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Celebrity

03rd Oct 2023

Jamie Oliver says if could choose he’d want ‘a normal life’ over fame

Anna Martin

Millionaire chef, Jamie Oliver, has said that if he could do it all again he would want a “normal life”.

From TV shows to cookbooks, Jamie has made quite the life for himself becoming one of the most easily recognisable faces in the food and hospitality industry.

Yet, when talking to presenter Kristy Young for her podcast Young Again he has said that given the choice he would choose the quiet life over all the attention he gets.

“I’m not trying to say ‘shoulda woulda coulda’ but if I came back on Earth and did it again, I would go to (set up the) pub, and I would have a normal life and I would be aware that anonymity is our greatest gift that we will never give any currency to.

“And to have just enough and to trot on, and to be the best you can at your thing, and be part of a community, and to have a mutuality… That is very very very precious,” Jamie said.

His current life is worlds away from the way he was raised in a pub in north Essex owned by his parents – a time he remembers fondly.

“I was never bored, I was never lonely. I was dyslexic, I was hyperactive… but in a pub I bounced around,’ he recalled. Jamie worked in that pub washing the dishes and cleaning toilets to earn his keep.

Though he soon left that all behind when he burst onto the scene as The Naked Chef in 1999 and his career began to take off rapidly.

The dad of five has confessed that being in the public eye hasn’t always been easy for the kids. He said they were “getting grief because of me,” arguing that “celebrity and children is not a good combination.”

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