Jamie Oliver says being ‘thick’ led to him losing his restaurant empire as he got the ‘basics wrong’

19 Sep 2025 • 1:48 PM MYT
The Independent
The Independent

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Jamie Oliver has said that being “conceptually thick” led to him “getting the basics wrong” which resulted in the loss of his restaurant empire.

Appearing on Davina McCall’s Begin Again podcast on Thursday (18 September), the TV chef opened up on having to close 22 of his Jamie Italian restaurants in 2019, which resulted in the loss of 1,000 jobs.

He said he views himself as “conceptually thick” due to his inability to grasp numbers: “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 it was really the basics.”

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