Jamie Oliver says his restaurant empire went bankrupt as he was ‘conceptually thick’

The chef admits he was ‘conceptually thick’ with numbers and maths. Photo / Getty Images

Jamie Oliver believes his restaurant empire went under because he did not get the basics right and was “conceptually thick”.

His Jamie’s Italian restaurant franchise went into administration in 2019, and he has now explained that his empire crumbled because he “got the basics wrong”.

Speaking with Davina McCall on her Begin Again podcast, Oliver, 50, said: “There’s a certain degree of life’s a bit of a numbers game and you gotta have a go otherwise you never know, and I think failure comes in various forms and shapes, but it’s an incredible educator.

“Failure can mean different things to different people in different ways. I mean it could be as simple as a cut or a burn or it could be losing something that you’ve spent every ounce of your savings on and it’s gone like that. It could be letting people down that you love.

“So I think failure can be very painful and I also think that as you get older, the concept of pain – pain is always seen as a negative thing – but really pain is an extraordinary gift as a whole concept.

“When you hit your foot, when you get a splinter, when you get a burn … if you didn’t have that, you’d be dead 30 years ago. So I think it’s a real true gift.”

When Jamie’s restaurant group – which also included Barbecoa – went bankrupt in 2019, 1000 jobs were lost, and 22 of his 25 eateries closed.

Reflecting on the bankruptcy, Oliver – who is dyslexic – said that “pain and failure is all part of really shaping your peripheral vision and your senses”.

He continued: “I think, whatever it is that you’re trying to do, you might not have failed because you were wrong, sometimes I’ve failed because I was too early and people weren’t ready. Sometimes I’ve failed because I was too late.

“Sometimes I’ve failed and I got all the hard bits right and I got the basics wrong because I spent a lifetime refusing to accept any responsibility around numbers and maths – which goes back to school, it’s my issue not the school’s issue – you know I was in the worst group for maths, I didn’t pass maths at school.

“Conceptually within that, yeah I’m thick. I have a negative view of myself when it comes to maths.

“So when I lost my restaurants, you know, all the hard stuff we got right – all the stuff that most people struggle getting right, we got right, we were really good at the hard stuff – and like, it was really the basics.”