Jamie: I’m a weekend dad – and my 5 children like it
HE appears to be a hands-on dad, thanks to his stream of adoring pictures on social media.
But TV chef Jamie Oliver says he’s happy not to see his five children during the week and would rather be a ‘weekend dad’.
In an interview with Good Housekeeping magazine, he said: ‘It is chaos in our house. In a nice way. You have teenage emotions, you have nine-year-olds, you have babies in nappies.
‘I’m mainly a weekend parent – I will get to the key school events but I’m flat out Monday to Friday and normally see the children a couple of nights during the week. I’m happy with that, I think they are fine with it.’
Oliver, who runs a £240million cooking empire, also revealed his battle with getting enough sleep. He said: ‘I have to treat going to the gym as work, or I won’t get there. I treat sleep like work, too. I have to set alarms to tell me to go to bed – at the age of 43! It is pathetic but it works. I put on a little eye mask, I get the room the right temperature and I open the window.
‘It works brilliantly and I have improved my sleep massively. I had five years where I was getting three hours’ sleep a day and your optimistic Jamie was getting less optimistic. That was not me and so I fixed it.’
Oliver did not rule out having more children with his wife Jools, saying: ‘I honestly thought I would have two children. Jools probably would like another child. I think we are done, but you never know with Jools – she has a very powerful, magic spell that can grow on you.’