“Two key ingredients in any successful chef: a quick learner and someone with a sharp brain.”

If you want to become a great chef, you have to work with great chefs. And that’s exactly what I did.

Kitchens are hard environments and they form incredibly strong characters.

It’s vulgar, coming from where I do, to talk about money.

They say cats have nine lives. I’ve had 12 already and I don’t know how many more I’ll have.

Would I swap what I have achieved as a cook if I could have been as successful as a footballer? Definitely.

The level of jealousy and insecurity in this industry [restaurant] is far greater than ever before.

I’d like to think I’m a great teacher.

I want my kids to see me as Dad, for God’s sake, not a television personality.

Put your head down and work hard. Never wait for things to happen, make them happen for yourself through hard graft and not giving up.

Chefs are nutters. They’re all self-obsessed, delicate, dainty, insecure little souls and absolute psychopaths. Every last one of them.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

I think pressure’s healthy, and very few can handle it.

Cooking a dish is fine; cooking it under pressure is a completely different ballgame.

I don’t think it’s a good advert for any restaurant, a fat chef, and secondly, who wants to eat a dessert when the chef’s a fat pig.

We’re fragile, fragmented souls who are very sensitive to criticism.

Best to start at the bottom & gradually climb up. It’s much more fun, too.

The brain may take advice, but not the heart.

My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.

Your brain has the power to modify your pain perception.

She is too fond of books, and it has turned her brain.

Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.

When something comes to my brain, I don’t ignore it. You never know what it’s going to turn into.

Breathing exercises produce brain waves.