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He was picked for stardom as a chef by Jamie Oliver on TV. But then, as his mother reveals in this heartbreaking interview, Kevin sent off for an internet kit promising ‘deliverance’ from his secret torment...

POSING for the cameras in his chef’s whites, Kevin Boyle, at 16, seemed destined to become one of Jamie Oliver’s big success stories. The youngest of the celebrity chef’s original apprentices at the Fifteen restaurant in London, Kevin epitomised everything Jamie’s new social enterprise stood for.

Having dropped out of school before his GCSES, Kevin was stacking supermarket shelves when he applied in 2002 for the chance of a lifetime to join C4’s Jamie’s Kitchen.

Beating 1,500 competitors to make the final, Kevin’s passion endeared him, not only to his famous mentor, but to millions of viewers who watched his progress in Jamie’s Kitchen. He cooked for Prince Charles and Tony Blair, and after graduating from Fifteen, went on to work in top kitchens including Le Caprice and Smiths of Smithfield.

He embraced Jamie Oliver’s philosophy of ‘cooking good food with love’ and his dream was to open his own restaurant in his home town of Purley, Surrey.

He took justified pride in his culinary skills, often saying to his mother, Patti, as she cooked: ‘Mum, do you want me to show you how to do that properly?’ So when a brown A4 padded envelope was delivered by courier to the family home last October, Patti Boyle assumed it contained icing bags or some other culinary paraphernalia. ‘I thought “what banquet is Kevin planning now?” ’ remembers Patti, 54, who teaches overseas lawyers the English legal system.

But there was to be no banquet. Instead, Kevin, 26, went missing the same day the package arrived. On January 24, his body was found in undergrowth at the bottom of a garden bordering Farthing Downs in nearby Couldson.

And today, to their everlasting horror, Patti and her husband, Tom, know exactly what was contained in that innocent-looking brown package.

Hacking into his son’s email account, Tom, 64, a writer and former industry magazine editor, discovered Kevin had paid £44 for a suicide kit from a sinister offshore based company (since closed down) promising painless ‘deliverance’. HE

company required no proof of terminal or debilitating illness, no psychiatric assessment; only a money transfer and a photocopy of Kevin’s passport. This ‘ death in a bag’, as Patti describes it, was then delivered like a takeaway pizza.

‘To lose your child is the worst thing that can happen for a mother,’ says Patti, tearfully.

‘But to think that Kevin might have ended his own life in this calculated manner, assisted by some faceless person who is still out there walking around alive, is simply horrific.

‘Who are these people who sell these suicide kits to vulnerable people whose judgment may be impaired by depression or mental illness? It is beyond my comprehension.’

This is Patti’s first interview since her son’s body was found the night before Jamie Oliver was due to broadcast a missing person appeal on ITV’S This Morning.

Tired and pale, she still hasn’t come to terms with the loss of her son, nor what she fears was the terrible manner of his death.

The inquest has yet to be heard and a post mortem examination declared the cause of death ‘inconclusive’. But there is little doubt in Patti’s mind.

When Kevin’s body was found by a resident clearing undergrowth at the bottom of his garden, Patti says the paraphernalia from the ‘death in a bag’ kit were close by.

TFurthermore, on the day he vanished, Kevin posted more than 20 goodbye letters, second class, to close family and friends, which arrived after his death. More letters were found in a satchel next to his body. Kevin’s letter to his parents, married for more than 30 years, arrived six days after he vanished. In it, he thanked them for their love and for standing by him during his many struggles. He said he hoped they would understand. ‘Reading that letter, his last sacred words to us, I knew instantly that our son was dead and we’d never see him again,’ says Patti.

‘Yet some part of me couldn’t give up all hope. I kept telling myself that maybe he’d pulled back from the brink; maybe there was the smallest chance he might still come home.

‘When the police officer came to tell us they’d found Kevin’s body, I howled like an animal. That night we sat there in silence, unable to communicate, not wanting to accept that we’d never see our lovely son again.’

But what drove Kevin — who seemingly had so much to live for — to purchase a suicide kit? Was Kevin’s depression, some have asked, triggered by the intense pressure young chefs endure in top kitchens, where a ‘macho culture’ prevails?

‘The pastoral care Kevin received at Fifteen and from Jamie Oliver was amazing. It was like a second family,’ says Patti, dismissing such theories.

‘After Kevin graduated and went to work in other kitchens, there may have been a school playground element with the big boys sometimes picking on the little boys, but Kevin never once complained of being bullied.

‘A lot of chefs do suffer mental health problems because of the pressure they put themselves under. I don’t know a decent chef who isn’t a perfectionist. For Kevin, the worst thing that could happen was to have a bad service.’

But Kevin’s problems apparently began long before he became one of Jamie’s first Fifteen, and it is this struggle with depression that Patti feels compelled to bring out into the open in the hope of helping others.

She was shocked to learn, after Kevin’s death, that suicide is the biggest killer of young men under the age of 35 and believes that we