JAMIE OLIVER: You won’t believe it but you’re going to marry a pukka model

Essex-born chef and campaigner for healthier school meals, Jamie, 44, shot to fame after The naked Chef TV show in 1999. now a MbE, he says:

WHEN I was 16, I couldn’t wait to get to London and get my first job. I’d had a rough time at secondary school and didn’t do well. I’m dyslexic. I’ve always struggled with writing, and I’ve never had the ability to concentrate long enough to read a narrative book: letters get mixed up. I’ve never had a problem with imagination, but when I write my cookbooks, I speak into a Dictaphone and my editor takes down what I say. I think it’s fine to tell kids you don’t need to be good at everything. Most 16-year-olds aren’t scared of much, and I certainly wasn’t, but I did worry about not getting a bunk-up. My love-life was like a bloody desert. There was nothing going on, and they were running a bloody mile, basically. I wasn’t very confident; my voice shook when I talked to girls. I’d like to tell the 16-year-old me he’d end up with a model — he wouldn’t have believed that. Actually, I’d already met Jools [his future wife] by then. She’d joined the sixth-form in my school, but every time I went to talk to her, I just sounded like Scooby-Doo. So I just sort of avoided her. A year and a half later, she had a change of heart and decided she quite liked me. I was all over it like a rash — I didn’t want to miss that opportunity. But when I asked her out, I still sounded like Scooby-Doo. She didn’t understand me but laughed and said: ‘Yes, to whatever it is you just said.’ I’d like to sit down with the teenage me, have a pint and tell him to stick to his guns and trust his gut instinct. When I was young I just wanted to cook, run a nice little pub in the country and have a nice wine cellar and good local beers. That’s all I dreamed of. The idea of five kids would scare the life out of the younger me. I only ever saw myself having two. I’ve had a fast, mad life. If I could go back, I’d take more time to enjoy that time when we had no ties, no responsibilities and no baggage; those weekends when we could just be selfish and have a conversation without being interrupted a million times.