Jamie Oliver

Jamie Oliver is an English chef, restaurateur, cookbook author, and TV personality whose three-decade career has made him one of the most-iconic British food-media figures of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He was born James Trevor Oliver on May 27, 1975, in Clavering, Essex, England, where his parents Trevor and Sally Oliver ran a country pub-and-restaurant called The Cricketers. He grew up in the pub kitchen and attended Westminster Catering College in London.

His break came in 1997 when he was filmed accidentally while working at the London restaurant The River Café for a documentary on the restaurant. The BBC subsequently offered him his own cooking show The Naked Chef (1999–2001) — the show's title referring to Oliver's stripped-down approach to ingredients rather than to nudity. The 1999 launch made him an immediate British TV celebrity at age 24.

His subsequent TV career has produced over 30 cooking series across BBC and Channel 4, including Jamie's Kitchen (2002, where he opened the London training restaurant Fifteen for disadvantaged youth), Jamie's School Dinners (2005, his campaign that successfully pressured the British government to reform school nutrition standards), Jamie's Italy (2005), Jamie's Ministry of Food (2008), Jamie's American Road Trip (2009), Food Revolution (US TV in 2010–2011), and many more.

His parallel publishing career has produced over 30 cookbooks that have collectively sold over 50 million copies worldwide — making him the bestselling-cookbook author in British history after Mary Berry. His restaurant empire (Jamie's Italian, Jamie Oliver's Diner, Fifteen, Recipease) operated dozens of locations through the 2000s and early 2010s before financial difficulties forced the closure of most UK Jamie's Italian locations in 2019. He has continued to operate his Jamie Oliver Group from his UK headquarters and has been involved in food-policy advocacy. He has been married to model and writer Jools Oliver since 2000, and the couple has five children.

His name Jamie is the Scottish short form of James (from the Hebrew Yaaqov meaning "supplanter"). Jamie has been continuously among the most-popular American gender-neutral names for decades.