JAMIE OLIVER at your service
Jamie Oliver has returned to the set of MasterChef to help the show, which exists to spread happiness, steer a path through grief. The celebrity chef is also at a turning point. He opens up about failure, love, second chances, and his endless reservoir of joie de vivre.
He’s arguably the world’s biggest celebrity chef, and definitely the most exuberant, rising to fame amid a flash of pans into which he enthusiastically chucked knobs of herby butter and big, old lugs of olive oil. But we’re barely a minute into our interview and Jamie Oliver’s voice becomes brittle. His familiar face, so often lit up with creative zeal, is taut. The megastar chef has come to Melbourne to shoot season 16 of MasterChef Australia, where the warmly lit cooking arena has had its lights dimmed.
“Yeah, it’s tough,” Jamie, 48, says. “This sort of situation is very rare and it’s very painful.
This was an incredibly important year to get right.
We couldn’t get it wrong for obvious reasons. From my point of view I was here to support Andy [judge, Andy Allen] and support the show, and that was it.”
Last year Jamie spent two days on set filming season 15 of the beloved cooking show. The day before it was due to air, news broke that judge Jock Zonfrillo had died suddenly at the age of 46.
The award-winning Glaswegian chef had been embraced by viewers for his gleefully raffish persona. He wore tailored suits with pocket chains, raved about native Australian ingredients, and was patient and encouraging towards contestants. His screen presence was magnetic, and his death was as shocking as it was sad.
The entire series had already been shot, and so
it aired – with the blessing of Jock’s widow, Lauren Fried – as it was. For season 16 the producers had to think hard about how they’d execute a show known for its warmth and constancy with the tragedy still casting a shadow. They called Jamie, and he answered. He told them he’d do whatever was needed to help.
“[I] came for two days last year.
This year it felt more appropriate to help and bed in and launch the judges. They call me a judge, but really, I’m a guest judge and it’s been amazing,” he says of his two-week stint. “It’s a tough year but full of celebration and I think everyone’s thinking of Jock in the decision-making process,” he continues. “I am, and I think we’ve done it right.”
Jamie joins a refreshed team. Andy Allen will remain, but Melissa Leong has left to focus on Dessert Masters. Stepping into the judging shoes is former contestant and first season runner-up, Poh Ling Yeow, “who is the most amazing human on the planet,” Jamie enthuses, as well as food critic Sofia Levin and awardwinning chef Jean-Christophe Novelli.
“He [Jock] left a huge hole, and it’s required an extra three people to even try to fill it,” Jamie says. “But in my heart I feel like we’ve done it right.”
Some of Jamie’s characteristic gusto rises to the surface as he talks about one contestant, a 62-year-old, who “hated most of the jobs that he’s had”, but loves to cook. “You can just viscerally feel this thing that he’s always loved. Coulda. Woulda. Shoulda,” he says with relish.
These are the stories and experiences that keep Jamie coming back to the set. “I have been doing this stuff for 25 years,” he explains, “and this is the only type of show in the world that I would do like this.”
MasterChef has always exalted family, food and creative fulfilment, and there’s a redemptive quality to the format that gels with Jamie’s ethos – and Jock’s story, too.
Jamie has frequently said that cooking saved him, and he says it
“He left a huge hole, and it’s required an extra three people to even try to fill it. I feel like we have done it right.”
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again: “The kitchen was my saviour.” He has always been very open about his dyslexia, and his trouble fitting in at school. Jock had written about his tough youth in Scotland, his addiction and homelessness, and the purpose he found sautéing and chopping.
“The reason I do MasterChef Australia is it’s actually, in my opinion, not a food show,” Jamie says. “It’s a show about hope and transformation. The food is just foreplay, in my opinion.”
We’re in a stark hotel room, dimly lit, surrounded by sombre greys, as Jamie ruminates on how a well-made meal is a pillar of happiness.
“Life is a bit colourful out there, so we do have three opportunities every day to have something delicious,” Jamie says, some of that swagger returning. “Food’s kind of cool. It’s a bit cooler than a lot of people think.”
Changing pace, Jamie gushes about Melbourne’s colourful Queen Victoria Market, just across the road, where he has spent the morning on a service challenge.
Back home in the UK Jamie has another, more personal, challenge on the boil. In exactly six days his new restaurant, Jamie Oliver Catherine St, will open in London’s Covent Garden.
“We officially launch about 48 hours after I get back,”
Jamie says. “So, let’s just get rid of some of the jet lag and then we’re, bang, back into service.”
He did a soft launch before leaving for Melbourne, and the new establishment has been secretly running, smoothing out any kinks, before Jamie’s return for the official opening. It’s his first foray back into the hospitality business since the collapse of his chain of Jamie’s Italian restaurants, and the shuttering of his passion project, Fifteen, in 2019.
“It’s probably two years before I should have done it financially,” Jamie says. “But I just thought, I’m going to get really old soon, so I might as well go for it. It felt right, most importantly.”
The closure of his restaurant empire hit him hard. Jamie allowed Channel 4 cameras to follow him through the shell of one of the locations, where he was captured speechless and teary. About 1000 people lost their jobs. It was, Jamie says, “seven years of the best, and then four years of the worst”.
The restaurants were wildly successful for a time, and the decor was as popular as the food. Jamie would regale talk-show hosts with tales of customers nicking his custom-made toilet seats. But a range of factors put pressure on the business model.
Gordon Ramsay was among the allies who offered support when the restaurants failed, but it was his friend, composer and impresario Andrew Lloyd Webber, who urged him to try again with the new establishment in Covent Garden.
“He said, ‘Please, can you just do it?’” Jamie says. “I said, ‘Alright,
I can’t really afford it, but I will try ... ’ I just think it’s brilliant that he’s my landlord. Can’t wait for a rent review.” And there’s that famous laugh.
“Maturing as a human is about listening to your heart. The heart was like: Do it! Get amongst it.”
His ethos with his new venture is classic Oliver: Simplicity, warmth, predictability and comfort. Shows like MasterChef highlight the artistry and creativity that fine dining can bring out in chefs and artisanal producers. Jamie says Catherine Street is about the other thing food can give us:
“Nice feelings”.
“It’s all the food of my childhood. I was working professionally, honestly, truly, from the age of 13, at weekends and all through my summer holidays. So it’s really the food from my age of 13 to 18. It’s kind of the greatest hits of the ’80s.
“I think I am doing what any good person that loves what they do loves, which is, dust down, regather your thoughts and start again.
For me, where to start again is home and family.”
So it’s a reflective moment in this grey hotel room where our interview traverses death and rebirth. Jamie is as he appears on screen: Open, generous and quick to laugh. He talks about luck and courage, learning from failure and embracing it.
“Loads of people don’t want to talk about failure. It’s so important to talk about failure. It’s so important to talk about moving on. No one gets it right all the time,” he says.