Tom Kerridge

Early life

Kerridge, whose parents divorced when he was eleven was the elder of two brothers. His mother held down multiple jobs while moving the now single parent family around several estates in Gloucestershire. He attended Saintbridge secondary school in Gloucester, and began cooking for himself and his younger brother after school while his mother was at work. Kerridge enjoyed riding his bike and visiting Westonbirt Arboretum.

He attended a youth theatre for three weeks when he was spotted and cast in the 1991 Christmas special of the BBC1 television show Miss Marple: They Do It with Mirrors. A number of other small television roles followed, but at the age of eighteen he decided to pursue his love of cooking instead of an acting career. Kerridge found Marco Pierre White's White Heat cookbook inspiring, and states that it encouraged him to pursue a career as a chef by attending catering college in Cheltenham.

Career

His first role in a professional kitchen was as a commis chef at Calcot Manor in Tetbury in 1991. He moved around several restaurants as a chef de partie before joining Rhodes in the Square as sous chef under Gary Rhodes in 1999.

He spent a further two years as sous chef at Odettes in London. In 2001, he became head chef for the first time, at Bellamys Dining Room, and then at Great Fosters in Surrey. He moved back to London to become senior sous chef at Monsieur Max until 2003, before moving to Adlards in Norwich as head chef once more. In 2005 he opened his own gastropub, called The Hand & Flowers, which gained a Michelin star in 2006. The Hand & Flowers gained a second Michelin star in the 2012 list, becoming the first pub ever to hold two Michelin stars.

Kerridge describes himself as "not a Michelin-star kind of guy", which influenced his choice to open his gastropub. His signature dish is his take on a hog roast involving cooking pork belly in a bain-marie, which is then wrapped in skin and roasted. This is accompanied by a stuffed pig's trotter.

Kerridge has appeared on television in series five and six of the Great British Menu, supplying main courses to the final banquet on both occasions, and has subsequently appeared as a judge on the programme every year since competing and has also appeared on Saturday Kitchen.

In February 2013, he appeared as guest chef on the BBC programme Food and Drink. He later became the co-presenter of the show in 2015.

In 2013, he presented his own BBC Two food programme Tom Kerridge's Proper Pub Food and then in spring 2014, he hosted Spring Kitchen with Tom Kerridge, which was aired in a daytime viewing slot on BBC One.

In 2016, Kerridge presented Bake Off: Crème de la Crème for BBC Two. He was replaced by Angus Deayton for the second series in 2017.

Kerridge co-presented the 2016 BBC Two series The Food Detectives with Sean Fletcher and Alice Roberts. In 2017, he co-presented The Best of British Takeaways with Cherry Healey on BBC Two. In 2017, he will present Tom Kerridge: Lose Weight For Good for BBC Two.

Controversy

On 7 November 2012, Kerridge was among a number of chefs who joined in the cyberbullying of a customer of his associate Claude Bosi's restaurant Hibiscus. James Isherwood had written on his blog, 'Dining With James', that he had not enjoyed his starter, leading Bosi and several other chefs to verbally abuse him on Twitter. Kerridge intimated publicly on Twitter, where he has over 90,000 followers, that the customer was a "c***", "bellend" and "dickhead" and would never be welcome in his restaurant, and encouraged Bosi to "smash him in".

Personal life

Kerridge does not cook often when at home and claims that his oven is the least-used appliance in his house. He is a season-ticket holder of Marlow F.C. He is married to Beth, a sculptor who has previously worked with Sir Anthony Caro.