When I was trying to bring Fifteen to life,
we had thousands of kids apply.
All right, then! Uh…
The tension is building.
I know you've all been down the pub, you naughty boys and girls.
I got it down to 50, then I'd take them away on a weekend
to get to know them.
A lot of those kids, by default, struggled at school.
So I had that in common.
Look at this.
What meat is that?
-Beef. -Beef.
I tried to create an environment
where it was okay and normal and actually healthy to fail.
I've got a complaint on the first skate.
-One off the bone, Kerryann. -It's coming now.
-I had a complaint, so you know. -Okay.
Okay, we've had one cut finger.
Can you all just take a deep breath and think about what you're doing, please?
I said there's nothing I can do about it.
-So what should I-- -Shut up.
So what should I…
If you've got young people
that have been treated a certain way all their life,
you have to earn trust.
Come here.
Don't cry, sweetheart.
Everybody knew I had childcare problems,
but nothing was done.
And I needed help. There was no help.
Being a single mother doesn't mean you have no right to be educated.
-I think… -Exactly.
We're not here to make things tougher.
Being at Fifteen was so real.
Being famous as the Naked Chef was the complete opposite.
Are we gonna cook shit food or good food?
-Good food. -Good food. Bloody good food.
-Are the critics gonna wanna cane me? -Yeah.
Absolutely. Are we gonna prove 'em wrong?
-Yes. -All right.
To give kids that had no self-worth
the ability to learn things every day, to make them feel proud of themselves…
that's what drove me.
And some salt to the pan.
That's from your section, Johnny.
That's what made Fifteen.
It is the best thing I've ever done.
Did you talk about jarred cabbage?
Yeah, we did.
Shall we use knife skills, or shall we use a speed peeler?
Whichever you prefer.
We can just say in the recipe to prep the veg however you want.
-Okay. I think… -If it's delicate and a pleasure to eat.
Yeah, I think the speed peeler is a really safe way to do it.
Yeah.
After Fifteen, I felt good about myself.
I thought, "My voice can make positive change in the food industry."
And I started focusing in on the next project.
At that time, how bad school dinners were getting
was in the paper, like, every week.
It was, like, 30-something pence per portion on the plate.
I knew from my students at Fifteen
that school dinners means different things to the kids that are very vulnerable.
This was something that could be transformational.
I'm like, "I've just set up a restaurant for these young people."
"Like, it's going really well. We're fully booked six months in advance."
"Course I can take over a school."
I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Nice to meet you all.
I'm gonna be here for the next couple of months, intermittently.
Um…
Nice one.
Um, and ba--
There was just the most processed foods everywhere.
What on earth is that?
I think that's a fish eye chicken foot.
I honestly, honestly have no idea what is in that.
What you got in there? Open… open that sandwich up for me.
-Tomato… Ugh! -Ugh!
I've never seen anything like that before in all of my years.
If you looked at a school dinner, you'd have a portion of chips,
maybe a couple of lonely peas if you're lucky,
and a thing called a Turkey Twizzler.
Not very healthy.
I just wanted to get in there and fix it all.
We're talking about feeding kids better at school.
It shouldn't really be a debate.
But it wasn't like someone from TV turned up and was like, "Whoo!" You know?
No, it was… it was like that for 30 seconds.
Then it was, "He's trying to change what? He's taking the matter what?"
I was like the enemy.
I used to look in the bins at the end of lunch service in the school,
and it was full of my food.
'Cause they fucking hated it.
There's nothing wrong with the food. It's good food.
You know, but it's just that I don't want to be upset every day by these children,
and they're saying, they're telling their parents
that there is nothing to eat.
It was probably the most miserable 18 months of my life.
I had faith that the more nutritious food could work.
But I remember laying in bed at night,
going "Why won't they eat it?"
"Why won't they fucking eat it?"
Those kids I was serving were debatably the fourth generation of British kid
that have never been taught to cook at home or at school.
My mind started just exploding with this realization.
It wasn't the fact that they didn't like what I was doing.
It's marketing.
The science I was told was a child has to try something 14 times
before they will openly try something.
-What's that? -Try that. It's nice.
-Have-- -I'll have a little tiny bit.
It's really nice. Like Christmas dinner. It's really, really nice.
Try a bit more.
It's really good.
Those Turkey Twizzlers are what idiots eat.
This is what Mr. Beckham eats. And Scholesie.
Rooney eats chicken twice a day!
To get kids to try stuff…
Kids need encouragement. They need love. They need nurturing.
Just like you would to your own child.
Hands up if you thought today's lunch was nice.
So you do that en masse.
Every day.
And then you start seeing your harshest critics turning.
And slowly but surely,
over the weeks and over the months, the bins got less full.
And less full, and less full.
They're not slagging you off so much.
Their trays are full of the good stuff.
Progress.
Have you got more hours?
Oh, don't be silly!
No, the government promised more hours last March.
Ugh! They might've promised everything, but you're not going to get it, are you?
That's why they promised the extra money. They pay for these extra costs.
-And the staff. -The extra money, I… I haven't seen it.
I think it's about a couple of grand. It wouldn't even do the service here.
It wouldn't service this kitchen.
It's near enough £1,000 to service this kitchen every year.
We created the bible for British school food.
But I was really struggling to get ministers to communicate with me…
regardless of the very solid science.
They said, "And how much is it?"
"No, we'll go for the shit, thank you very much."
How do you make change?
How do you not just talk, but get the public absolutely behind you?
How the hell do you do that?
And then, all of a sudden, when that first program came out,
it was almost like a magic spell had been set.
Everyone was on side.
We literally went from a scenario where we couldn't get a meeting
with senior political people to…
I was able to see Tony Blair in two weeks.
This was all new to me. I'd never played this game.
I'm talking to the prime minister.
I had to go and get money and commitment. I had to.
And I knew I had to catch his attention.
I said, "My team wanna film the end to this series."
"I think you've got three options."
"Do nothing."
"Do a little bit."
Band-Aid, polish.
Very typical for politicians, right? Shut 'em up.
"The third option is you reimagine school lunches."
"More money on the plate for primary."
"More money on the plate for high school."
"And this is an investment in the next generation, not a cost."
"Communities and countries are defined by how they treat their most vulnerable."
"It's your legacy."
He had a very clear understanding.
If we were going to change school food,
we as a government had to get behind that program.
It really was false to say that people were choosing to eat badly.
The fact is, they didn't really have a choice,
and he wanted to give them a choice.
In terms of the money, we will extend it up to 2011 now.
So we will put another 240 million over and above the 220.
-That's what Alan and I were working on. -Really? That is fantastic.
-Uh, well, it's… -That's mega.
We shook hands,
and he went and found the money in the Treasury.
He committed to tangible, real, well-thought-out change.
-How many kids are you feeding here? -1,900.
-1,900? Wow. -Yep.
-Sorry. -Sorry.
So, tell me. Um, you've been here 18 years.
-I have. -I mean…
How have you seen school dinners change? Do you feel it's changed much?
-Dramatically. -Yeah?
When I first started here, we used to do about 24 bags of chips a day.
-Right. -Uh, now we don't do any.
-Oh, really? -No. Um…
Used to be lots of fried food. Now we don't.
It's all more fresh veg, fresh cooked.
-Yeah, it's changed dramatically. -Yeah.
Good meat.
After School Dinners, it was all going very, very well,
but the public expected me to do more.
I was opening restaurants,
Jamie's Italian.
Incredible ingredients, really affordable prices,
democratizing great food.
Then we started to grow.
From one restaurant to 46.
We were turning over £100 million a year.
The more money I could earn,
the more I could put back into making change.
And we were like, "Where do we go next?"
We made Jamie's Fowl Dinners,
where we showed where your chicken and eggs came from.
Then we went to live in the most unhealthy town in America.
Ended up with a key to the town.
Got an Emmy for the show.
-So where do we start? -Breakfast.
We did a show called Sugar Rush.
We were able to show how sugar
had infiltrated every part of your life.
And we created the sugary drinks tax.
It was the biggest reduction in sugar in history.
We were just smashing the ratings.
Fifteen was still powering away.
We were ticking all the boxes.
Doing good was good business.
And we thought the sky was the limit.
We had eight of the most amazing years.
I was thinking maybe I was a businessman.
One day, I was on the next project,
working in this school district in LA.
My team in the UK are like, "Can you come home now?"
"What are you talking about? What does that mean?"
And they said, "It's the restaurants."
"There's not enough customers. The business is in trouble."
I was quite taken back.
And as I found out more, it got more and more ugly.
The success had happened so quickly.
We had four and a half thousand staff.
Wage bill was 75 grand a day.
We just… we couldn't afford it.
It was a massive "oh shit" moment.
I thought, "How can I save this?"
I tried everything.
We went from plan A, to B, to C, to D.
But things got worse and worse.
Morning, guys. Um…
So, look, it's a… it's a really tough one.
Um… uh…
For many, many months now, I've been walking around this office,
and you've all said, "Hi, Jamie, you all right?"
And I've gone, "Yes!"
But the truth was, "No,, no, it's."
It was awful.
For restaurant chains, there is one surefire ingredient,
a sprinkling of celebrity.
But today, Jamie Oliver showed that in these tough times,
even that is no guarantee of success.
We ended up losing all the restaurants.
Everything that I'd built over 20 years.
And it cut deep.
Embarrassment and shame, and everything else that goes with it.
Over 1,000 people working for Jamie Oliver
across the UK have lost their jobs.
Everything felt like I'd fucked up.
But the hardest bit to swallow was I… I lost Fifteen.
It was like losing my heart.
The kids at Fifteen were my north star.
And…
I'd lost that.
When I lost all the restaurants,
I wanted to disappear.
Run off and hide away.
I was thinking, "Has this all been for nothing?"
I'm like, "Fuck, maybe now we wind it up."
But I didn't feel it was my time to do that yet.
For as bad and as dark as this was,
I'm still employing, like, 150 people.
This was definitely not the time for me to quit.
On the days when it was bad,
one of my team or a student,
they'd just say something or prop me up, and that kind of kept me going.
People, organizations, charities, governments.
You know, "We wouldn't have done that if you hadn't done that."
"When we saw you do that, we did this.
"That changed my life, and I went and did that."
And I realized
I was so focused on creating these moments,
these thunderclaps.
Documentaries,
front-page news.
These splashes.
And I'd never realized that it was all about the ripples.
If I give a recipe or a little hack or a little tip,
that could have positive ripples in your home
for years and years and years.
But actually, more than that.
It might make you shop differently, hang out with a different group of people.
One small thing can make beautiful things happen.
I had a job and a purpose
to guide as many people towards the joy of food and cooking.
My voice, our voice,
can make positive change.
And I'm gonna give it my best shot.
If I can be really honest with you, kids, when I was your age,
I was really struggling at school.
Hands up if you guys struggle
on, like, reading, English, like, just find it really tricky.
Yeah, okay. So it's, like, half of you.
So that… that was me when I was your age.
But what I loved about cooking was it made me feel a bit more grown-up.
I would go as far as to say that cooking saved me.
So I hope it just grows into something beautiful
that just helps you have a lovely life and look after your future families.
Jamie's much, much more than a chef.
His legacy is multifaceted.
He made cooking cool,
and he also linked food
really at a very early stage to nutrition and to health.
He's one of these guys who just wakes up every morning and thinks,
"What am I gonna do to change things?"
That is something, I think, that he… he's gonna be doing
until his last breath.
And that is the mark of a proper changemaker, actually.
It's not if someone's gonna learn to cook or love food, it's when.
I don't care what it is that hooks you.
It could be, like, fish pie, it could be the best patty ever.
Whatever it is that hooks you in, then we get you on the journey.
Getting people on that culinary rollercoaster
is what it's all about.
It fills you up
and makes you feel like
it's a life worth living.