How I earned TWO Michelin stars with one arm

From the car crash that changed his life to tracing the family he never knew, Michael Caines – the new host of My Kitchen Rules – tells his extraordinary story...

Chef Michael Caines has landed his first TV cookery show, a programme that can best be described as MasterChef- meetsCome Dine With Me. What he seems most thrilled about is that it includes a round where the contestants cook a meal for him in their own homes.

It turns out this is quite a novelty for celebrity chefs as they never, ever get invited to dinner at anyone’s home. ‘It never happens, not even with close friends,’ Michael admits. ‘They invite you round, but you have drinks then go out for something to eat. On the rare occasions when they do cook, I always tell them they shouldn’t go to any trouble – but invariably people want to show off their skills. It can lead to you saying, “Here, let me do it” because you know how to do it properly.’

Hurrah then for his new job on Channel 4’s My Kitchen Rules UK, which lets him enjoy a rare homecooked meal – albeit one he then has to critique. He and cookery guru Prue Leith have taken over from Lorraine Pascale and Jason Atherton on the show, in which four teams of two each week are tasked with turning their home into a restaurant for one night. Their cooking is then judged by Prue and Michael – as well as their fellow contestants – as they aim to progress to pick up the £10,000 prize.

Michael feels the show targets the home cook in a way other cookery contests don’t any more, pointing out that although programmes such as MasterChef still feature amateur cooks, the quality has risen markedly over the years. ‘There’s no way the winners of MasterChef, or even Bake Off, from years ago would win on those shows now because the standard’s got higher and higher.’

It offers a more ‘realistic’ type of contest, he insists, and in some ways it’s a harder one too. While there’s a studio-based round, where the contestants have to cook in front of the cameras, it’s the home cooking that offers the terrifying realism. Take the first episode, in which two friends submit their chosen menu, which includes langoustines. Alas, when they go to the fishmongers there are no langoustines available. Cue a manic dash around Glasgow to find some. ‘For me, that sort of thing is what makes it real and relevant to the home cook,’ says Michael.

This is a first big presenting role for Michael, 47. It’s been an extraordinary career, though, because when he was in his twenties it seemed his glittering future was over before it had properly begun. Driving to a christening one morning in 1994, Michael, who’d just landed his first head chef role at the renowned Gidleigh Park hotel restaurant in Devon, fell asleep at the wheel and his car smashed into the central reservation, ending up upside down. Michael was dangling from his seat, suspended by his seat belt, and on the floor below him was his right arm. He believes his life was only saved because a doctor, who happened to be passing, came to his aid. Sadly his arm, which had been ripped off, could not be saved.

Astonishingly, he was back at work within two weeks and today he says the need to keep earning was a huge factor as the small print of his insur- ance policy meant he received no big payout. Quite simply, he could not afford to quit. ‘If you’re going to lose everything you’ve worked towards, it gives you a focus,’ he says. The first few months back in the kitchen, without a prosthetic arm at this point, were ‘the most difficult’. Even now he tends to use his existing left arm ( he’s right-handed) to accomplish most tasks, with the prosthetic there as an assistance. He jokes about trying to establish whether engineers could make him a selection of whisks and knives to fix on the end instead of boring old fingers. ‘We did try it. It was a bit Inspector Gadget, but they weren’t very practical. It’s quicker to pick up a whisk.’

Since he went on to make Gidleigh Park a two-Michelin-star restaurant ( he’s now opening his own country house hotel, Lympstone Manor in Devon), Michael clearly emerged the victor. But he believes his self-confidence predated his accident and was a result of a ‘very happy’ upbringing. He knew he was adopted and had a full-blood elder sister, but he never knew the circumstances. When he turned 40, though, and with children of his own, he decided to find out more. ‘I always had this belief that to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’re from.’

The first breakthrough came when he was told his sister, Sharon, had been found and would like to meet him. Through Sharon he met his birth father Augustus, then his bir th mother Joyce too. ‘It was an incredibly sad story,’ he says. ‘Joyce’s family hadn’t approved of her being in a relationship with a black guy. When she was pregnant with me her parents moved from London to Devon, forcing them apart. Sharon was put into foster care and Joyce was put in a motherand-baby home, where she had me. She looked after me for six weeks. Then one day she was told to go out for a walk – and when she came back I was gone. It was incredibly cruel.’

The series of reunions were full of tears. ‘Meeting my sister was amazing. We’re actually like two peas in a pod,’ he says. Meeting his birth father was emotional too. ‘I’d always wondered why I picked up French so quickly. It turned out my dad was from Dominica, where they speak French. And he was a cook before he came to the UK.’

Together, he and Sharon went to meet Joyce. ‘It was very emotional,’ he recalls. ‘She’d been diagnosed as bipolar, but she was as sharp as anything when we saw her. She remembered it all as clear as day. She called me Joseph, the name she gave me when I was born.’ Sadly, Augustus has now passed away. Michael is still in touch with Joyce though, and he and Sharon are very close. She’s one of the few people who isn’t terrified to cook for him. ‘She’s a brilliant cook,’ he says. ‘The whole thing has given me closure. When I found them, I found myself.’

‘We tried fixing a whisk to the end of my false arm’

My Kitchen Rules, Monday-Friday, 5pm, Channel 4.