Jamie Oliver says he's 'conceptually thick' as he opens up on restaurant failure

Jamie Oliver says his restaurant empire went bankrupt because he didn’t get the basics right and was “conceptually thick”. The TV chef and healthy food campaigner once ran dozens of UK restaurants with other eateries around the world. His TV series also played out globally and it looked like nothing could go wrong.

But In 2019, a severe financial crisis led to the collapse of Jamie Oliver's UK restaurant group, including Jamie's Italian and Barbecoa, resulting in 1,000 job losses and the closure of 22 or his 25 UK restaurants.

Speaking about the highs and lows of his career in a new podcast interview with Davina McCall, 50-year-old Jamie, who is dyslexic, said: “There’s a certain degree of life’s a bit of a numbers game and you gotta have a go otherwise you never know, and I think failure comes in various forms and shapes, but it's an incredible educator.

• Pregnant Morning Live star Michelle Ackerley rushed to A&E as she takes medical leave
• Laura Anderson leaks Gary Lucy WhatsApps and reveals her shocking nickname for him

“Failure can mean different things to different people in different ways. I mean it could be as simple as a cut or a burn or it could be losing something that you've spent every ounce of your savings on and it's gone like that. It could be letting people down that you love.

“So I think failure can be very painful and I also think that as you get older, the concept of pain - pain is always seen as a negative thing - but really pain is an extraordinary gift as a whole concept. When you hit your foot, when you get a splinter, when you get a burn… if you didn't have that, you’d be dead thirty years ago. So I think it's a real true gift.

“Maybe it’s me being philosophical and trying to protect myself but I think that pain and failure is all part of really shaping your peripheral vision and your senses. And I think, whatever it is that you’re trying to do, you might not have failed because you were wrong, sometimes I’ve failed because I was too early and people weren’t ready. Sometimes I’ve failed because I was too late.

"Sometimes I’ve failed and I got all the hard bits right and I got the basics wrong because I spent a lifetime refusing to accept any responsibility around numbers and maths - which goes back to school, it’s my issue not the school’s issue - you know I was in the worst group for maths, I didn’t pass maths at school.

"Conceptually within that, yeah I’m thick. I have a negative view of myself when it comes to maths. So when I lost my restaurants, you know, all the hard stuff we got right - all the stuff that most people struggle getting right, we got right, we were really good at the hard stuff - and like, it was really the basics.”

Jamie married wife Jools in 2000 and they have five children together, with son Buddy a young chef himself. Jamie spoke fondly of his ‘Fifteen’ project which taught young unemployed people to cook for a number of years, saying it was “the best thing I’ve done”.

And turning to speak about his partner Jools, who has kept the family together during Jamie’s decades of campaigns and business ventures, he added: “She's quite in the background and she’s done that on purpose. She’s definitely the rock. She’s got incredible instinct, she's incredibly kind, very funny.

"I love her to bits. she makes us the way that we are and I’m very grateful for Jools, and she’s an amazing mum.”

* The full interview with Jamie Oliver is on the latest Begin Again podcast with Davina McCall, out now.

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , and Threads .