Jamie Oliver: 'Tell me Mr Gove, Mr Lansley. How can we stop Britain being the most unhealthy country in Europe?"

In the 10 years since the opening of his restaurant Fifteen, Jamie Oliver's campaign has gone global. But his passion for improving schools in the UK is maintained. "There is an obesity epidemic. And the coalition do nothing"

Last month marked the 10th anniversary of Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant. At a dinner to celebrate the occasion arose and went to a room full of friends and supporters. The food was prepared by five of the 15 "graduates" of the restaurant, which a decade earlier had changed the lives they had been diverted or derived from the discipline and the ability of the kitchen and the television series who attended. Oliver is an emotional speaker at any time, but the anniversary was doubly painful by the recent suicide of one of the original cohort, Kevin Boyle. When Oliver got up about the fact that 340 youths had passed through the kitchen at Fifteen London, Cornwall and Amsterdam, he talked about the culture of mentoring that restaurants had fomented the excitement of high-risk "brilliant" start-up and he also talked to Kevin.

on the restaurant wall is a framed photograph of the original group of fifteen and Oliver went through one by one, describing a sort of paternal pride, they had gone to meet. "Ralph has seen two months ago in New York, chef at Spotted Pig, a Michelin star, has just moved to LA to do his own thing. Ben is sous-chef at Fifteen Cornwall, we are starting to reappear in the family. Tim is here one of our great young talent, the owner of Trullo romance in your way. Warren is running the Hope & Anchor just doing an incredible job. Kerryann is a full time mom at the time, but helps the community in Hackney show people how to cook ... "then looked at his face on the side and tried to pick up, and went not all the same, his voice cracking and eyes filled with tears. "And then there's Kevin here, whose father and mother are sitting there. Unfortunately Kevin is not with us. We lost, but it was a beautiful child and a great talent, great and I know one thing is for sure I would have simply I liked being here tonight ... "

in time for dinner, I spent much time trying to get as far as Jamie Oliver is these days. I got up to his Ministry of Food in Bradford, I saw a group of children Lilian Baylis school in Kennington (Oliver Letwin MP on which Conversative said he would rather beg in the streets of send their children to) make cakes as part of cooking skills qualification at home, and speak passionately about his ambitions to be cooks, I spoke with the directors who signed up the latest initiative of Olivier for vegetable gardens of the school, I ate in restaurants and cooking their books, and run over by some of their magazines. I saw on YouTube to give a TED conference with Bill Gates and Al Gore, among others, and I re-watched American mothers to feed their children reprimands at Coca-Cola bottles, and rebuke the inclination of business executives up "pink slime". I also sat for an hour or two with Oliver himself, before and after another long-term mission to spread the gospel of his food revolution in South Korea and Australia. For these reasons, though, is when I talk to Kevin Boyle's mother, Patti, after dinner, I understand what that means.

Kevin Boyle took his life after being diagnosed with diabetes, the latest in a lifetime of physical problems, and he feared he might take the opportunity to do what he lived, and also the kitchen cooking with Jamie. "As I said at the funeral of my son," Patti recalls Boyle, pride and heart, "who had fought on our own with Kevin for a long time. Fifteen was actually given another 10 years. So I will be eternally Thanks to Jamie. Kevin was incredibly generous, but very worried. farewell letters he wrote for us, writing in the church. The funny thing is that his friends there who has seen it written, he said simply thought it was written menus, usual ... "

Kevin Boyle had holes in his heart he was asthmatic, had a speech impediment, had problems with their ears, and he had all the difficulties that accompany depression. He never thought he would accomplish much until it starts cooking. After fifteen years, he worked at Le Caprice Smith and Smithfield. He cooked for the Prince of Wales and Prime Minister. Fifteen but never stopped. "If Kevin had a couple of weeks off between jobs and had come and volunteer," says Oliver. "At the graduation of students last October, was the creation by the night he was serving drinks and taking care of people and he was the last man by a stack of chairs hours. "When Boyle died, Oliver went through all the emails were exchanged in recent years." It was very sad because he was always positive, always writing about how we can help others. Nothing of himself or of what was happening. "

When Kevin came to the funeral, Patti Boyle got a little nervous with the restoration, knowing that his son would have wanted to put on a good spread. But Oliver and had everything in hand, and organized many ways that Kevin would have been proud. "The only thing about Jamie," she says, "is that because it has become a brand, people forget that it is still a human being and a man of very extraordinary. Although Kevin and others have learned, I think Jamie has also learned much from them about what could be achieved by working together. As he says in memory of Kevin, when he started fifteen years would never have met these people in the same room, and much less work with each other, but when they left the company were friends. "She gestured around the restaurant itself." You know what this place is that it is a little light on many of the worlds people. "

To understand anything of what you have to Oliver

beginning with the Fifteen. This is really where it all began for him, he believes. That's when he became a celebrity chef on a motorcycle with a mission in the world human food. He was 25 years, no larger than unemployed teenagers who had supported. He had already made three series of

The Naked Chef

, after being spotted working the grill at The River Cafe for a four channel chip producers in search of a new TV chef in 1998. His number had gone around the world, there have been books, but the money had begun to come. To start fifteen years has mortgaged his house to the restaurant without telling his wife, Jools. "It was really crazy," he says now. "But I was a kid with a new lump of cash and thought, shit."

Cynics will say that nothing

Oliver is an advantage, without commercial chain reaction, but regrets that the success he has achieved. Fifteen if once said, then his detractors might have a point. In fact, he taught his 30 cooks over a year out of pocket, at £ 25 000 each. Most of them came to him by the probation service. Three-quarters are still working in the industry, much success. "During the first three years were the tabloids still running exhibition of how this or that was on medication or have a history of flight before reaching fifteen," he said. "It took many years to explain:" Yes it is the people we are trying to participate. Children in jail or children from broken homes or only children who need a break. "

Talking to Oliver quickly realizes that the reason I know for a fact that food can change people's lives and bring them together is that her life has changed so much from him . He has faith in his recruits to fifteen years, because it could be one of them himself. When I was in high school, she recalls, was in classes with special needs in math and anything that involves reading and writing. "All I am are the marks of art and geology, which were the only questions I had their hands on practical aspects for them. I loved school, but there was no . Fortunately I was cooking at the age of eight years and I stopped feeling that experience. "

Lilian Baylis

At school there are many children who were once as Oliver was. Cooking class children are not Rusling to have a bit of a reputation at school, are in several states, most had behavioral problems when it comes to math and English and history, but for now I was with them, and they worked in the kitchen, I could hardly wait to see a more committed group of 14. Although the ingredients were mixed, they talked about the food she had cooked at home, in the previous week, shepherd pies and curries. Before the curriculum adopted Oliver taught "food technology" which, as explained Rusling, was all about how food is produced: "How do you market a tortilla," he asked, when many do not know what it was a tortilla. They were supposed to be the design of pizza boxes and so on ... "

Oliver, after spending much time in schools working in their school lunch programs healthy, he realized that part of the problem was that children had no direct experience food intake. "The lessons of the school kitchen was not enough - that shit would have pictures of lemons on the page, but no lemons in the classroom is one of the questions we have attempted to solve. ".

For Oliver, of course, problems do not stop coming. In his office, behind the Fifteen in Islington, in a jumble of the creative aspect of the current concerns, page proofs, thank you letters, magazine covers and plans for his next book (dinner 15 minutes ), smiles at the idea that anything is really expected. "I really like it Jamie Oliver brand," he said. "But it's really not at all. He has always felt more like a pinball career travel without any problems, I mean to ping between the things that interest, and anger. In the spirit public, which of course work at a certain noise level. But in all my own brain still seems quite small and intimate and somewhat parochial. I hope that doing little things that may important consequence. "

is quite surprising to see how Oliver Parish has spread a message. His books are sold in over 100 countries. Four or five million people each month worldwide to use your site as a forum for all food-related information and discussion and recipes. One thing leads to another. The British School Dinners

series presented in 80 countries and resulted in "debates in parliament, where there was not even a system of school feeding. It has the people speak of a hospital and jail people food, all these institutions, and asking if they had one of those places have been treated by people with visual impairments or a box ticking acquisition machines bought any old shit. "

• When he talks about some of that, despite its relentless positive energy, I can not help sensing a bottom note of weariness. The first time I meet is full of the flu - "the only time that ever happened to me" - and considering his flight to Australia. When asked if he believes that the responsibility of nutrition in the world seems to have taken heavy appearance, it is not too strongly disagree. But it is not about to relinquish it. "You can not mix all that and then walk," he said, more than once.
• His ministry of food projects are a good example. I visited Bradford, in a tent on the street, and sat at the same time a lively group of men and women, each made a jambalaya Jamie Oliver in eight plates. They came for different reasons, a couple of men had retired recently and wanted to know their way around a kitchen, some women were ashamed that he had not had the confidence to make dinner for their children at home - but now all have something in common: six weeks before had not been able to cook, and now they could, and not only had great satisfaction in that, they were on teaching Other evangelical

Soraya Overend, who headed the Ministry of Bradford for three years, it was opened, how the sessions are organized for children who have been centers for young offenders, for recent widows years, for mothers who do not know the basics and children who want to learn, and corporate groups who want to build teams. Course of a day were heavily oversubscribed, the book is full of comments from the deepest praise. The center of Bradford is primarily funded by the council in other places, in Leeds, for example, local confidence to quit the NHS. But funding is the best irregular, and Oliver hopes to have a ministry in all the cities have not materialized. He seems tired of having to make new arguments. "It is very expensive whereas the problems addressed -. Chronic conditions related to poor diet and obesity - has cost us all a huge amount of money that is clearly working to politicians ask," Are you going to break with him ..? "I say no, we want your name on it. Well, if you have my name on it so I have to be in charge of all standards. Then suddenly I became responsible for anything ... "

you hesitate to ask Oliver if it spreads too thin, as is obviously the argument that he has of himself all the time. For someone who seems almost clinically optimistic, it is difficult for him to let any opportunity to sell their message about eating well happen. This was the reason which led to his road show school canteens in the U.S., the belly of fast food companies of the beast, with predictable results incendiary. Had he not a voice in his head told him he could not conquer the world?

"Sure. And America is the worst use of time in business, much less in terms of my family. But I was offered a show in prime time on the biggest network in the country to talk about food policy, a subject that had been sent to all U.S. television. So I had to. "
Their struggle has been reduced to a campaign against the "red mud" - changed scaling of bodies that had once been dog food, but because of an industrial washing process , became part of three quarters of the "meat" in supermarkets and hamburgers. A couple of years after having distributed the question, Oliver is to win. Under unprecedented pressure on American consumers, some supermarkets and fast food chains like McDonalds, began to fall products containing sludge pink.

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