While most of us are snoozing in bed at 5am, the chef Gary Rhodes is doing
his 250th sit-up in his home gym, having risen 30 minutes earlier, brushed
his teeth and fastidiously scrubbed his hands. Next, he’ll shower, dress
immaculately, grab an instant coffee and rush to work before anyone else, so
that he’s “in control”.
At 47, Rhodes’s life is so self-disciplined that he deserves the title,
robo-chef. Now he’s sharing some of that personal efficiency with his latest
cookbook, Time To Eat, 120 simple, mostly healthy, mostly quick
recipes created so that we can all beat that taskmaster of the 21st century
– the clock. It’s a timely proposition. Just to keep pace with our society’s
spiralling aspirations, we all must chase harder. So maybe it makes sense to
take tips from a lifestyle pentathlete such as Rhodes. He’s all achievement,
whip-taut under his ironed shirt and slacks. “It’s my 20th year in
television. And this is my 18th cookbook,” he announces as we settle in a
back room of a breakfast TV studio.
The old trademark spiky hair is long gone, but there’s something jagged about
his abundant, smiling energy. He was one of Britain’s first celebrity chefs,
with his solo TV show, Rhodes Around Britain; he’s launched five
Michelin-starred restaurants and is reportedly worth more than £8 million.
But still he is driven. Now it’s not just to give kitchen tips, but to offer
perfect life-support.
“When I started writing books I wanted to share my best dishes, such as
lobster omelette thermidor. It’s a professional dish rather than an easy
one. But now time has become less for us all. Work is more. I get home on
the train sometimes at 10pm and there are people who’ve just finished their
office day. I want to make it easier for them.”
“I’m fanatical about scrubbing my hands”
The happily married father of two hardly makes it easy for himself: “I get up
at around 4.30am. I have a gym at home where I work out six days a week. On
working days I do 30 minutes, at weekends up to two and half hours,” he says
in his semi-polished Estuary accent. “My main exercise is abdominals – this
morning I did 150 but that’s because I was rushed. Normally I do between 200
and 300. Then I do weights. I’ve got a gym machine. And I’ve got a treadmill
that looks really good, but I never use it.
“I’m on my feet all day. I never work on my legs, I never go running. They’re
matchsticks.” We’re going beyond dedicated here, eh Gary? “It’s a
psychological thing. It’s not because I want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But once I’ve been into the gym, I know I’ll feel positive. I may come home
at the end of a day and get depressed about things that haven’t worked. But
every morning I can start again. I jump out of bed, brush my teeth, scrub my
hands – I’m fanatical about scrubbing my hands – shave, gym, shower and I’m
wide awake. A quick instant coffee, I drink loads of coffee, which I slurp
in the Porsche on the way to work. And it’s full-on during the day. I love
being in work before anyone else. I feel then that I’m in control. If I’m
not in a kitchen from the start, I’ll come in and moan about everything:
‘Who did that? Why’s that been left there?’ I like to structure my day
right. And they are long days. At weekends I’ll work at least three quarters
of a day at home, working on menus, recipes, book writing; there are no
distractions.”
It’s a crystal picture: everything super-efficient and rational. Except for
the hand-scrubbing. I notice his snow-white paws and neatly cropped nails.
“Ten years ago a TV producer showed me a close-up of my hands on screen. I
had all this grub below my nails, pepper and chili, it made them look dirty.
Awful,” he says. “I carry a nailbrush when I’m filming. I brought four pairs
of rubber gloves with me today (he’s just been cooking rapid pork stir-fry
on Richard & Judy). I won’t do any preparation without rubber
gloves on. I’m the same at home. My wife and children think I’m a nutcase.
But I can’t get it out of my head. I’ve got to have clean hands.”
For the TV appearance, he’d cooked barehanded: “I’ve just scrubbed my hands,
rubbed them in lemon juice and used one of those metal things, but the smell
of onion won’t go away. He lifts his hands theatrically to his nose. “Ugh!”
His clothes are beyond neat, too. “It’s something I have always taught my
children [Samuel, 19, George, 17],” he says. “First impressions last. It’s
simple things like that, just general manners. That’s the one lesson that is
missing from schools. There’s a strict rule about appearance for my boys
when coming into a restaurant, it’s got to be good. If it’s smart casual,
then it’s got to be smart casual, it’s got to be new jeans. They’ve got to
be polite and respectful to whoever’s serving them. I always tell them that
you won’t get respect unless you earn it and give it. I must say, they are
brilliant boys. I’m very proud of them, proud as Punch. They’re my best
friends as well as my sons.”
Rhodes, a fanatical Manchester United supporter, even lets his hair down with
the boys, though it’s kept within strict bounds: “We have a little room at
home where we watch the football, drink a beer, and generally, well it’s not
always polite. It’s a rule that we go into that room and have lots of fun,
and we don’t ever repeat that behaviour outside it.”
He lost his sense of smell in a road accident
Rhodes’s self-control was learnt young. It helped him to survive – and then to
thrive. He was born in South London but brought up in Gillingham, Kent. When
he was 6, his father ran off with the woman next door, sold the family house
and subsequently disappeared from his Rhodes’s life.
“With my father going, it made me so much stronger,” he says. “I became the
house cook, and, by the age of 13, I took on more and more responsibilities
in the family, such as babysitting. Mum went back to work, and if she left
me the washing and asked me to switch the machine on, I’d make sure that
when she came home it was all sorted and folded too. I wanted to impress and
do more than expected.”
That obsessive self-discipline helped him to overcome a horrific accident just
weeks into his first job as a commis chef in the Amsterdam Hilton. He’d
worked the first 13 days solid, and on his first day off joined a couple of
English lads to see the city’s sights and bars.
“We found ourselves in the path of a tram, jumped out of the way – and I ran
in front of a Transit van. It smashed the back of my head. The back of my
skull is flat. I had to have brain surgery. I was in a coma at one point.”
Aside from the skull injuries, Rhodes had suffered another catastrophe. His
sense of smell had gone. “They asked me to take a smell test, sniffing these
vials, and I couldn’t. I almost lost my career. But I refused to give up.
And over the months it came back. The doctors wanted me to take 12 months
off, but I only took six.” Rhodes says his olfactory sense still plays weird
tricks. “The onion on my hand is killing my nose. But it can take a while
for me to process smells. When a sommelier gives me a wine to sample, I have
to linger at the glass. And I can pick up bad smells quicker than anyone
else.” Is that really the only damage he sustained after such a terrible
accident? Any other deficits? He smirks knowingly: “Yes, but I’m not going
to talk about that.” Oh, go on. “No. That’s for another day. For a book
sometime.”
After the accident, Rhodes strove his way to the top of his super-competitive
industry. But he realises now that all that toil might mean he missed a few
things. “I’ve been with Jennie for the past 29 years and married for 19, but
we had never had a holiday until ten years ago. I was just working all the
time,” he reflects.
“I look at people now, who have children and still work hard, but they found
more time for their children. I only ever took time off once to look after
Sam for three or four days when his brother was born, and Jennie had
undergone a Caesarean. Then I went straight back to work. All I did was
work, work, work, like an idiot.” Now he’s trying to be, well, not
downshifted, but a little less upshifted. “Ten years ago, some friends were
going to Disney, so we went with them. We thought: ‘We need to do this in
future.’ But we’ve not managed it this year. We did four days in Cannes, but
we’ve not had a proper break. We’re going to the Caribbean for a week before
Christmas. But I’ve got a restaurant there, so I’ll work a couple of days.”
Why keep pushing so hard? He gazes at the ceiling. “I don’t really know what I
still want out of this industry. I don’t ever see me retiring. Maybe I’ll
work less. When I’ve gone I would like to be remembered as somebody who
dedicated himself 100 per cent to the industry. If anyone can take
inspiration from that, then it’s more than I could hope for. At Thanet
College in Kent, where I trained and met Jennie, one of the training rooms
is called the Rhodes Room. If it stays like that, I’ll be really gratified.”
“Sweet stuff is my vice”
Oh, and he’d like to put the record straight about his “unhealthy” recipes.
“People said that I had too much cream, butter and salt. So in the new book
I’m looking at the most natural of flavours. I think that Time To
Eat shows the way. I’ve cut back on fatty ingredients and I’m just using
a little drizzle of oil.
“I’ll still do puddings though. We should have treats now and then. I’m all
for healthy food, but you only have one life. Sweet stuff is my vice. I had
two Snickers yesterday. That’s rare. I won’t allow biscuits or cakes or
crisps in the house. They get eaten in a ridiculously short amount of time;
I’m the main culprit. If I make a bread-and-butter pudding, you can’t
believe the amount of cream I put into it. And when you’re finishing that
last scrape of the bowl, you will be in heaven. If you have one of those
once a month, that’ll be just 12 times a year. It’ll be OK, if you’re strict
about puddings at home.”
Time to Eat (Michael Joseph, £25) is available from Times BooksFirst for
£22.50, p&p free: 0870 1608080 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
