Early Life
Oliver was brought up in Clavering, Essex, England. His parents ran a pub, "The Cricketers", where he used to practice in the kitchen. He was educated at Newport Free Grammar School. In 2009 Oliver stated that he was of partial Sudanese ancestry via his great-great grandfather John, whom he described as "a bit swarthy with curly hair". However, research for the Sunday Express established that John's father James was a hatter from Penzance, and that James' father Richard was also Cornish, leaving little or no possibility of a Sudanese connection. The family legend of Sudanese ancestry may have originated in the 19th century when John Oliver returned from sea, possibly with a tanned complexion after visiting Africa. He left school at age sixteen with two GCSE qualifications and went on to attend Westminster Kingsway College, formerly Westminster College. He then earned a City & Guilds NVQ in home economics.
Read more about this topic: Jamie Oliver
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)