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Jamie Oliver has admitted that his hero, Marco Pierre White, still seriously dislikes him.
White first called Oliver a “fat chef with a drum kit” in an interview with The Sun in 2007, before hitting out at him again for being “delusional” and refusing to admit he had “f***ed up” after his restaurant failed following Brexit in 2019.
Oliver’s campaign for healthier school meals made him a polarising figure and caused division within the wider hospitality industry. The chef faced backlash last year for writing a book focused on the lives of aboriginal children, causing it to be pulled from print.
“Oh he doesn’t like me at all, still doesn’t,” Oliver said of his relationship with the Michelin-starred chef, on the Louis Theroux Podcast.
“I don’t know (why). I have no shared history with him, working under him, so, he doesn’t have a sense of control.
“I mean, I could easily start saying, look, we don’t get on, more importantly, he was really important for the industry.”
Oliver, who has had his fair share of run-ins with famous chefs including Gordon Ramsay, chose to take the high-ground as he praised Pierre White for his contributions to the industry.
“When I was a very young chef, the industry was quite dark and boring, and it felt like from a different era and he came along, and he was incredible, and his sort of energy and attitude was so cool, he was my hero, for sure,” he explained.
The cookbook author continued: “We went on a shoot one day, spent a day with him and it was perfectly lovely, and then a week later he just destroyed me on a double-page spread.
“I was really pleased to meet him, but he just destroyed me. And then you sort of think, well that was sort of a bit low.
“But, you meet people you love and often they’re like, they clearly think you’re a w***er. So that’s fine. I don’t need anything from him.
“I still think he was a game changer. He was still my hero for that period of my life. But, that’s life and it’s not just Marco, it’s lots of people it’s happened to.”
Although Oliver and Pierre White still don’t see eye-to-eye, the TV chef said that he’d made up with the short-tempered and foul-mouthed Hell’s Kitchen chef Ramsay after their wives and children told them to “grow up”. He said the two are “currently friends”.
