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

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.

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.

If I relaxed, if I took my foot off the gas, I would probably die.

I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.

There is absolutely no reason for being rushed along with the rush. Everybody should be free to go slow.

It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane.

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

I would absolutely characterize myself as ambitious.

If absolute truth belongs to anyone in this world, it certainly does not belong to the man or party that claims to possess it.

It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard, no matter how long or hard the struggle.