Jamie Oliver

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Jamie Oliver : biography

27 May 1975 –

James Trevor "Jamie" Oliver, MBE (born 27 May 1975) is a British chef, restaurateur, media personality, known for his food-focused television shows, cookbooks and more recently his campaign against the use of processed foods in national schools. He strives to improve unhealthy diets and poor cooking habits in the United Kingdom and the United States. Oliver’s speciality is Italian cuisine, although he has a broad international repertoire.

Early life

Jamie Oliver was raised in Clavering, Essex, in England. His parents ran a pub, "The Cricketers", where he used to practise cooking in the kitchen. He was educated at Newport Free Grammar School. In 2009 Oliver stated that he was of partial Sudanese ancestry via his great-great grandfather John, whom he described as "a bit swarthy". However, research for the Sunday Express established that John’s father Peter was a hatter from Penzance, and that James’ father Richard was also Cornish, leaving little or no possibility of a Sudanese connection. The family legend of Sudanese ancestry may have originated in the 19th century when John Oliver returned from sea, possibly with a tanned complexion after visiting Africa. – David Jarvis in The Daily Express 30 August 2009 Oliver left school at age sixteen with two GCSE qualifications and went on to attend Westminster Kingsway College, formerly Westminster College. He then earned a City & Guilds NVQ in home economics.

Notes

  • in The Telegraph
  • at The Guardian
  • in BBC Online
  • , 8 November 2007
  • at Visit Britain
  • at the Chef and Restaurant Database
  • in The Guardian October 2010.

Personal life

In July 2000, Oliver married former model Juliette Norton. The Observer, 14 April 2002 The couple met in 1993 and have four children: Poppy Honey Rosie Oliver (born 18 March 2002), Daisy Boo Pamela Oliver (born on 10 April 2003), Petal Blossom Rainbow Oliver (born on 3 April 2009) and Buddy Bear Maurice Oliver (born on 15 September 2010). Oliver announced the births of the two youngest children on Twitter. Twitter / Jamie Oliver, 3 April 2009 Sky News, 16 September 2010 The family lives in Clavering, Essex.

Oliver suffers from dyslexia, and read his first novel (Catching Fire) in 2013, at the age of 38.

Charity and campaigning

Oliver conceived and established the Fifteen charity restaurant, where he trained fifteen disadvantaged young people to work in the hospitality industry. Following the success of the original restaurant in London, more Fifteens have opened around the globe: Fifteen Amsterdam opened in December 2004, Fifteen Cornwall in Newquay in May 2006 and Fifteen Melbourne in September 2006 with Australian friend and fellow chef Tobie Puttock.

Oliver then began a formal campaign to ban unhealthy food in British schools and to get children eating nutritious food instead. Oliver’s efforts to bring radical change to the school meals system, chronicled in the series Jamie’s School Dinners, challenged the junk-food culture by showing schools they could serve healthy, cost-efficient meals that kids enjoyed eating. caterersearch.com. Retrieved on 2 November 2007 Jamie’s efforts brought the subject of school dinners to the political forefront and changed the types of food served in schools. 29 March 2010, The Times In 2012, after supporting Scottish primary school blogger Martha Payne in her NeverSeconds blog, Oliver attacked education secretary Michael Gove for failing to adhere to the standards agreed to by the previous administration.

In December 2009, Oliver was awarded the 2010 TED Prize for his campaigns to "create change on both the individual and governmental levels" in order to "bring attention to the changes Englanders and now Americans need to make in their lifestyles and diet."

In 2010, Oliver joined several other celebrity chefs on the series The Big Fish Fight, in which Oliver and fellow chef Gordon Ramsay spend time on a trawler boat to raise awareness about the discarding of hundreds of thousands of saltwater fish because the fishermen are prohibited from keeping any fish other than the stated target of the trawl. 24 January 2011, Evening Gazette