Antony Worrall Thompson - T.V. Personality

Friday, 26 May 2006

ANTONY WORRALL THOMPSON - TV PERSONALITY
 
Antony Worrall Thompson was born in 1952 in Stratford-upon-Avon. Today he joins us on the couch sharing his secrets of his success, and tolls us why he thinks men are better chefs in the kitchen then women. The girls might be changing his mind today with their culinary skills!

Public-school educated (Kings School, Canterbury) Antony then studied Hotel and Catering Management at Westminster College. From there on he was success. He worked for various establishments in Essex, much to the horror of his grandmother who refused to write to him because she could not bring herself to write the word Essex on the envelope.
He finally became brave enough to make the move to London in September 1978 to become sous chef at Brinkley's Restaurant in the Fulham Road.
He became head chef after only one month.  In 1979 he took six months 'educational sabbatical' in France, eating and working in 3-star establishments.
Returning to Brinkley's as head chef, Antony changed the menus according to his experience gained in France.  Next was Dan's Restaurant in Chelsea, where, as head chef in 1980 he changed its character from café to haute cuisine, propelling its image into the pages of glossy magazines and Sunday supplements.
It was in 1981 that Antony opened Menage a Trois in Knightsbridge (widely known to be the Princess of Wales' favourite restaurant) to abundant publicity and reviews: it was the only restaurant in London to serve just starters and puddings.  The restaurant and Antony received a tremendous amount of press coverage.
He was also the first chef/patron to be chosen to open and operate the restaurant at One Ninety Queen's Gate, a unique club with an abundance of style, designed exclusively for the restaurant industry.
The restaurant won the Time Out Eating Guide's Best New Restaurant award in 1990 and featured in Egon Ronay's Guide 1991 as a new entry with two stars.
In 1990, Antony opened Bistro 190 adjoining One Ninety Queen's Gate, with a Mediterranean-biased menu and affordable prices.
He became Managing Director of the Simpsons of Cornhill Group for which he launched dell'Ugo in Frith Street, which achieved extensive press coverage and where the accent was on robust and hearty Mediterranean and British food. 
Following this enormously successful formula he opened Zoe in St. Christopher's Place to rave reviews, Café dell'Ugo in the City of London, Atrium in Westminster, Palio in Notting Hill Gate, Drones in Belgravia and De Cecco in Parsons Green.
Antony left the Simpsons of Cornhill group at the beginning of 1997 and now runs his own very popular neighbourhood restaurant Notting Grill in Holland Park, which specialises in organic meat, fish and vegetables. 
Antony is also a partner in the delightfully picturesque Angel Coaching Inn and Grill, at Heytesbury near Warminster, Wiltshire where his mission is to source the best local foodstuffs from around the south west area; something which is very close to his heart.  Last year he opened Kew Grill, in Kew, Richmond, which is in the same vein as Notting Grill, with delicious well-hung meat and the best possible produce available.
In March 1988 he won the Mouton Rothschild Menu Competition, and shortly before in December 1987 the most prestigious accolade: the Meilleur Ouvrier de Grande Bretagne (MOGB) - the chef's Oscar - which is the Academie Culinaire's competition, held every four years, to find the most talented chefs in the country. 
He is one of only seven chefs to have merited the lifelong title so far.  In 1989, he represented Great Britain in the Bocuse d'Or, which is a bi-annual world competition launched by Paul Bocuse and feted by the culinary soul of France itself, attracting extensive media coverage.  He was placed 6th out of 26 international competitors. 
His talents are not restricted to cooking and eating: his powerful imagination and flair for interior design are additional factors contributing to the success of his ventures.
In 1998 Antony became resident studio chef and main presenter for BBC2's Food & Drink programme.  He is a Ready Steady Cook regular and also appears on the amazingly popular Celebrity Ready Steady Cook.
He also took part in the incredibly successful 1999 Ready Steady Cook Roadshow playing to packed theatres across the UK.
He filmed several of his own series for Carlton Food Network: a 78 part series called Worrall Thompson Cooks,
A 26 part series Simply Antony, Antony's Scotland (13 parts), So You Think You Can't Cook, filmed at the 1997 BBC Good Food Show. A five part series called Retrospectives which looked at dinner party food since the 1950s, Antony's Morocco on location in Morocco, and More Simply Antony.
His final series for Carlton Food Network was Master and Servant with James Martin.
Antony regularly guests-presents and cooks on Good Food Live (UK Food Channel), and since mid 2003 has been the presenter of BBC2's hugely popular, Saturday Kitchen.
In June 2004 the UK Food Channel broadcast a series of 10 half-hour programmes called simply Worrall Thompson, an entertaining mix of food programme and fly on the wall documentary.
He has guested on many programmes, including ITV's This Morning, GMTV, Hot Chefs, MasterChef, Junior MasterChef, Home Front, Channel 4's Light Lunch and Quisine as well as Have I Got News For You, Question Time, Richard and Judy, Shooting Stars, TFI Friday, The Clothes Show, Live and Kicking, The Kumars at No. 42, Bookworm, Heaven and Earth, Pet Rehab, Through the Keyhole, Going Going Gone, Celebrities Under Pressure, Freddie Star's Christmas Special, Country File, Nation's Favourite Food, Newsnight, Children In Need specials.AND The Afternoon Show.
He has also fronted a 30 minute programme for Channel 4, Stir Fry, looking at the quality of food in prisons. 
He was a team captain on BBC Radio 4's Question of Taste with wine expert Oz Clarke. He has guested on Radio 4's 'Broadcasting House' and regularly reviews the papers on LBC.
Antony was the winner of The Weakest Link Chef Special and appeared on Panorama presenting an item on the Fairtrade issue on behalf of the 2003 Comic Relief project.
He is increasingly in demand by broadcasters to comment on and discuss serious food issues such as diabetes, obesity, nutrition and the eating habits of children. Antony's books include The Small and Beautiful Cookbook (Weidenfeld and Nicholson 1984), Supernosh with wine writer Malcolm Gluck (Faber & Faber 1993), Modern Bistro Cooking published by Headline in May 1994 and in Spring 1996 Sainsbury's Quick and Easy Fish.
He contributed a regular weekly column for The Sunday Times under the title 30 Minute Menus, and Headline published a collection of the recipes in 1995.
He co-authored with Brian Turner Ready Steady Cook One.  Sainsburys published Quick and Easy Winter Warmers and Headline published The ABC of AWT.
He has written a weekly restaurant review column for the Daily Express and he currently writes a cookery column for The Express on Sunday Magazine, a weekly food feature for Saturday Express, a cookery book column for the Express, as well as a monthly column for Good Food magazine.
He has just completed the sixth edition of his annual magazine At Home with Antony Worrall Thompson. 
Antony has also published The Top 100 Recipes from the Food & Drink TV Series (BBC Books) and Ready Steady Cook, The Top 100 Recipes from Your Favourite Chefs (BBC Books)
His latest books are the hugely popular, Healthy Eating for Diabetes, published by Kyle Cathie (in it's 7th reprint) and Little Books', Well Fed, Well Bred, Well Hung: how to buy & cook real meat and his frank autobiography RAW, published by Transworld, and the Saturday Kitchen Cookbook (BBC), published in 2004.
He is passionate about organic farming and grows many herbs and vegetables for his restaurant.  Despite such an energetic professional lifestyle, he still manages to find time for art, antiques, tennis and swimming (he swam the Channel when he was sixteen), gardening and of course his wife Jay and their two young children, plus two dogs called Trevor and Jess, two cats, twelve pigs and a variety of fish and chickens who all live at his country cottage retreat by the banks of the Thames.