Celebrity Chef Turns 40

Jamie Oliver the renowned celebrity chef turns forty years. This is what Jamie, who is a Gemini, can be expecting today:

The famous British chef, TV personality and restaurateur first rose to fame on the 1999 BBC show The Naked Chef - which was credited with inspiring men to get cooking.

His profile rose quickly, and in 2000 he became the face of Sainsbury. By 2002 Jamie had opened his first restaurant Fifteen as part of the 2002 Channel 4 documentary Jamie’s Kitchen, in which he trained 15 disadvantaged young people with the end goal of employing them at the new restaurant.

Jamie was awarded an MBE in 2003, and in 2005 he began his first campaign to encourage British schools to improve the quality and nutritional value of school dinners.

The accompanying TV programme Jamie’s School Dinners was an instant hit, and the Feed Me Better campaign led to a ban of certain drinks and fried foods in schools across the country.

By 2010, Jamie’s campaign had made its way across the Atlantic but resistance from the educational authorities led to Jamie being barred from filming inside American schools.

He is now the successful owner of a chain of restaurants called Jamie’s Italian, and in 2013 was inducted into the Culinary Hall of Fame alongside Gordon Ramsay and Wolfgang Puck.

Jamie married his long-term partner Jules in 2010, and the pair have four children - 13-year-old Poppy, 12-year-old Daisy, Petal, aged 6, and four-year-old Buddy Bear.