James Martin TV’s top chef on his new series
TV chef James Martin tells us about his new ITV series and how he was cooking up a storm from a young age
James Martin is certainly no flash in the pan. Not only has he been hosting some of our favourite TV food programmes for 24 years, but the popular chef has actually been a dab hand in the kitchen since the tender age of five.
Barely able to reach the work surface, young James would wander into the kitchen at home, pick up a wooden spoon and set to work helping his mum prepare dinner.
“My mum says I was always stirring and mixing stuff and helping out with Sunday lunch,” James recalls.
“I’d make the gravy and the sauces and help with the roast chicken.
“At eight I was making poached fish with hollandaise and when I was nine I was working in professional kitchens. My family were farmers, restaurants bought their produce from us and my mum took me along and just left me in the kitchens. I wanted to learn.”
When he was 12 James cooked for the Queen Mother when she visited Yorkshire’s Castle Howard and by 14 he was catering for weddings. But his passion for cooking almost saw him expelled from school.
“The cookery teacher said we could make whatever we wanted,” he recalls.
“Everybody else was doing butterfly buns, but I decided to do flambeed chicken livers with mangetout and rocket. I took alcohol into school for the flambee and they went mad!” While his school didn’t fully appreciate a his talents, the t small screen did and in i his 20s he landed his first television show, James Martin: Yorkshire’ s Finest. Since then he has established himself as one of the nation’s favourite TV chefs, with popular shows such as Saturday-Kitchen, which ran for ten years, and Saturday Morning with James Martin.
His latest series, James Martin’ s Islands to Highlands, sees him on an amazing culinary trip around the British Isles, travelling from the furthest south of the country to the very north.
“We started off in Jersey for the potatoes and went right up the East coast of England to Newcastle,” he says. “We then jumped across to Ireland to Rathlin Island which is famous for kelp, and then into Scotland to the Cairngorms, the Isle of
Skye and Shetland.”
The ITV series, consisting of 20 one-hour episodes, took five months to film, and where possible James drove himself around in a Mini.
“The Mini is an iconic
British car,” he says. “I collect cars, that’s my hobby. I have around 30 in my collection, including some old 1960s Minis. I could go around in a big Bentley or Aston Martin, but that’s just posing and showing off!”
Although Islands to Highlands shows off James’s undeniable talents for rustling
“All chefs eat burgers – and don’t believe any chef that tells you they don’t!”
up cordon bleu feasts, he admits that away from the screen he does have a secret penchant for junk food.
“My vice of choice is a Twix and a Red Bull, and I ordered a
Domino’s pizza the other day. Why not? Everything is about moderation. All chefs eat burgers – and don’t believe any chef that tells you they don’t,” he grins.
There is however one dish he can’t face… “I don’t eat eggs all that often. I’m afraid that ten years of eating rubbish omelettes on a Saturday morning has put me off them for the rest of my life!” he laughs.
James, 47, lives in Hampshire and when he’s not on television will often be found working in the kitchens of his two restaurants. Time off is a rare treat, but he tries to ensure he has a daily walk every morning before work.
“I’m usually up at 5am and I take the dog out for an hour,” he says. “It’s a fantastic time to think about what I’m going to be doing for the rest of the day; it clears my head.”
James’s other passions are playing guitar in a rock band and flying – he gained his pilot’s licence 16 years ago.
“I enjoy the freedom of flying,” he explains. “It was also about proving something to myself. I have dyslexia and I never passed a single exam at school – I even failed
GCSE cookery!
I could do it practically, but not academically. I wasn’t interested in the genetic compound of an egg.
I’m still not, but I can cook it.”
As for the future,
James is hoping there will be more TV adventures to take him around the globe.
“I fell in love with cooking when I was eight years old and I’m sure I’ll still be doing it when I’m 80,” he says. “If you find something you love, it’s not a job.”
JAMES MARTIN’S ISLANDS TO HIGHLANDS AIRS WEEKDAYS FROM MONDAY APRIL 6 AT 2PM ON ITV