Jamie Oliver

Rating:
Summary: Touching! A Real Tear Jerker! Newberry Award Winner!
Review: Crackingly British biography of our favourite "tongue-pushing" chef from his glorious (and almost regal) East-end fame. This is a brutally frank, almost cockney tale of how young Oliver rose to culinary stardom with his fantastic recipes and has worthless insight of his beyond horrible music group, "Mother Russia." Each page is filled with a "rogering" of recipies, each with a "Big Ben/Parliament" type of enigmatic splendour. As a Brit, I know all too well of how chefs are often the [fool] of the culinary joke, but with Oliver and the often buxom Nigella Lawson, we're put England back on the map of dining delights. As such, we Birchshire-ians will one day take over the deep-fried, carnival world of food and triumph beyond the gates of heaven. Bloody Outrage!

Rating:
Summary: Touching! A Real Tear Jerker! Newberry Award Winner!
Review: Crackingly British biography of our favourite "tongue-pushing" chef from his glorious (and almost regal) East-end fame. This is a brutally frank, almost cockney tale of how young Oliver rose to culinary stardom with his fantastic recipes and has worthless insight of his beyond horrible music group, "Mother Russia." Each page is filled with a "rogering" of recipies, each with a "Big Ben/Parliament" type of enigmatic splendour. As a Brit, I know all too well of how chefs are often the [fool] of the culinary joke, but with Oliver and the often buxom Nigella Lawson, we're put England back on the map of dining delights. As such, we Birchshire-ians will one day take over the deep-fried, carnival world of food and triumph beyond the gates of heaven. Bloody Outrage!

Rating:
Summary: Routine Journalistic Effort. 4 years out of date already.
Review: `Jamie Oliver The Biography' is a weak book using just about every criteria you may wish to apply to the biography of a contemporary culinary celebrity.

The very first warning I would make to a potential buyer is the fact that the book was published in 2001, so it was probably completed in early 2001, when Jamie was about 25. This means that all of the most interesting events in his life and career such as the birth of his children, the `Oliver's Twist' TV show, on stage performances, and the whole `15' restaurant enterprise do not even appear in this book.

I suppose there is some justification for doing a biography of a public figure so early in their career OTHER than making money, but this book exhibits none of what I would consider worthwhile. If this were a book on a 25-year-old physicist, mathematician, or microbiologist, I would expect that it would deal with the subjects scientific achievements in some depth. If this were a book on a 25-year-old chess player, I would expect an intelligent analysis of the subject's play. If this book were on a 25-year-old poet, I would expect some intelligent analysis of the subject's poetry. This book says virtually nothing about Jamie's cuisine, aside from the fact that it is based on Spanish and Italian influences (and that he likes his great mortar and pestle), and everyone who has watched his shows already knows that.

In fact, in these 250 pages, there is precious little I did not already know about his nibs already. By the nature of Jamie's shows, we already know that he grew up in Essex to parents who ran a local pub and that he began his cooking career by washing dishes and doing prep work in the pub's kitchen at the age of 8. We know all about his being mentored by Gennaro Contaldo and his stint at the River Café where he was discovered during the taping of a TV special featuring Rose Gray and Ruth Rodgers at the River Café. There are even events in Jamie's early career I have encountered that are not in the book. For example, Ruth Rodgers was very stern with Jamie when he first applied for a job at the River Café. It turns out, this was just her `game face' when talking to unsolicited job seekers. The book does absolutely nothing to examine Jamie's relations with Contaldo, Gray, or Rodgers.

The book is pretty thin on several other accounts. While 250 pages seems to be a rather respectable size for the story of a 25 year olds life, the font is quite large, so we are probably getting no more that about half that number of pages were the book printed in a normal font size for the size of the page. Regarding the content, even those things we may not know about young Jamie are pretty easy to adduce from what we know of his character, without having to be told. It is new to me to read that Jamie and Jools have known one another since shortly after Jamie graduated from catering school. And, they were a real couple before Jamie attained even the slightest hint of celebrity. But, the book doesn't even come close to discussing anything interesting about their relationship. There is more interesting material on this matter in the introduction to Oliver's third book `Happy Days with the Naked Chef' than there is in this whole book.

So, this biography is almost purely journalism of the most superficial type. A year ago, there was a long profile of Mario Batali in the New Yorker which, in about 10 pages said more about the inner workings of Mario's ambitions, achievements, and culinary style than this book does in its anemic 250 pages. And, it really fails as good journalism too, as I found at least one rather serious factual error, where Bobby Flay's name is misspelled as `Bobby Ray' and he is only credited with being the executive chef of Bolo and Mesa Grill rather than being a co-owner. It is especially odd that the only quote from an American source comes from Flay, as Jamie has much more in common with Mario Batali, as he has even featured Mario invented dishes in his cookbooks.

A small but not insignificant concern to American readers is the fact that this book is written entirely from an English point of view. Aside from a snapshot of Jamie with Nigella Lawson (who is not mentioned in the text) and brief references to Delia Smith, Elizabeth David, the `Galloping Gourmet', and `Two Fat Ladies', there are virtually no references to names familiar to American foodies. There are a fair number of references to the Food Network, but nothing about the close business relations between Jamie and the Food Network involving the production of `Oliver's Twist'.

There is some interesting material about Jamie's musical endeavors, but it seems that the authors are about as clueless about music as they are about cooking, as they describe `Quadrophenia' as a film about London mods. This work is much more important as The Who's second major long musical work, and, this is important because, to my ear, `The Who' seem to be the most important influence on the sound of music coming from Jamie's band.

Unless you are an unalloyed Jamie Oliver fanatic, I suggest you pass on this book and spend your money on our boy's excellent cookbooks (One small interesting fact here is that Jamie started his first book several years before his appearance in the first `Naked Chef' show. No surprise, but a confirmation of his seriousness about cooking and his natural talent as a creative chef.)