British Chef Jamie Oliver's Career Highs And Lows

Think of popular TV chefs and there are two types that spring to mind: Michelin-starred professionals, such as Gordon Ramsay and Thomas Keller, and talented wonders, like Julia Childs, who brought French cuisine to American audiences – along with dinner party doyenne Ina Garten. British star Jamie Oliver is a bit of both. He took an opportunity presented by a documentary film crew and turned it into a wildly successful career.

Alongside a string of television series that bear his name, Oliver's restaurant empire stretches from the U.K. to Indonesia, while his cookbooks have sold more than 46 million copies worldwide. Oliver used his fame to give under-privileged youngsters a leg up into the food industry, and remains a fierce champion of healthy eating in schools and communities, both in the U.K. and the United States. In 2000, People named him the "Sexiest Chef" in 2000.

From a distance, it all sounds like a fairy tale — but life hasn't always been plain sailing for the Essex-based star. He has faced his share of incredible successes and devastating knockbacks, all in the harsh glare of the public spotlight. Pull up a chair as we detail British chef Jamie Oliver's career highs and lows.

Jamie Oliver grew up helping his parents run their Essex pub, telling Flow Magazine: "I was really good with the knife even back then, and to be honest, I cooked up some really good grub, even as a kid." Dyslexia meant he left school with no qualifications. "I hated words, I hated reading, I couldn't see a point in it, and I just couldn't get it," he told Kirsty Young, host of BBC podcast "Young Again."

Despite that, Oliver landed a place at Westminster Catering College, trained in France, before landing a job as a pastry chef at Antonio Carluccio's London restaurant, working alongside Gennaro Contaldo. From there, he took a job as sous chef at the legendary River Café, where he worked for over three years. 

In 1997, he featured in a BBC documentary called "Christmas at River Café," working a shift to cover for a sick colleague. The camera and TV execs loved him, and Oliver was showered with offers, resulting in the hit 1999 series "The Naked Chef." "We'd [he and then-girlfriend Jools] sort of seen enough of the fame thing to be frightened and excited, but it was a sort of like you kind of have to really do it. If you analyze celebrities and shenanigans and all the kind of dark side of what happens when you're watched, the odds are not good, but I felt that together we could do it," OIiver told Young.

Fast forward several years and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Jamie Oliver's tune about being in the spotlight was starting to change. He told The Guardian in 2018: "Every day I wish I wasn't famous. But I'm lucky enough to work with nice people; getting more people to shop in a healthier way, cooking together and having a laugh is a pretty damn good job to have, so I'm super grateful."

In 2023, when asked by Kirsty Young if he would do things differently if he had his time over again, the answer was immediate. "Definitely. I'm not trying to say 'shoulda woulda coulda' but if I came back on Earth and did it again, I would go to the pub, and I would have a normal life and I would be aware that anonymity is our most valuable gift that we will never give any currency to." He expressed the desire to have just enough to live and enjoy life and give it your all, to be a thriving part of community ... these are the things he would want if he could do it again. And he said, "I'm very grateful for what I've had and hopefully when I die I'll have stood up for things that mattered, but it's definitely a big job to maintain 24/7: Jamie Oliver, family Oliver. It's quite a lot."

The success of "The Naked Chef" series set Jamie Oliver on a path to global domination, and not just on the small screen. A tie-in cookbook for the show, "The Naked Chef" was followed by 35 others, the most recent being "Simply Jamie". Aside from his prolific publishing, Oliver was hard at work building a physical restaurant empire too. In 2008, he opened the first Jamie's Italian, a brand that quickly grew to more than 40 U.K. outlets and 24 worldwide, including Brazil, Delhi and Toronto. He followed it up with the Jamie's Pizzeria chain across India. Would it beat a Brooklyn-style pizza? According to him, maybe: "There's no fuss, just big flavors and fresh ingredients served in a relaxed environment at an affordable price," Oliver told the International Council of Shopping Centers.

Today, his restaurant empire stretches from Brazil to Bali, and Helsinki to Bangalore, with four of Oliver's seven brands available in multiple countries. In 2023, following encouragement from impresario Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, he opened Jamie Oliver Catherine Street in Covent Garden, and plans are afoot for the Jamie Oliver Group to operate more than 200 restaurants across the globe.

Like many famous faces from the culinary world, Jamie Oliver offered his advice and support to budding chefs on "MasterChef Australia." However, one day before season 15 went to air, the death of beloved Scottish judge Jock Zonfrillo was announced. For season 16, Oliver stepped up as a temporary judge as a tribute to his 46-year-old friend.

He told TV Week via Woman's Day, "Jock left a huge hole, and it was devastating for everyone. That made this year very important, and very emotional. This was an important year to get right for Jock, for the show and the contestants." Oliver went on to note that he wasn't going to get involved in the show if it wasn't produced right — and he felt they succeeded in that goal. 

He also expressed his sorrow on Instagram, writing: "We had the best time working together for this year's 'MasterChef,' I can't tell [you] how good it was to work with him! Jock was very generous to me with his time and spirit in the show and for that I was really grateful ..."

One of Jamie Oliver's most spectacular career highs came relatively early, when he was 26 years old. In 2002, just two years after "The Naked Chef" aired, he launched Jamie Oliver's Fifteen in London. This pioneering restaurant — Oliver's first — didn't just carry his name, it was part of the Fifteen Foundation, a training spot to offer the U.K.'s most disadvantaged youngsters a career pathway to becoming chefs.

The model was so successful that, in 2016, Oliver announced its nationwide expansion. He wrote on his website: "Plans are already underway and my dream is that we'll soon have at least one apprentice in every one of my restaurants in the U.K., each of them learning from the core values and passion established at Fifteen."

The next year, Jonathan Woodhouse, reservations and events manager at Fifteen told HeadBox: "We know that the skills that you learn and the friendships that you make in this industry stay with you for life. The fact that we're able to use food to help people in this way is very exciting. We're seeing the birth of the next generation of chefs right before our very eyes."

Unfortunately for Jamie Oliver, the Fifteen dream ended in 2019, with the collapse of the Jamie Oliver Restaurant Group. He told The Times, "It was very, very upsetting to have to close Fifteen. We died. It was tough. I'm not going to lie; it was really bad." He went on: "Really, there's nothing like it, even now. I think it's heart was in the right place. It's completely changed me, that business. The young people who graduated were the profit really." While Oliver hoped to find a way to revive the Fifteen concept, more bad news followed. 

In December 2019, Jamie Oliver's Fifteen Cornwall, run by the Cornwall Food Foundation, also closed its doors. At the time, the charity said it was working to ensure its welfare and safeguarding responsibilities could be met, and to find ways to support people, including those on the Fifteen training program. (cite)

Let's spool back a decade to the end of 2008 and start of 2009. Just when you thought Jamie Oliver couldn't possibly take on anything else at the time, he launched Jamie Magazine. The monthly publication featured lots of recipes in his signature, easy-to-follow style, plus spotlights on global food locations, local artisans and restaurants.

Three years later it hit the United States, and was even translated into French, though Tiphaine, the blogger behind Gourmandiseries.fr wasn't completely won over, writing: "The only downside is that Jamie's French version is not a translation of the latest issue of his English big brother, but a translated collection of previously published articles ..."

Sadly for Oliver, his titular magazine wasn't as popular as his cookbooks. Dwindling circulation numbers and the switch to digital content saw it fold in 2017. The chef did manage to step outside his culinary writing comfort zone with the 2023 children's book "Billy and the Giant Adventure." However, a second tale, "Billy and the Epic Escape" was pulled from shelves in 2024. The BBC reported that Indigenous Australians claimed it "... dangerously trivializes the ongoing trauma associated with Australia's violent history of child removal."

In 2005, the chef put his name to "Jamie's School Dinners," a documentary series about a cause that was (and still is) close to Oliver's heart: Using food education to make U.K. school meals healthier. Five years later, he launched a similar campaign in the United States with "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution." Cameras followed the star as he tried to help the people of Huntington, West Virginia, get healthier.

Oliver teamed up with the lunch ladies at a local school to spread the word about ditching junk food in favor of healthier, lighter options. In the first episode, he set out his mission, saying: "I'm here to show America that just a little effort can make a massive difference." A year after the series ended, vegan.com asked Doug Sheils, director of PR at Cabell Huntington Hospital, if Oliver's campaign had worked. He replied: "No longer are most people in the Huntington area in blind denial of the crisis facing our community. Thanks to all the recent media attention, our collective eyes are now wide open and we admit we have a serious problem — the first step toward resolving it." As for Oliver? His show won the 2010 Emmy for outstanding reality program, before doing it all over again a year later in Los Angeles. 

It would be easy to think by now that almost everything the chirpy, baby-faced Essex chef touched turned to gold. Jamie Oliver might not agree. In 2014, he told Richard Edelman at the Cannes Lions festival (per The Guardian): "Some people think I am a businessman or massively strategic [but] I worked out the other day, I took a little review of my 17 years — we've done all right, I've sold a few books and we've made a few quid — I realized that I think I wasted and f***ed up about 40%."

While Oliver's entrepreneurial skills may be debatable, the financial pressures of the restaurant trade were starting to bite. In 2018, Oliver's business lost millions of dollars and, the next year, 22 of his 25 U.K. outlets closed and 1,000 people were out of work. Among the casualties was the flagship Fifteen restaurant in London.

Oliver, who had given more than $20 million of his own money to support the business, posted on X: "I'm devastated that our much-loved UK restaurants have gone into administration. I am deeply saddened by this outcome and would like to thank all of the people who have put their hearts and souls into this business over the years."

As his TV shows "Jamie's School Dinners" and "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution" prove, the Essex chef is passionate about healthy eating. In 2009, after being shocked at the poor levels of food education in the U.K., he was inspired to launch Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food. 

It initially covered five locations, including Leeds and Newcastle, but has since expanded to become the country's largest community cooking program, helping 115,000 people nationwide to date. "Celebrating 15 years of my Ministry of Food program has to be one of my proudest achievements, and this is still just the beginning," Oliver told Big Issue.

He explained how the Ministry aims to teach 1 million people to cook by 2030 by ramping up programs in secondary schools and expanding to more U.K. communities. "Knowing how to cook from scratch is one of the most important skills you can learn — it will set you up to feed yourself and your loved ones for life," he said.

The phrase "you can't keep a good man down" might have been coined for Jamie Oliver. The collapse of his business saw him and Gordon Ramsay bury the hatchet after a simmering feud; he and Jools welcomed their fifth child, River Rocket in 2016; and his most recent program, "Jamie Oliver: Seasons," aimed to teach viewers to eat in harmony with nature. 

Oliver has endured many ups and downs but the future is looking bright for the Essex-based chef. Following the success of his Covent Garden restaurant, his group is looking to expand its presence in Europe and the United States. His stateside profile will get another boost after Tastemade snapped up the rights to six of his series from Fremantle – and, if you're struggling with lumpy mashed potatoes, he's joined forces with YesChef to provide online tutorials.  

Summing up his career, Oliver told Now to Love: "It's been a long journey — it's been extraordinary. The cooking has developed in a very linear way, but mentally and emotionally, most of the stuff people like me for now, I never was that. Like, I was always a nice kid, but I was never political. I was never an activist, a mentor or concerned about right and wrong. I wasn't born like that. But the journey's made me very exposed to some really amazing and really terrible things, and that's shaped me as a person."