November 20, 2024 • 10 mins
Jamie Oliver has built a culinary empire.
He’s a household name in the kitchen, writing 23 cookbooks and selling over 46 million copies.
Oliver sprung into the spotlight 25 years ago with ‘The Naked Chef’, a BBC Two cooking show that ran for three series.
He landed the role after he appeared in the background of a BBC documentary about The River Cafe in Fulham, where he was working as a sous-chef at the time.
Oliver told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking that he got lucky.
“It was never planned,” he said.
“I was never even supposed to be there that day ... Someone called in sick.”
25 years on, Oliver says time has given him a bit more perspective, and he tends to lean more towards experience and wisdom a little more than just enthusiasm.
Oliver is currently on tour in Australia, performing live shows to promote his newest cookbook ‘Simply Jamie’. Coming from a humble background, the chef told Hosking he never thought he’d be able to travel internationally in this way.
“I never thought I’d get here,” Oliver said.
“I just thought it was out of my reach.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Naked Shift did a lot of things that put
Jamie Oliver on the map. Of course, for a start,
it went on to produce any number of cookbooks and
the empire of restaurants and recipes designed to be so
simple you can give them a crack at home without
being a genius. It also sold the idea that frish
and good doesn't have to be expensable or complicated. Jamie
Oliver is beck with us, good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Lovely to be here, my friend.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's start with a big broad questions. I mean, twenty
five years for goodness sake, does it seem like that
since Naked Shift?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I mean it's starting to feel like that. I mean,
I think I had twenty years if it didn't feel
like that. And I think finally I've become nostalgic and
retrospective and feeling a bit older. And when I brush
my teeth in the morning, I do say, who the
bloody hell's that? But yeah, it's a it's funny thing time,
(00:46):
isn't it. I think it's definitely gives you a perspective,
And yeah, I start leaning towards experience and wisdom a
little bit more than just enthusiasm.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And what was your expectation. Do you remember in nineteen
ninety I mean, what did you nothing.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I just was so grateful to be alive. I was
so grateful to be like young and in London and exploring.
I was so happy to have a job. When the
Naked Chef happened, it was never planned. I was never
even supposed to be there that day that they was.
I was in the background of a documentary that and
I wasn't even on the road to that day. Someone
called him sick. I got lucky. I mean, I kind of.
(01:24):
I was very confident in cooking. I've been cooking since
an early age. But when the TV people, I knew
nothing about production or TV. But I was very very
clear that if I was going to do it, I
wanted to do it on my terms, my food, my
friends and family. I wanted it cut to the music
that I listened to, not what the BBC library wanted
me to listen to. And I don't know, somehow it
(01:45):
tuned into a little moment, a little flavor, and it
went massive around the world. And yeah, I mean, I
think I was so green and naive but just excited
to just to be I never thought i'd get to Australia.
I never thought I'd get here. I just thought it
was out of my reach. I came from a little
(02:06):
village in Essex, so you know, pretty humble beginnings.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Really when did it sort of turn into a business
and did that take away from what you were trying
to do at any point?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I think, like naturally, like you're working it out, so
you know, you kind of you do a TV show
that's kind of interesting, and then like you do a
book and that exploded, and then you know quite early
that the relationship with people through books was an interesting one.
It was a very very pure one and to this
day actually it's a very pure one if you think
about the world we live in now, which is often
(02:37):
driven by likes and comments and views, but they're all free, right,
But a book sale is still a book sale. And
going to book signings and talking to people, you know.
I started to learn very quickly that it was more
than just recipes and a cooking show. It was you
know what it is, which is like food is the
biggest employer in the world, the biggest business in the world.
(02:58):
It's full of good but mainly the bad and the ugly,
and so yeah, that kind of just sent me down
a path. And yes, it became a business because I
guess when you start employing. As soon as I made money,
I started employing people and investing in people. And that's
probably one of the things I've done very well. And
(03:18):
try to tell bigger stories and better stories, and yeah,
try try to do some stuff that had never been
done before, and and yeah, so there's kind of a
business element, which was always a bit uncomfortable because business
is business. But also business allows you to invest in
things and employ people and bring congregate people that maybe
(03:40):
never ever Like if I took you to my office
in Holloway, I know for a fact, you'd be like
bloody hell like real experts in all kinds of geeky
areas of like science and environment and people that send
stuff away for analysis and do secret rerecords on factories
and farms and you know, documentary and campaigns to apartments
and government departments, and you know, it's just like a
(04:03):
there's a lot going on under you know, there's a lot,
quite a lot of what I do the public don't
really know about. And it's just trying to be thorough
about the stuff I talk about in food.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Really now, when you talk a lot. I'll come back
to the business in the mondment, but when you talked
about the campaigning side, about the school lunch program or
the you know, the school food program, I guess that's
the most famous.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, very very proud of it. I mean, I think
it's you know, when you're able to tell a story
about something that's run by the government and you look
at it in context to now and also when it
was created, which is at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Yeah,
we look at the government had one hundred and ninety
(04:44):
days of the year to get breakfast and lunch, right
in a country that's often cold and wet and damp,
and where you know, a fairly large proportion of those
kids are on free school lunches because they're from very
very poor families, and there were no standards. There were
standards for dog food, but no standards for kid food.
So it's a really classic example of Britain's love for
(05:08):
dogs and and sort of lack of detail when it
comes to nourishment of kids. And even to this day,
I think, like we we look at the education of
food as a luxury, not a necessity, and I completely disagree.
So I just I always think that the best way
(05:28):
to learn that maths is through baking. The best way
to learn history is through food. And I really I
mean I you know, kids are not born genetically to
love nuggets and burgers. It's called marketing. So I just
really truly believe that governments have a I think government's
job is to look at how the world is constantly
(05:48):
changing and then just kind of try and create a
fair playing field where people don't die of stupid stuff.
And do you know what I mean? Like people, you know,
and whether it's to Ossie's, you know, if you're some
they'll say things like nanny state, don't tell me what
to do. But you know, when you kind of translate
(06:08):
foody things into a seat belt or the type of
rubber used to make a tire on a bus that
takes kids to school, or the kind of rivets that
are holding an aeroplane up in the sky, you know,
like standards and practices, as boring as they might sound,
are super important.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
You're saying, now, listen to the business side of the equation.
So you use your celebrity, as you were telling us,
a moment to go before the break of celebrity for
success and good.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
All of that.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
When it went wrong, and it did go wrong there
for a while, what's that like.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I mean I've kind of I mean, it's gone wrong
constantly throughout my career. I mean I think I used
to be about forty sixty like failure to success. I
think I'm about fifty to fifty now. I Mean people
call it being an entrepreneur. I always think that just
in my position with the with the information that I
(06:54):
get and the access I get, I'm always trying to
find new ways to communicate, like people having a better
relationship with food and through the realms of businesses. And
you know, I've set up some fascinating businesses and food
businesses that were really like either two years too early,
or like a year too late, or or just it
(07:15):
wasn't the right cocktail to work. I mean, every failure
has had it's little jewel that I've taken out and
turned into something else. But yeah, I mean, like certainly
when I lost the UK restaurants, that was a big one.
I mean, it's it's it's the worst. I mean it's
it's kind of you at your most vulnerable. It's it's
the worst. And that's all the stuff like when certainly
(07:37):
when you're trying to work in between the press and
things like that, it's you know, making sure your suppliers
are paid, and like you might not be able to
express that to the press because there's stuff going on
behind and not behind the you know, because I'm a
massive I've come from a family business, you know, so
you know people that you know, I work with all
the same supplies and stuff now as I did when
(07:58):
I lost the restaurants, which is as I did for
the last twenty years. It's painful living out your failures
in public, but I think at the same time, you
know you've been doing this long enough. Sometimes it's help.
Sometimes it's a hindrance. I think. I think, if your
heart's in the right place and I'm still young enough
where I should have another go, and it would be right.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I mean, for what it's worth. I've always thought authenticity
is the key to it all. Authenticity is the key
to success generally in life. As far as I can
work out, people know you, they've seen you. You've got
a reputation and a record, and it all works out
well in the end, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And I think, look, failure, failure is such an interesting conversation,
doing the best version of bad and learning from it
and coming back. I think that's probably generally the spirit.
I think I always see the publishing as the center
of my world because I think when you're paying, I
don't know what it is in dollars, but when you're
buying a book, my job is really to listen and
(08:57):
then react every year in the fur of a book.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Yeah. Is London, by the way, it still the center
of the world for you in terms of culinary expression.
I mean, if you want to make your name in
the culinary world, you've got to be in London and
nail it.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah. I think that London is definitely an amazing city.
There is something about London that has a sort of
strange halo around it, and I'm not quite sure what
it is. It's kind of like it's kind of impressive enough,
but gnarly enough. It's like rough and beautiful, and I
think I definitely think like London's a legit city. But
(09:33):
saying that, if my kid was a chef, I'd be
telling them to come to Sydney or Melbourne, So you know,
it kind of runs both ways. But I think also,
you know, the benefit of London, of course is and
you within an hour and a half you can get
to Portugal, Spain, France, you know, the Nordics. It's like
you know, so obviously as you get more central, it's
a bit more posha and a bit more kind of
like grown up. But I love that about London. And
(09:56):
of course it's you know, ten million people and eat
diverse and I'm still there four days a week, no.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Regrets, terrific stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Lovely to see you, Thank you mate, look after yourself and.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Will and go well. Jamie Oliver out of Australia for
Us this morning.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news Talks. It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
The Naked Shift did a lot of things that put
Jamie Oliver on the map. Of course, for a start,
it went on to produce any number of cookbooks and
the empire of restaurants and recipes designed to be so
simple you can give them a crack at home without
being a genius. It also sold the idea that frish
and good doesn't have to be expensable or complicated. Jamie
Oliver is beck with us, good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Lovely to be here, my friend.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
It's start with a big broad questions. I mean, twenty
five years for goodness sake, does it seem like that
since Naked Shift?
Speaker 2 (00:25):
I mean it's starting to feel like that. I mean,
I think I had twenty years if it didn't feel
like that. And I think finally I've become nostalgic and
retrospective and feeling a bit older. And when I brush
my teeth in the morning, I do say, who the
bloody hell's that? But yeah, it's a it's funny thing time,
(00:46):
isn't it. I think it's definitely gives you a perspective,
And yeah, I start leaning towards experience and wisdom a
little bit more than just enthusiasm.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
And what was your expectation. Do you remember in nineteen
ninety I mean, what did you nothing.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I just was so grateful to be alive. I was
so grateful to be like young and in London and exploring.
I was so happy to have a job. When the
Naked Chef happened, it was never planned. I was never
even supposed to be there that day that they was.
I was in the background of a documentary that and
I wasn't even on the road to that day. Someone
called him sick. I got lucky. I mean, I kind of.
(01:24):
I was very confident in cooking. I've been cooking since
an early age. But when the TV people, I knew
nothing about production or TV. But I was very very
clear that if I was going to do it, I
wanted to do it on my terms, my food, my
friends and family. I wanted it cut to the music
that I listened to, not what the BBC library wanted
me to listen to. And I don't know, somehow it
(01:45):
tuned into a little moment, a little flavor, and it
went massive around the world. And yeah, I mean, I
think I was so green and naive but just excited
to just to be I never thought i'd get to Australia.
I never thought I'd get here. I just thought it
was out of my reach. I came from a little
(02:06):
village in Essex, so you know, pretty humble beginnings.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Really when did it sort of turn into a business
and did that take away from what you were trying
to do at any point?
Speaker 2 (02:15):
I think, like naturally, like you're working it out, so
you know, you kind of you do a TV show
that's kind of interesting, and then like you do a
book and that exploded, and then you know quite early
that the relationship with people through books was an interesting one.
It was a very very pure one and to this
day actually it's a very pure one if you think
about the world we live in now, which is often
(02:37):
driven by likes and comments and views, but they're all free, right,
But a book sale is still a book sale. And
going to book signings and talking to people, you know.
I started to learn very quickly that it was more
than just recipes and a cooking show. It was you
know what it is, which is like food is the
biggest employer in the world, the biggest business in the world.
(02:58):
It's full of good but mainly the bad and the ugly,
and so yeah, that kind of just sent me down
a path. And yes, it became a business because I
guess when you start employing. As soon as I made money,
I started employing people and investing in people. And that's
probably one of the things I've done very well. And
(03:18):
try to tell bigger stories and better stories, and yeah,
try try to do some stuff that had never been
done before, and and yeah, so there's kind of a
business element, which was always a bit uncomfortable because business
is business. But also business allows you to invest in
things and employ people and bring congregate people that maybe
(03:40):
never ever Like if I took you to my office
in Holloway, I know for a fact, you'd be like
bloody hell like real experts in all kinds of geeky
areas of like science and environment and people that send
stuff away for analysis and do secret rerecords on factories
and farms and you know, documentary and campaigns to apartments
and government departments, and you know, it's just like a
(04:03):
there's a lot going on under you know, there's a lot,
quite a lot of what I do the public don't
really know about. And it's just trying to be thorough
about the stuff I talk about in food.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Really now, when you talk a lot. I'll come back
to the business in the mondment, but when you talked
about the campaigning side, about the school lunch program or
the you know, the school food program, I guess that's
the most famous.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Yeah, very very proud of it. I mean, I think
it's you know, when you're able to tell a story
about something that's run by the government and you look
at it in context to now and also when it
was created, which is at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Yeah,
we look at the government had one hundred and ninety
(04:44):
days of the year to get breakfast and lunch, right
in a country that's often cold and wet and damp,
and where you know, a fairly large proportion of those
kids are on free school lunches because they're from very
very poor families, and there were no standards. There were
standards for dog food, but no standards for kid food.
So it's a really classic example of Britain's love for
(05:08):
dogs and and sort of lack of detail when it
comes to nourishment of kids. And even to this day,
I think, like we we look at the education of
food as a luxury, not a necessity, and I completely disagree.
So I just I always think that the best way
(05:28):
to learn that maths is through baking. The best way
to learn history is through food. And I really I
mean I you know, kids are not born genetically to
love nuggets and burgers. It's called marketing. So I just
really truly believe that governments have a I think government's
job is to look at how the world is constantly
(05:48):
changing and then just kind of try and create a
fair playing field where people don't die of stupid stuff.
And do you know what I mean? Like people, you know,
and whether it's to Ossie's, you know, if you're some
they'll say things like nanny state, don't tell me what
to do. But you know, when you kind of translate
(06:08):
foody things into a seat belt or the type of
rubber used to make a tire on a bus that
takes kids to school, or the kind of rivets that
are holding an aeroplane up in the sky, you know,
like standards and practices, as boring as they might sound,
are super important.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
You're saying, now, listen to the business side of the equation.
So you use your celebrity, as you were telling us,
a moment to go before the break of celebrity for
success and good.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
All of that.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
When it went wrong, and it did go wrong there
for a while, what's that like.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
I mean I've kind of I mean, it's gone wrong
constantly throughout my career. I mean I think I used
to be about forty sixty like failure to success. I
think I'm about fifty to fifty now. I Mean people
call it being an entrepreneur. I always think that just
in my position with the with the information that I
(06:54):
get and the access I get, I'm always trying to
find new ways to communicate, like people having a better
relationship with food and through the realms of businesses. And
you know, I've set up some fascinating businesses and food
businesses that were really like either two years too early,
or like a year too late, or or just it
(07:15):
wasn't the right cocktail to work. I mean, every failure
has had it's little jewel that I've taken out and
turned into something else. But yeah, I mean, like certainly
when I lost the UK restaurants, that was a big one.
I mean, it's it's it's the worst. I mean it's
it's kind of you at your most vulnerable. It's it's
the worst. And that's all the stuff like when certainly
(07:37):
when you're trying to work in between the press and
things like that, it's you know, making sure your suppliers
are paid, and like you might not be able to
express that to the press because there's stuff going on
behind and not behind the you know, because I'm a
massive I've come from a family business, you know, so
you know people that you know, I work with all
the same supplies and stuff now as I did when
(07:58):
I lost the restaurants, which is as I did for
the last twenty years. It's painful living out your failures
in public, but I think at the same time, you
know you've been doing this long enough. Sometimes it's help.
Sometimes it's a hindrance. I think. I think, if your
heart's in the right place and I'm still young enough
where I should have another go, and it would be right.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
I mean, for what it's worth. I've always thought authenticity
is the key to it all. Authenticity is the key
to success generally in life. As far as I can
work out, people know you, they've seen you. You've got
a reputation and a record, and it all works out
well in the end, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
And I think, look, failure, failure is such an interesting conversation,
doing the best version of bad and learning from it
and coming back. I think that's probably generally the spirit.
I think I always see the publishing as the center
of my world because I think when you're paying, I
don't know what it is in dollars, but when you're
buying a book, my job is really to listen and
(08:57):
then react every year in the fur of a book.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Yeah. Is London, by the way, it still the center
of the world for you in terms of culinary expression.
I mean, if you want to make your name in
the culinary world, you've got to be in London and
nail it.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah. I think that London is definitely an amazing city.
There is something about London that has a sort of
strange halo around it, and I'm not quite sure what
it is. It's kind of like it's kind of impressive enough,
but gnarly enough. It's like rough and beautiful, and I
think I definitely think like London's a legit city. But
(09:33):
saying that, if my kid was a chef, I'd be
telling them to come to Sydney or Melbourne, So you know,
it kind of runs both ways. But I think also,
you know, the benefit of London, of course is and
you within an hour and a half you can get
to Portugal, Spain, France, you know, the Nordics. It's like
you know, so obviously as you get more central, it's
a bit more posha and a bit more kind of
like grown up. But I love that about London. And
(09:56):
of course it's you know, ten million people and eat
diverse and I'm still there four days a week, no.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Regrets, terrific stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Lovely to see you, Thank you mate, look after yourself and.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
Will and go well. Jamie Oliver out of Australia for
Us this morning.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news Talks. It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
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