I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

Being a chef is the best job in the world.

However amazing a dish looks, it is always the taste that lingers in your memory. Family and friends will appreciate a meal that tastes superb-even if you've brought the pan to the table.

The issue I have is that the cooking techniques are up for questioning, today more than ever before. If you waterbath beef at 22-degrees for 12 hours, it may taste fantastic, but if you don't cook food at a high enough temperature, you risk not killing the bacteria. Things like that make me nervous of venturing into it.

Jack, my 16 year old, was in knots a couple of months back, studying for Latin. I said, Mate, you've got no interest in Latin. You don't want to go into it after, so drop it. He said, No, I can't. I'm going to get bullied at school because all my mates are in there. There's a prime example of why no one cooks at school. You're studying Latin, you've got no interest.

How are these people deserving huge payouts for losing weight when they should have done it without the camera or without a team helping them? Then, six months later you go back and find out where they are, and they're in a worse state than they were in before they joined the f -- ing show. Then they blame the producer.

Given that level of responsibility with your 25-year old or 35-year-old chef, it's just quite nice to see how they handled that exposure. Not every chef deals with it properly; they get slightly excited, a little bit overconfident and then they miss out on the most important part.

Something you need to do three times a day, seven days a week, and something you need to stop worrying about. If kids don't know how to cook, they go to junk, and then the junk becomes addictive, and then all of a sudden they're left with no choice.

My mum doesn't enjoy sometimes listening to me tell staff off, and I say to my mum, it's a kitchen, not a hair-dressing salon.

If a chef says to you that he sits down and eats dinner before service, then it's bulls***. And if they do, then I'd tell them that they are a fat f***! You shouldn't indulge, because you need to keep your palate on edge, and keeping it on edge is all about small attention to detail and tweaking along the way.

There's a side to reality TV that is part education, as well. I've seen that since doing MasterChef Junior, in terms of the effect it has on the confidence given these young kids from 8 to 13, a quality life skill. Even if they never pursue cooking as a job or a career, just learning how to cook for yourself sets you up in a good place.

That's what we do on MasterChef, on Junior. No school teachers, no parents, let it go. You're going to go on a challenge. We're going to go to hell and back, and we're going to have some bumps.

Certainly in business terms, considering how thriving the market is. Understanding what people want is essential. We have a team on the ground whose job it is to keep tabs on what's good, whether it's a tapas bar in Barcelona, or an amazing fish and chip shop in Yorkshire.

I am the most unselfish chef in Britain today.

I was a naturally aggressive left-back, a cut-throat tackler.

I still love football, though, and I think cooking is like football. It's not a job, it's a passion. When you become good at it, it's a dream job and financially you need never to worry. Ever.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody's ego, that's it, game over.

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner's medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it's three-Michelin's stars, there's no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it's too assertive to the naked eye.

I spend more time in the kitchen than I have in the dining room, for obvious reasons, however, I just want to sit and indulge.