First TV show I loved<\/p>\n
In the Fifties my parents wouldn\u2019t let us have a TV. I was born and brought up on a farm in Oxfordshire and would visit the couple who managed the farm to watch The Lone Ranger. It was the Western for me. <\/p>\n
![\"Clayton](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/aed93fb9-432f-4d2f-82b8-735a404f7f17.jpg\")
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Clayton Moore in the US TV series The Lone Ranger<\/p>\n
SILVER SCREEN COLLECTION\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n
First thing that made me want to be a chef<\/p>\n
About three years after I started my restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall. I started by running a nightclub there and it got closed down because we couldn\u2019t keep order. So I opened a restaurant as a way of paying the bills instead. I didn\u2019t really want to cook, but my mother had taught me. It came out of necessity and then I started to enjoy it. <\/p>\n
First film I saw at the cinema <\/p>\n
As a child I would bicycle to the Regent Cinema near Chipping Norton once a week. I remember watching High Noon starring Grace Kelly, who I thought was the most beautiful person in the world. <\/p>\n
![\"Grace](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/\/6e3e82ac-d129-4008-bfea-ad24be522ff5.jpg\")
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Grace Kelly in High Noon (1952)<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
First album I bought<\/p>\n
I was lucky enough to be part of the rock\u2019n\u2019roll generation. My contemporaries at [Wells House] boarding school had record players in their studies. 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can\u2019t Be Wrong: Elvis\u2019 Gold Records, Volume 2 was the first one I bought. It was the cover with Elvis in the golden suit, surrounded by lots and lots of Elvises. I loved the first track, I Need Your Love Tonight. At school, as an Elvis fan, I would have a lot of arguments with Cliff Richard fans. He didn\u2019t quite hit the spot for me. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Why music nostalgia still sells in the age of streaming<\/a><\/p>\n First pop-inspired fashion trends I adopted<\/p>\n I had Beatles boots and, of course, the Beatles haircut. I wanted to look exactly like them from their second album. Various masters at school told me off for having that look. But there was so much rebellion around that it felt inevitable that we would rebel against rules that insisted everyone\u2019s clothing had to be the same. <\/p>\n First TV chef I admired<\/p>\n In the Sixties I was in Australia for a couple of years and one of my jobs was working for the cookery show The Galloping Gourmet, hosted by Graham Kerr. He used to drink wine on set and would drive right into the studio in his Volkswagen Karmann Ghia with his glamorous wife. He made people realise that food could be fun and sexy. <\/p>\n \u2022 Rick Stein\u2019s simple suppers \u2014 really easy 7-ingredient recipes<\/a><\/p>\n First time I cried at the cinema <\/p>\n I don\u2019t really tend to cry over films, but I do remember watching and crying over Bambi. I couldn\u2019t take it. It was just too sad. <\/p>\n First time I felt overwhelmed by fame<\/p>\n When my first TV series came out, Rick Stein\u2019s Taste of the Sea on BBC2, it was instantly successful. I was cooking all the time and left the kitchen one day to empty a dustbin into a wheelie bin and someone stopped me to ask for a photograph. I just thought why me? I\u2019m emptying a dustbin. Then I realised why. That show also had a huge effect on business and it was difficult to get used to it. Some people got annoyed at the slowness of our service because we just weren\u2019t prepared for it. <\/p>\n \u2022 Read more TV reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n First moment I realised I\u2019d made it<\/p>\n I went to India a few years ago where I\u2019d filmed about 15 years earlier. We went to Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur<\/a>. I didn\u2019t realise I was well known in India, but when we had afternoon tea they produced a cake with my face on it. That was a special moment. <\/p>\n