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

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.

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

Being a chef is the best job in the world.

Cooking today is a young man’s game, I don’t give a bollocks what anyone says.

The cutting of the gem has to be finished before you can see whether it shines.

Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him.

My advice is to never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.

A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself: if you heed yourself, you’ll never go wrong.

It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man, you will learn to limp.

Look both ways before u cross the street.

The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, ‘Create silence’.