Jamie: Brexit helped ruin my restaurants
UNCERTAINTY CHANGED PEOPLE’S HABITS’
THE original Coronation Street set has been turned into a shameful slum.
Yobs have ransacked the site and squatters are rumoured to have moved in since nostalgia trips ended last year.
As bulldozers prepare to demolish the set, the Rovers Return is a shell, “Thug Life” has been sprayed on a door and the iconic bridge from the opening credits has been tagged with graffiti. The ITV soap was filmed at the Manchester nchester studio for 30 years until 2013,3, when it moved to Salford, and wass home to favourite characters suchh as
Jack Duckworth, right.
Fans of the show reacted with horror when pictures of the scene appeared online.
One said: “What’s JAMIE Oliver has blamed Brexit as one reason for the collapse of his restaurant empire.
The TV chef claims that diners stopped eating out due to uncertainty triggered by the 2016 EU referendum result.
Oliver, 44, said: “The world changed, the high street changed – it started to become Uber-fied. Our competitors changed, and we looked less different to them.
“There’s that chain reaction, throw in a bit of Brexit, upset me most is how much memorabilia and historhistory was lying around. Scripts are on the floor and props left to be dumped iin skips.”
Mamany claim the items should havhave been retrieved and auctiontioned off . “How many of these ththings could have been turned ininto fund-raisers?” asked one coconcerned Corrie viewer. confidence goes and people’s habits changed.” But he added: “It’s a fascinating time – one for me to sit back, learn some stuff, be humbled, try to deal with the mess and move on.”
Around 1,000 jobs were lost when Oliver’s Italian, Barbecoa and Fifteen 25 outlets went into administration this year.
The group lost £29million in a single year despite him having pumped in £13million of his owned money to try to reverse the slump.
In a two- part programme for BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme, marking 20 years since he burst to stardom, Oliver said his “birthday was ruined because of the cloud” over his collapsed business.
But he added: “I’m fairly sure I’ve learnt valuable lessons that will allow me to do, possibly, some extraordinary things in the next 20 years in a very, very different way.
“I, weirdly, have a sense of gratitude for having seen the extraordinary best of it, and having had to live through the worst of it.”
Despite financial issues, Oliver spent £6million last year on a mansion in a 70-acre estate in Essex with wife Jools and their five children.
In 2015, he bought a £8.9million Grade Ii-listed mansion in North London.