Renowned chef James Martin has spoken about a situation at school where he found himself in tears every week. Speaking on the Spooning podcast with Mark Wogan earlier this year James, 52, said he struggled at school and “hated” large parts of it. He also went into detail about his life at school and what he would be doing in his spare time and during the holidays when everyone was chilling out.
James, who hosts ITV ’s Saturday Morning, espoused his love for cooking and his role as a chef as something he’d wanted to do since he was eight years old. At school, James ruminated: “I hated it. I failed all my exams at school.
I didn’t enjoy it. I loved the cooking side of it but I couldn’t do it academically because..
.you had to pass things these full exams and I would never pass an exam in my life. “I left school with no qualifications.
I’m not proud of it but I used to hate Wednesdays. Wednesday [was a] spelling test. “I’d be in tears on a Wednesday night, I’d have 20,000 words to write because I knew that I would get every single one of them wrong.
“[I was a] massive dyslexic , never read a book in my life apart from I think Peter and Jane level B2 was probably the last one I read when I was at primary school. I just longed to be cooking and so hand in hand with being at school I was working every weekend.” James added: “In the summer holidays when everybody would just chill out, I used to go France and I was working at two-star Michelin places and chateaus and places like that.
All I ever wanted to be was to be a chef from the age of eight years old so I just needed that spark.” This isn’t the first time James has opened up about his past. Talking with the hosts of the Travel Diaries podcast in 2023, he talked about an incident with Rick Stein when he was working for the BBC .
He recalled: “I was doing my old show on the BBC , and Rick Stein ...
I was coming out of a Rick Stein VT, and usually I sort of, I'm reading the autocue thinking I can't spell that, I can't say that, so I've got to change this. “But for some reason, I didn't because I was too busy getting prepped with bits and pieces and chatting to my guests, and I remember just looking up - James, we're coming to you in five, four, three, two, one, and I read it. "And for some reason, I just got all my words mixed up.
What it was supposed to say was, 'what a delicious looking dish, Rick; now I'm going to do spotted dick and custard, and now I'm going to show you what to do'." "What I said was, 'what a delicious looking d**k, Rick', and before I even got the apology out, they're laughing in my ear. I've got the BBC laughing in one ear, producers wetting themselves.
“I just wanted to find a hole to cry in, and I had to carry on - you had to carry on for 12 minutes live, knowing full well that all the while you're doing this, and the producers are in my ear going, 'it's gone viral, it's gone viral', and you're trending all over the place.”.
