A chef's palate is born out of his childhood, and one thing all chefs have in common is a mother who can cook.
I take so much from my life. I have my shooting and my fishing. I have my working life. I have my relationship with my children.
Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer when I was a lad. From then on, he lived in fear that death was just around the corner, and he set about programming me to work hard and bring in some cash.
The food wasn't very good in the first kitchen I ever worked in. But it was very busy, so I learnt to be fast, absorb pressure, use a knife, and say, 'Yes, chef.'
I'm a great fan of farmed products, as long as it's done properly, because it allows people to be able to afford them. If it wasn't for farmed products, a lot of people wouldn't eat so well.
One day, a chef moaned that he was too hot, so I took a carving knife in one hand, held his jacket with the other, and slashed it. Then I slashed his trousers. Both garments were still on his body at the time.
My tortured life - with its extremes and conflicts - might have been difficult for me to deal with, but the press couldn't get enough of it. I was in the papers every day, 'the enfant terrible of the culinary world.'
The reason I do television is because we all have to work and earn a living, as I have four children. It's also a platform for me to share my knowledge and inspire the young.
If I did one thing, I made cooking rock n' roll: I made it sexy. I made young kids from rich backgrounds want to come into my world.
All great chefs have two things in common. First, they respect nature as the true artist, and they are just cooks. Second, everything that they do is an extension of them as a person.
My cooking attracted celebrities. I met Sylvester Stallone. He squeezed my bicep and said: 'I don't usually eat your kind of food, but for you, I ate it.' I haven't got a clue what he'd eaten but he asked me to cook for his wedding feast when he married Jennifer Flavin at Blenheim Palace.