Jamie: “Jools accused me of having an affair once!”
Cooking legend Jamie Oliver opens up about family life, his troubled restaurant empire and living in the moment
hey’re the picture-perfect T couple with an incredible brood of five gorgeous children, but life can still be a struggle, even for Jamie and Jools Oliver – with the TV chef admitting he sometimes finds it difficult to get the work/life balance right.
Although he’s only 43, Jamie has already written an incredible 25 cookbooks, with another – Jamie Cooks Italy – just out. He’s also made countless TV shows and recently added government anti-obesity campaigner to his already-packed CV. All while being dad to three girls and two boys – Poppy, 16, Daisy, 15, Petal, nine, Buddy, seven, and River, two.
And Jamie chuckles that he’s so busy, Jools even started thinking he was playing away from home. He jokes, “My missus accused me of having an affair once, because I kept disappearing and coming back with green on my knees. It was courgette season and I was in the veg patch!”
NO REGRETS
Now the famous chef tells Closer that life at home is often chaotic with so many mouths to feed and that kicking feet, screaming matches and tears are commonplace in his household during mealtimes.
He says, “We eat as a family at the weekends and someone always kicks off. It’s like fire-fighting. We’ve got such an unusually large family. If it’s ever peaceful, and sometimes it is – like one day in seven – I’ll look at Jools and she’ll look at me and it’s lovely because we all love each other and we’re all eating. But we both know we’re always 30 seconds from carnage. Water is going to go over someone’s face or dinner and someone will burst into tears!”
It hasn’t been the easiest of years for the star, who has reportedly built a £150m fortune from his business of books, TV shows, endorsements and restaurants. In January, the centrepiece of his restaurant chain, Jamie’s Italian, announced they were closing 12 of their 37 branches.
But the chef is a grafter and is determined to keep on going from strength to strength with a brand-new TV series about his passion for Italy about to hit our screens. “I don’t regret anything,” he says. “Even stuff that’s been financially painful is all learning.
And Jamie admits he’s never lost his passion for cooking – which started when he was a child. He reveals, “By the time I was 14, I’d been cooking for six years – I started with an omelette aged eight. You don’t know anything about life when you’re a kid, but you work out early on that you like a pat on the back. I couldn’t find that at school. But at home, at the weekend, I was cooking and I’d get that a lot, so I just stuck to it.”
LOSING FRIENDS
Aside from his food empire, Jamie admits he’s become more reflective as he’s got older and has learned to be more appreciative after losing friends later in life.
“When you get to your 40s, you have too many friends dying and too many awful things happening,” he says. “There are too
many funerals and I’ve got a few family members who aren’t well. That whole thing about living in the moment starts to make sense.” After years of struggling with insomnia – at one point surviving on just five hours a night – Jamie now treats sleep very seriously. He explains, “I have a reminder on my phone telling me to go to sleep. I have to be reminded to get to bed, otherwise with phones or Netflix, you’re lying there at 1am, all sweaty. It’s nuts. I used to treat sleep like this cute little luxury, which just happens. Now I have to treat it like work!”
Jamie Cooks Italy is published by Penguin Random House ©Jamie Oliver Enterprises Ltd. The new series of Jamie Cooks Italy starts Monday 13 August, 8.30pm, C4
‘We eat as a family at the weekend and someone always kicks off’