Daily Mail - 23.08.2019

Daily Mail, Friday, August 23, 2019 Page 35

I’ve been

so naive

Jamie weeps over failed

restaurant chain... and

admits he was too ‘cocky’

‘We had these big cathedrals we

couldn’t fill. The truth is I didn’t

know what I was doing.’

It’s 20 years since Jamie Oliver

burst on to TV, knocking up a meal

for his friends and Jamie Oliver:

The Naked Chef Bares All charted

17, Daisy, 16, Petal, ten, Buddy,

eight and River, three, with his

wife Jools, said: ‘It’s like a film

where a bomb had gone off and

everyone’s just left.’ Struggling to

speak, he added: ‘It’s tough. I’ve

been so stressed. It’s gone. Over

there on the pillar was two

plaques from students who died.

The staff got paid up until the

date and I made sure of it. It is

without question the most pain-

ful regret to tell staff who you care

about and who worked hard for

you, that they don’t have a job

anymore.’ Around 1,000 jobs were

lost when KPMG administrators

closed 22 of Oliver’s 25 restau-

rants in May.

Earlier in the programme Oliver

explained to his shocked staff that

the business was closing, despite

trying to stay afloat by pumping

£25 million of his own money in.

Oliver delivered the news in the

HQ of his restaurant empire as his

business went under.

Standing in front of his staff, the

father-of-five said: ‘Morning guys.

It’s a really tough one. For many

months now I’ve been walking

around and you’ve said “hey,

Jamie, you all right?” And I’ve said,

“yeah, I’m all right!” And the truth

is no, I’m not f****** all right.

‘I’m utterly devastated. Finan-

cially, I used everything I could. I

used every card, every trick, every

contact. We got cocky. We thought

everything we did would work. I

made massive mistakes and I’ll

never make them again.’

The Jamie Oliver Restaurant

Group included 22 Jamie’s Italian

outlets, plus London restaurants

Fifteen and Barbecoa, and Jamie’s

Diner at Gatwick Airport. Fifteen

Cornwall survives.

Broken dream: Administrators shut 22 of Jamie’s sites

JAMIE Oliver admitted he

was ‘very naive’ and ‘hadn’t

known what he was doing’ as

he made a tearful trip to his

failed Fifteen restaurant for a

TV documentary.

The chef, 44, was visiting his pet

project – where he employed young

people from disadvantaged back-

grounds – for the first time since it

closed in May.

In a Channel 4 documentary, Oliver

broke down as he surveyed the non-

profit London establishment, which shut

when his restaurant empire collapsed.

There was rotting food on the kitchen

hobs as the sad chef admitted he was

‘not a businessman’ and ‘very naive’. He

said: ‘I was very good at running one res-

taurant. I opened lots of big restaurants,

but people like little restaurants.

By Alisha Rouse

Showbusiness Correspondent

‘I made massive

mistakes’

his career on Wednesday. Speak-

ing to presenter Davina McCall,

Oliver compared the Fifteen

premises in Hoxton to a bombsite

as an administrator said they will

try to sell its contents, including

the tables and chairs.

Oliver said he took the closure of

that particular restaurant espe-

cially badly. He spent all his

£650,000 earnings from The Naked

Chef cookbook on it in 2002.

Oliver, who has children Poppy,