Ready, steady, book

You know Antony Worrall Thompson

You know Antony Worrall Thompson. He's the belligerent-looking one on Ready, Steady Cook and Food and Drink, a dead-ringer for Mr Punch, someone you feel would enjoy getting up people's noses. And you'd be right.

He's just had a run-in with the planning authority where he lives outside Henley, a turnip's throw from the banks of the Thames. It's a five-acre smallholding and he wanted to erect shelters for his pigs. The council said No: area of outstanding natural beauty and so forth. But he won on appeal. They chose the wrong man. although this verdant valley has been colonised by showbiz celebs, it happens to be Worrall Thompson's ancestral patch. He grew up here, both the land and the four cottages now knocked into one were his grandmother's.

When I arrive his Irish wife, Jacinta, tells me he won't be long: he's feeding the chickens. He eventually lopes in looking more like an itinerant potatopicker than the pick of the crop of celebrity chefs. For the time being the newly housed pigs - Vietnamese - are just a hobby. But next year he's going to cross them with Gloucester Old Spots: Vietnamese flavour and English yield could prove a nice little earner. He recently gave a lecture at the Rare Breeds Society and the meat they had at the dinner afterwards was, he said, a revelation. As it is, the land is worked hard with the help of a gardener.

Last summer his two London restaurants were self-sufficient in salads and most vegetables. And eggs, although officially he's not allowed to sell them. It's illegal, he tells me, unless you've got more than 400 hens. And the hackles rise again: "It's nonsense," he snorts, "The red tape kills any enthusiasm."

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But he's not talking about himself. Nothing, you feel, could dent the Worrall Thompson enthusiasm. Even though it's nearly December when I visit, there's still plenty of kale and spinach and raddichio which he'll use at Woz, his no-choice restaurant where the emphasis is on seasonal produce. Next year he plans to open an organic vegetarian restaurant.

Antony Worrall Thompson is the Richard Branson of the cheffing world. Ideas are his thing. He first made his name in the early 1980s, with MenageaTrois, a restaurant that did away with main courses and only had starters and puddings. It was a formula that the public loved. Within a few years there were Menage a Trois outposts in Sydney, New York and Bombay. His most recent venture, Wiz, has a similar theme - a mass of small dishes, while Woz (the name is his sometime nickname) operates a no-choice fixed menu.

In the intervening years he has run just about every sort of restaurant, and a couple of food emporiums. However such entrepreneurial chutzpah has made him few friends in the cheffing world. Indeed, he says, the cooking glitterati of the early 1980s had him down as "a cowboy". However, Michel Roux's wife, who had eaten at Menage a Trois, soon put the Roux Brothers straight and in 1987 they persuaded him to enter Le Meilleur Ouvrier competition, the first time this French gastronomic Olympiad had been held in Britain.

For the final he had to prepare a Careme classic: a highly complicated fish mousse lined with fillets of sole. For this he was allowed a week's practice and hit upon the idea of freezing the various stages so it wouldn't overcook.

He won. "It was a bit like the village football club winning the cup final," he says. "All I could do was to put one finger up, because I had been given such a knocking." There are still only seven in Britain and Ireland - all of them chefs at Michelin-starred establishments and none of them tele-famous.

"No one nowadays would go into it because of the fear of failing. I didn't care. I had no reputation to lose. It was very flaithiulach, as they say in Ireland." And as for Michelin stars, he's not interested because, he claims, they encourage violence in kitchens, "hitting with pans and general verbal abuse as well, that kind of prison camp mentality which believe me doesn't create confidence in a cook."

And anyway, he has no great regard for standard issue chefs. "They're so tunnel-visioned and I don't think I would have the imagination I have now if I had trained." Because Antony Worrall Thompson is completely self taught, except for the mandatory two lessons a week for his catering management course.

"After college I ran a hotel for a friend of my mother's. The chef didn't turn up one day, so I went in the kitchen and using my management skills I told the second chef what to do then watched how he did it. And I bluffed my way through 10 jobs as head chef."

And you can believe it. Antony Worrall Thompson is a natural showman. It comes as no surprise to learn that his parents were classically trained actors with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where his father's understudy - and Antony's godfather - was one Richard Burton. It was because of his parents' precarious existence that his grandmother played such a central role in his life, although, he says, she was impressed when her grandson said he wanted to be a chef. It was she who insisted on the compromise of catering college. "She hated cooking but she was a farmyard cook. Anything she grew she would cook with it. She made her own cider and blackberry gin. Lots of pickles and chutneys." All of which have found their way into his new cook book, The ABC of AWT, which as its name suggests, takes us from Anchovy to Yoghurt, each section devoted to an ingredient, beginning with its history and place in the culinary repertoire, full-scale recipes, quickie ideas and follow-through hints and tips. And if you ever had any problems cooking eggs, worry no more: scrambled, poached, boiled and coddled, they're all there in no-nonsense simplicity.

The ABC of AWT is not a foodie-fest, however. There are only a handful of "poncy-chef" recipes, he says. In which category he puts the garlic terrine, made from eight heads of garlic, needing to be blanched six times. It's much more in tune with his television philosophy which is "to try and give the public confidence and relaxation. To try and be in their front room as a mate not a god. To show that cooking doesn't need to be hard." Ditto the book. "I try and make my recipe language as simplistic as possible without dumbing down."

Worral Thompson is no stranger to accusations of dumbing down. "When Michel Roux attacked us in the Tele- graph, me, Brian Turner and James Martin, for doing something in five minutes for the BBC TV awards, he said we were turning cookery into a pantomime. But he misses the point. It's like Gary [Rhodes] attacking Delia, saying she's insulting our intelligence. But if you had any intelligence you'd switch the television set off. What Delia is doing is realising that an awful lot of people can't cook. And Michel Roux wants to retain these myths that only chefs can cook properly.

"In Ready, Steady Cook we're not targeting Michel Roux or anyone else who's attacked us. We're targeting a certain element of the audience, that four million who enjoy the fun, enjoy it as a light-hearted entertainment. Food and Drink has a different audience - another four million. Again not for the food purists. TV commissioning editors don't commission lightly, they know their target audience and they don't re-commission if it isn't working."

At home, Jacinta does the cooking. Their relationship began the day she handed in her notice as a commis chef employed by her future husband, saying she "couldn't work on this sort of salary". It was her first job after leaving Ballymaloe, and Darina Allen had warned her in advance that her Worrall Thompson was a rogue. She no longer works in the kitchen but retains a handson interest in the restaurants, although her role now is more front-of-house and "concept".

Antony Worrall Thompson maintains close ties with the Allens and Ireland generally. Not only family trips to Malahide, where Jacinta's family lives and his annual visit to the Kinsale Festival, but to teach at Ballymaloe. Currently three of Worrall Thompson's "chefs" are ex-Ballymaloe and he would love to have the same sort of set-up as Ballymaloe in England. "I may have a fun appeal, but at the end of the day I'm serious about food and I talk a lot to Darina and she has encouraged me.

"She has a wonderful massive garden, and she has one of the nicest lifestyles I know. And that's the way to do it, but I'm only just starting." He knows that once the organic vegetarian restaurant is up and running he'll have to bring in poly-tunnels and "More trouble with the planners". And Mr Punch laughs with a pugilistic gleam in his eye.

Food and Drink is on BBC 2, Mondays, 8.30 p.m.