Nick Nairn - cooking up a treat

Fans of Ready Steady Cook (the longest running cookery show on TV) will already be familiar with celebrity chef Nick Nairn. He’s been one of the show’s stalwarts since the first series back in 1994, and has also made regular appearances on other television programmes such as This Morning, The One Show, Saturday Kitchen, and the Great British Menu in which he won the accolade of preparing the main course at Queen Elizabeth II’s official celebration for her 80th birthday. Off our screens, what may not be known is that he was the youngest chef in Scotland to be awarded a Michelin star and he has since gone on to establish the UK’s leading cook school.
During a break in teaching at his cook school Nick Nairn chatted to me – his melodic Highland accent friendly and familiar – about his return next month to Christchurch Food and Wine Festival.
“I came down to the Christchurch Food and Wine Festival for the first time three or four years ago; and I’m doing it again this year partly because I really enjoyed it and it was well organised with fabulous local produce, especially the fish and shellfish, but also because my wife, Holly, is from that part of the world, she’s from Southampton. So this time she’s coming down with me and bringing the kids and we’re going to spend a couple of days exploring the area and visiting relatives and letting the kids see where their Mum's from as they’ve never been down to the South Coast before.
“The event itself has grown in stature very much as well; it’s a fantastic Festival and it’s got a really good organiser who looks after you and makes sure all the hard work is done behind the scenes, making it all very easy, and it's a delight to use such wonderful produce and that is coming from a Scot!”
The Festival is also, increasingly, moving towards those areas, education and health, which are of particular interest to Nick.
“Those two subjects are very close to my heart – I’m a passionate advocate of better diet for children and adults, reducing salt, refined sugars and saturated fat in our diet and incorporating a higher percentage of fresh fruit and vegetables. Somewhere like Christchurch Food and Wine Festival is a great opportunity to demonstrate how easy it is to do that – especially if you've got really fresh ingredients. If you’re using ingredients that intrinsically have lots of value and are tasty in their own right, you don’t have to do anything to them to make them sing.”
With the recent demise of Reading Steady Cook, which was given the chop at the end of last year, Nick has lost a useful platform for advocating healthy eating. But it had also been an important part of his working and social life for around 16 years. Whatever rivalry there was on the programme between the competing chefs did not exist away from the cameras.
“Ready Steady Cook was a big part of my life and a big part of my social life. I met my wife because she worked for Ready Steady Cook… I have a lot of friends in London and because I no longer film Ready Steady Cook every couple of weeks, there’s less of a reason to be in London so I don’t get to see my London chef pals as much as I would like to. Paul Rankin and I are best mates; we knew one another before Ready Steady Cook, but we’ve become best mates since; he was best man at my wedding.
“Phil Vickery’s a good pal, Tony Tobin is a good pal, Ainsley’s a great pal…” Nick lists the chefs. “We were a very close tight-knit team… And, of course, lovely Lesley [Waters] is a good pal as well, and, of course, as Lesley is patron of Christchurch Food and Wine Festival we’ll still be working together.”
The long-running TV series is just one of many highlights in his long career. I wondered which one stood out above the rest. Was it being the youngest chef in Scotland to be awarded a Michelin star or preparing the main course for Queen Elizabeth II’s official 80th birthday celebrations?
“That was quite a big gig… quite an experience,” Nick recalls.  “It felt quite special and, of course, it’s something that will never be done again.”
He adds, “Getting my first Michelin star was a big turning point in my career, and opening various restaurants… But I think the thing I’m most proud of is creating the cook school at Port of Menteith [in the foothills of the Trossachs in the heart of some of Scotland’s finest scenery].
“A lot of hard work and effort has been put into that and a lot of money as well, but it has fantastic facilities, it’s the UK’s leading cook school with the finest facilities in the country. Nothing gets close to what we do here. We have great people, that’s the number one thing… My team are all at the top of their game whether it’s the chefs or the managers or the guys behind the scenes.
“It’s a fantastic building, architect-designed and purpose-built with the best cookers, the best cookware, the best knives… and our access to ingredients is second to none across the UK. We’ve been doing this for a long time, we’ve been teaching for 11 years now, so we know how to communicate with people, and we know how to get our message across. Of all the things that I’ve done, the creation of the cook school is the one that I’m most proud of.
“We get younger kids and older people, it’s wide-ranging, but mainly Scots. About 10 per cent of customers come from the south and two or three per cent from overseas, but they’re all passionate about and interested in cooking. Today the ages range from 25 to 75 and there are equal numbers of ladies and gents.
“Masterchef is always interesting for me because it always throws up…” He hesitates and starts again, a touch of pride evident in his voice, “...I think there are two of the guys in the current series have been to the cook school. But we usually deal with the average consumer who range from not being able to get toast out of the machine to being quite nifty with a whisk.”
Perhaps he finds it so easy to inspire others as Nick’s own skills are self-taught; travel was his inspiration.
“I was a navigator in the Navy so it was just travelling around the world that opened my eyes to the amazing cuisines I’d never encountered before. I was in Singapore and I had satay for the first time… I was in Milan and had pasta for the first time… I was in Naples and had pizza which I’d never had before. I just got very passionate about eating out.
“Then when I left the Navy and was studying at college, I couldn’t afford to eat out so I decided I would teach myself to cook. I was just very fortunate that I discovered the thing that I was good at, at a stage in my life when I was able to make a career from it. I don’t think many people ever get that opportunity so I feel very thankful for discovering that at that time of my life.”

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