Dish of the day

JEAN-CHRISTOPHE NOVELLI was once voted the world's sexiest chef by the New York Times. What's that supposed to mean? Your steak-and-ale pie resembles roasted Winalot but you look hotter than Mexican salsa in your whites? No, he is a Michelin-starred chef so let's be a little less insulting than to judge Mr Novelli, who, as a young man, turned down modelling offers from Klein, Armani and Benetton.

Those interviews where attractive subjects get warm honey drizzled over them before it's licked off are truly nauseating. They make you want to punch the paper and say, "Stop drooling! Start questioning!" So this will be a proper, grown-up look at the French chef from the little northern town of Arras. (Bloody gorgeous, though. Objectively.)

Talking to Novelli is a bit like being trapped in an episode of 'Allo 'Allo. 'Ee alwayz want-ehhd to bee a chef. 'Ee deed not want to bee a pon star. A pop star? No, a pon star. Oh, a porn star? Yes, a pon star. Why would he be a porn star?

A little bit of what you fancy: Jean-Christophe Nobelli's latest recipes

But Novelli is a little eccentric, a little off the wall. He is also on the wall, in that there is a life-size painting of him behind the door of his 14th-century farmhouse in Hertfordshire, where he lives and runs a cookery school. Who painted that? "A stawkerr," he says. Is this a name? A. Stawkerr? "A stawkerr," he repeats, "a woman 'oo stawked me." Ah, a stalker. She was very, very pretty, by the way. She fell in love with him, then threatened to kill herself. "I had to be really rude on the phone," he explains apologetically. "I told her to f*** off."

He has had more than 20 female stalkers and a couple of male ones. Yet Novelli only really hit major celebrity status three years ago when he took over from Gordon Ramsay for a series of ITV's Hell's Kitchen. Hard to understand how it took him until he was 44 to become a television chef. (And yet another male one. How come women do most of the nation's cooking but rarely become celebrity chefs? Novelli is not sure, except to say that most are too busy at their own stoves to invest the requisite hours in commercial cooking. Women are cleaner for sure, more hygienic, more disciplined. He wrinkles his nose in disgust. "I am always sacking people for being dirty. Just f*** off! Have a wash!")

His delayed entry into the celebrity chef club was not for want of trying. He had offered himself to Ready Steady Cook but, believe this if you can, was turned down. "They said, 'No, you're not good enough.'" How thick can television executives be? They have the man voted the world's sexiest chef offering himself on a televisual platter with garnish and what do they say? Eh, no thanks – we've got Antony Worrall Thompson.

The media coverage during Novelli's time in Hell's Kitchen was overwhelming. Now fully ensconced in the public consciousness, he has created a line of frozen meals for Findus, is about to film a new series of the show for American television, will open a second gastropub later this year (the first, at the White Horse, in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, opened in 2006), is launching a new set of pans and a brand of wine, and has just produced his new cookery book, Everyday Novelli. (Unlike many other celebrity books, it's stuffed full of things you can actually make without sidling into your local Spar and asking for partridge breast, kumquat or entrail of pipistrelle bat.)

Novelli understands about image. Before I arrived, he was apparently dressed in a tracksuit, which is what he prefers, but changed for the interview. He offers champagne and begins with a formal little thank-you for travelling all the way from Scotland to interview him. He is not lazy enough – or arrogant enough – to take anything for granted. "Now I am a commodity. The brand name is a commodity. Look is very important – image, brand name, logo. If someone tells you it doesn't matter, I think they are an idiot."

Talking of Hell's Kitchen, he admits with refreshing candour, "For one of the few times in my life, if it hadn't been for the way I looked, I don't think they would have given me the job. Sad, eh?" Very sad, I agree gravely. Television executives! Half of them are oblivious to possibilities and the other half… well, how shallow can they be?

IN Everyday Novelli, the chef's mother writes a lovely introduction, explaining how Jean-Christophe was the only person who realised that her cooking changed with her moods and that it was through food that she expressed herself. Cooking became a similar tool for her "hyperactive and sometimes eccentric" son. In what way eccentric? "I don't wear skirts or makeup or lipstick or drive a bicycle with three wheels. I think it's my way of thinking which led me to become very odd and creative. But not to be some kind of show-off." In fact, his mother writes that he is humble. "I'm very timid, believe it or not. Or… reserved, not timid."

The family of six lived in one room and washed outside. His father was a jack of all trades, turning his hand to painting, building, electrical work, even to hairdressing. "He was the best footballer," says Novelli. "A good man, disciplined, strong, hard, fair. Somebody with heart and integrity. If I didn't have him, I think I would be a failure."

His mother had a very hard life and was handicapped from an early age. "She got polio at the age of four. She went to the public pond with her sisters and put her feet in and…" He snaps his fingers. "Sad, eh? No bicycle, no nothing."

He knew there had always been a kind of shadow in her life. Recently, newspaper cuttings were unearthed that told of his grandfather's heroic exploits during the war, but Novelli feels he cannot repeat them. After the war, his grandparents split up – perhaps partly because of his grandfather's difficulty in processing his wartime experiences – and the repercussions were enormous. "I think my grandmother and my mother and aunties were very cold about something that happened in the family. No, not cold – sad. No, not sad… you hear too much now. My mother did not communicate so easily and the only way she could express herself was in cooking."

He remembers his mother taking him to school once and collapsing on her knees because she couldn't walk any further. Nobody stopped. It was such a long time before anyone came to help them. But he inherited his mother's mental resilience. "She's tough, my mum. She's hard like you've no idea. Strong like a bull. She's someone who can take the shit. She's also a lovely woman. But she never cuddled, didn't kiss much. It didn't mean she didn't love us. In fact, I didn't know what a kiss was until I got a girlfriend.

Before you feel too sorry for him, he didn't have long to wait. As a child, he was irrepressible and remembers teachers literally tying him to his chair. "I didn't care," he shrugs. "I was only embarrassed because of the girls. I was King of the Girls." This was his official title? "I had four or five girlfriends already," he replies. "My friends, they didn't know what a woman was. They used to run away when they got a kiss from girls." But he didn't? "It was no secret to me." Girls were the reason he went to school at all.

Physically, he was a daredevil who nearly killed himself crawling out of the bedroom window four floors up and climbing on to the roof. Once he hung out of the windows by his ankles. His father wanted to put him in the French Foreign Legion but he was turned down because he was under 16. Why did his father want to do that? "Too long a story," he says airily, which is what he replies to every question that asks anything awkward.

Physically, he never felt pain, only mentally. "I'm a very caring person." When his father used to lose his temper with him, he never felt frightened; he was just worried about his dad getting so upset. "I was a free spirit but I never had discipline. The clock did not exist for me. The problem was I did not understand my limits. I have never understood my limitations."

That quality would later bring about his downfall when he expanded his business too quickly. But as a young man, it gave him drive and energy. He hated school ("I did not like concepts," he says), and at 14 was already working in a bakery. But Arras was too small to contain him. "I was bored in Arras," he says. He went to work in Paris and became a private chef with the Rothschild family before buying a one-way ticket to Britain in 1983.

"I knew I would not need a return. I was so happy when I crossed over. You have no idea. I couldn't speak I was so happy." He also couldn't speak because he didn't know a word of English. But he was determined. "Where I came from, it was a nightmare," he says. "I could not see myself living in France because the system is too hierarchical. You have to follow a queue. I don't queue, that's for sure. I don't go out, I don't go to the cinema, I don't go to the shops, I don't go nowhere. I don't queue. It does my head in. Even if I am starving and need a sandwich, I don't f***ing queue."

That attitude is why he has never been a sous-chef. "I have never worked for a top chef," he says. After arriving in Britain, he ran a pub restaurant in the New Forest for Keith Floyd, to release him for television work. Novelli has to be in control? "Yes," he admits. "I have always been like this, in everything. But in a relationship," he adds, "I am not a control freak. There's a big difference. My way of being in control is to be aware rather than being tough with people."

He quickly worked his way up, winning a Michelin star, ending up at London's Four Seasons hotel. But his unpredictability surfaced. "I was very comfortable, had just got my Michelin star, five AA rosettes, and I decided to give it up and open a crappy caff, in the view of nowhere, in a shitty part of London where we could have been mugged every day. I had no money but I turned it into one of the best restaurants in Britain and had a Michelin star in three months."

Nine months later, he had an empire of three restaurants in London, one in Normandy, one in South Africa, and was chef consultant on Sea France Ferries. The business grew so fast that disaster was almost inevitable, and indeed he was declared bankrupt in 1999. (Small consolation, but that year Harpers & Queen voted him fifth most alluring man in the world. Skint, but alluring.) "It collapsed because I didn't have any infrastructure, but the most important thing was that I stopped being the chef. I tried to be a businessman and that was a massive mistake."

His friend and fellow chef Marco Pierre White bailed him out financially. "He helped me when I lost everything. He took me out of the shit." Would Novelli have done the same for White? "Yes, of course. For anyone."

His personal life, too, has been volatile, hasn't it? There is a pause and I think he's offended, then he laughs. "If you want to call it that! I have been shot three times." Twice with pellets. Once with a bullet. "It missed me, by the way." He laughs again. Shot at! Really? "Listen," he says, "it's a true story. I don't lie. And twice I nearly died in a car crash." But why was he being shot at? "It's a long story. I can't really explain too much."

Perhaps he had to leave France? No, no, not like that, he says. And he was never a person who would carry a knife or a gun himself. Certainly, he has a gentle, if mercurial, manner. "I don't hurt people. It's not inside me. I can't hurt someone." And his recklessness did not extend to illegal substances. "I have never taken drugs in my life. I never saw cocaine in my life. Do you believe me?" Yes, I believe him. "I am going to make myself sound a right idiot, but I don't even know what crack is. I saw hash, that's for sure. I used to smoke a lot in the army." (He did national service.)

He now trains heavily and wants to enter the Ironman endurance event. He no longer drinks. Why? Was alcohol a problem for him? "Me personally, I have never been drunk. It has never affected me. But it is not normal, not correct, not human, to be able to drink so much. It's a waste of money, time, energy. I can't have one glass. I have to have the bottle." Everything, it seems, is all or nothing.

He has been married twice, once for eight years to Tina, the mother of his daughter Christina. The marriage was a mistake, he says, but his daughter wasn't. "At the end of the day, life is only what you leave. What you pass on is a name. It's not money. It's not property or an expensive car or a million pounds. It's a legacy." Is his daughter like him? "We get on very well. She's a pain in the ass, but, yeah, I love her. She would probably say the same about me."

His second marriage, to South African model Anzelle Visser, was over almost immediately. Is it impulsiveness, or boredom, that makes and breaks his relationships? "No, I think it's work. You need to have someone who understands your work. Not accepts, understands. Big difference. Somebody who understands, participates. Someone who just accepts does not participate." Working long hours prevents relationships developing naturally. "You meet somebody, it's quick, then you realise the truth of it. You are attracted, excited, and then you realise it's a mistake."

But he is monogamous – if serially. "I have never been with somebody if I was with someone else. I can't. I can't look them in the eyes otherwise. I can't lie. A good liar speaks with his eyes. I can't. You see it with me – black or white. I can't lie to save my life. No, no, that's guaranteed."

He is engaged now to Michelle Kennedy, who manages his company Novelli Associates. Novelli says he won't answer the phone himself or open letters. He doesn't really want to communicate much. "I even pretend to be French," he laughs. He is French! He means he pretends he doesn't speak English, but it's an indication of how anglicised he has become. He cannot imagine living in France now, and thinks and reads exclusively in English.

His relationship with Michelle is completely different, he says. "I not only love her very much but she's a good friend to me. We do everything together, even sport. It's fabulous. We don't need to go out; we don't need to do anything. We are a unit, and I have never achieved that before."

He has changed from his younger days. "I think I am more composed. I have spent so much energy in my life. The number of hours I have worked – which I have loved every minute of, by the way – I think I got to the point where I decided I don't want to see life like this any more. I used to get overexcited about nothing, discuss subjects for hours and days. I used to smoke ten million cigarettes. I stopped that. I don't spend as much energy any more. I am lucky not to be on my own any more. I know I am an individual, but sometimes it is nice to have someone you can speak to."

IRONICALLY, after being expelled from school as a child, Novelli now finds himself reading a lot. He is even learning German, because he goes skiing in Austria. But he still has the same attitude to teachers, to being in control. He dismissed his ski instructor after two hours because "he bored me to death like at school". He prefers self-tuition.

Having skimmed the surface of life so energetically for so long, it seems he is more content to dig deep in one spot now in the search of substance. His book is dedicated to his parents and to Michelle, but also to the French chef Alexis Soyer. Look up Soyer and you see similarities to Novelli's life. Expelled from school. Moved to England where he became the most famous French chef in Victorian London. Soyer was wealthy and successful but did a lot for charity, distributing soup to the Irish poor during the potato famine, and working alongside Florence Nightingale to improve the lives of soldiers. He was a good man, says Novelli. He has been to visit Soyer's grave, was shocked by how ordinary and unvisited it is.

It strikes me there is a kind of message in Novelli's dedication to Soyer. The man whose looks have always been the source of accolades understands the importance of image but strives for something more lasting. "Soyer left behind that freehold that inspired people," he says. "He inspired me. That's the beauty of life." r

For a selection of recipes from Everyday Novelli and a chance to buy the book at a reduced price, see page 32