He may be an award-winning celebrity chef, an acclaimed cookbook author and have an MBE to his name, but to Jamie Oliver‘s youngest children still living at home, he’s simply “Dad”.
The 51-year-old cook and restaurateur, who shot to fame in 1999 with his series The Naked Chef, tells HELLO! that he has a “tough audience” when cooking for his children at his Essex home, which he shares with his wife of 26 years, Juliette “Jools” Oliver, 51, daughter Petal, 17, and sons Buddy, 15, and River, ten.
© GettyJamie is just “dad” at home
The couple’s eldest children, Poppy, 24, a university graduate who is engaged to her long-term partner, and Daisy, 23, a nurse, have both left home.
“I want them to be more grateful and in awe of their father, but I’m just their dad,” Jamie says. “They’re so unimpressed by me.
“The ones that have left home can’t wait to come home, and I feel the love when they’re back. Sometimes I’m like, kids, do you not realise people queue up to have this, are you kidding me?”
© InstagramJamie Oliver with his children
We’re chatting to Jamie ahead of his new Channel 4 TV series, Jamie’s 20 Minute Meals, and his accompanying cookbook, 20 Minute Meals: Real Fast Food.
In the show, Jamie cooks a healthy meal from scratch in 20 minutes, which, the chef says, in this new age of “Uber-isation” is “an acceptable amount of time for busy, hardworking people”.
“Like most of the recipes I develop, I typically always try at home first, so my kids or my family are my guinea pigs, which also means they probably get stuff before it’s finessed and at its best,” he says.
© Instagram/ jamieoliverJamie Oliver’s sons at their family dining table
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Oliver clan have developed sophisticated palates.
“They’ve got to the age now where they like dishes from different countries, flavours from Asia, and they love noodles and pasta. They want proteins with crunch and attitude, so they’re getting into textures. But they’re quite a tough audience. They really don’t know how lucky they are.”
© Getty Images for DisneyJamie with his wife Jools
Jamie and Jools met as teenagers and, now in their fifties, the chef knows a thing or two about marital bliss – which is why he doesn’t film in his actual home kitchen. Instead, Jamie uses a “work kitchen” on his 70-acre property, which sits in the village of Finchingfield, Essex.
“I’ve been married for 26 years, and you aren’t going to be married for another 26 years if you have a film crew in your house every bloody day,” he says. “It’s a lot.”
Jamie has pioneered incredible campaigns over the years, including his fight to make school meals healthier, documented in 2005’s Jamie’s School Dinners, and tackle childhood obesity in the US, earning an Emmy for his corresponding series, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, in 2010.
His restaurant chain, Fifteen, which has now closed, trained young adults from disadvantaged backgrounds to become professional chefs.
Now he has a new goal. “If I have one dream that would make me proud of my career, it would be that every 16-year-old leaves school knowing ten recipes to save their life,” he says of his 10 Skills programme, which he launched in 2025.
“Whether they’re rich or poor, they can be happy and well-nourished, and that will affect their outcomes and their productivity.”
That programme has now been implemented in more than a third of all secondary schools in Britain by teacher demand, he reveals.
“We’re super-proud – I think it should be bound into the syllabus and funded properly,” he says.
Jamie has even got the consumer champion Martin Lewis on the case. “I had him in for lunch the other day, because I think that we need to have a modern expression of home economics.”
Is there a busier dad in the country right now? It’s no wonder that Jamie has plans to slow down a bit. “I’m going to try and work from home as much as possible, just to be happier, healthier and more productive.”
Jamie’s 20 Minute Meals airs on Channel 4 at 8pm on Monday 28 September and Jamie’s 20 Minute Meals: Real Fast Food is out now
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