Australia Trusted Brands 2024

READER’S DIGEST In addition to your cookbooks and restaurants, you are famous for your campaigns for healthy eating for children. Eighteen years ago, you were in a school in London’s Greenwich district with television cameras for Jamie’s School Dinners . There was criticism at first, but later 270,000 people signed a petition for better school meals. Knowing that what I do is ultimate- l y wanted by mos t people is the most im- portant thing for me. And I don’t campaign if I don’t know t hat I’m 99 per cent right: right in terms of the facts, but also morals, law and ethics. That sounds arrogant. But I would never waste my time doing something controversial. Nothing we’ve done in our campaigns so far has been particularly clever. It’s always about fundamental things. For example: in the UK, it’s estimat- ed that 5.5 million children are fed breakfast and lunch in schools every day, 180 days a year. That means about half of those children’s diet through- out their childhood takes place at school. Do we have any standards or rules for this? No. We have standards for dog food, and if you don’t adhere to them, you are punished. So you think: aha, the British like their dogs more than their children. I BELIEVE IN ETHICS AND INTEGRITY IN EVERYTHING, NOT JUST IN COOKING, BUT IN LIFE In the county of Yorkshire, angry mothers tried to launch a counter- campaign against you and your school meals a few years ago. Have success and wealth impacted your credibility? To be honest, when I start a cam- paign, I don’t really enjoy it. It’s very hard, especially as I’m much shyer than people think. I like peace and quiet. But when I have to fight, I fight, because I think that’s what people ul- timately expect from me. Selling books is like a vote for me, and a real one at that. Not a meaningless ‘like’, not a cheap comment on social media. Don’t you worry that some people now see you as the rich, hip Jamie Oliver with the fancy house who wants to tell people what to eat? I didn’t get rich on my own, the public made me wealthy. And I see myself as their servant in my cam- paigns. For me, it’s a very simple, very clean, very pure relationship. I don’t do these campaigns because I feel like fighting. On the contra- ry, I hate that. The period after the launch of Jamie’s School Dinners was the 18 worst months of my life. Our house was broken into, com- puters were hacked, I had to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds 6 June/July 2024