Jamie Oliver is running late. This is hardly surprising for someone who seems to have more projects, both business and philanthropic, than seems humanly possible. Normally, such a delay is tedious. In the cheerfully industrious offices at the hub of Oliver’s burgeoning empire, it’s a pleasure. Friendly staff bombard you with offers of coffee and freshly baked cakes. Attempts to refuse are greeted with blank incomprehension, so I settle for a pear frangipane with fresh cream. It is indescribably good. I’m offered more. If Oliver doesn’t arrive soon, I’ll need a new outfit to accommodate my expanding stomach.

Fortunately, just as my willpower is nearing surrender, he arrives, all busy apologies and bloke-ish bonhomie. He is, as with his TV persona, extremely affable, entertaining, and just a little manic. He’s already packed more into a day than most would into a week, including experimenting with making some new Focaccia breads, two loaves of which he packs me off home with. (They are, surprise, surprise, superb. If this is bribery, it works.)

His new four-part TV series, Jamie’s Chef, starting on 31st January, sees him select one chef from a group of the most promising graduates of his Fifteen restaurant and training scheme. The winning chef will be given his own restaurant to run, with financial support supplied by the Fifteen foundation. In a rare quiet moment, Jamie reveals why this series was torture for him to make, how he plans to revolutionise the restaurant industry, and why Richard Madeley threw him out of his kitchen.

You’ve put an extraordinary amount of time into the Fifteen Foundation, not to mention money. Why?
I think a mixture of things initially: Guilt. Not feeling very comfortable about being successful. Being very young. Having spent, although not a delinquent childhood, spent all my years at school as a special needs kid. And feeling that I’m in a pretty unique position and actually it had to be two-way traffic really, and in what shape and form does that come? Everyone’s got particular opinions about education and training these days, but we live in a funny country - it’s very media-based, very service-industry-based, but try finding an English plumber, or a carpenter. Chefs are in the same category, I’m afraid. So it’s about helping people out but also about getting some decent young British chefs out there.

Why do you think it’s worked so well?
I guess as time’s gone on it’s been about an opportunity to offer apprenticeship-style practical learning of a bloody high level, camouflaged as a charity in the form of one of the top restaurants in the city. Because it’s teaching the trainees by not just cooking for a kitchen or a lecturer but cooking for real customers who take no prisoners. To turn that business into something that works is really tough. It took us three years to get fifteen even beginning to be profitable. Now it’s an efficient little workhorse - we netted over £400 grand this year in net profit.

When you set up the foundation, was it part of the eventual plan to give one of the graduates of Fifteen their own restaurant to run?
Absolutely. The original brief, before we’d even started, was to train a bunch of kids from really tough backgrounds, put them in front of a gaggle of incredible experts, track them through their career, and promise them that if they graft like a bastard and make you proud, that one day you’ll help them to set up their own restaurant. And once you do that, it’s up to them to pay it forward and, in some shape or form, inspire the next generation of chefs. So for me this project we’re doing is the completion of that. All that needs to happen now is that that restaurant works, that it’s profitable. Then there will be many more, if this works. If it doesn’t work, there’s no way the foundation’s trustees will ever let me do anything so radical and entrepreneurial again with charity money. If it works, imagine how the next generation of kids will react to having someone who was in their shoes do so well.

So this could be the first of many restaurants for graduates of Fifteen to run?
Yeah. Every year I’ve always promised the trainees “If you’re really good, and you’re long term, and not erratic and back on crack or this that and the other, we will try and hook you up with your own restaurant. At least now I can say that I’m not bullshitting. And, in all honesty, it was always the original plan, and I drew a little drawing, like a family tree, when I first started, showing that if these kids go off and they set up their own thing and train more kids. See, I came into the industry professionally at the age of 16 or 17, when things were really quite bad. It was all “Fuck off you c***!” and burning and slapping and physical and verbal abuse. Chefs were very famous for being fucking horrible. And it’s not all like that. Like any trade there are some horrible bastards, but I only want to work with positive people, and everyone that I’ve worked with has also been positive, and a positive attitude and patience and good practice can achieve some amazing results.

One thing that’s interesting in this series is it’s clearly the trustees who get to call the shots, it’s not you in charge of everything. Was that difficult for you?
It was torture. Even though I gave birth to the Fifteen Foundation, it’s a real charity, it’s got trustees, it’s surrounded by law and paperwork, and I just can’t do what I want to do. I was handcuffed, and it was horrible. I wasn’t used to it, and it was a real exercise in learning that I can’t always get my own way, or get things moving as quickly as I’d like. It was awful, actually, but we got there.

The new restaurant in this series is a pub in Essex, The Cock. You’ve gone full circle, haven’t you?
Yeah, I started in the kitchen of my dad’s pub in Essex, The Cricketers. It’s 40 minutes from The Cock – far enough away not to be too much competition. It’s funny, my dad never initially liked the idea of Fifteen, he never got it. And that’s not because he’s a bad person, it’s because he’s never made an easy pound in the catering industry. He’s done well, but he’s always worked for it. He didn’t like the concept, but through this series he got to understand it. For the final part of his training, the winning chef went and worked for my dad for a couple of weeks, and actually they got on very well, and became very close. Dad was mentoring him much as he mentored me when I was younger. So dad got it, which was really important to me. And what was interesting was that when our chef left the kitchen, dad’s chefs were fired up with some new ideas as well.

So how’s The Cock doing now?
They’re doing well. Is it vulnerable? Yes. Are they established yet? No. Do they have enough staff yet? No. It’s a brand new business, and it’s a possible bucket, with thousands of holes in, and its got plasters all over it. It’s so easy to lose money and quite hard to make any. Are they busy? Pretty. Is the food good? The last two meals I’ve had there were pretty damn good, actually. So it looks good, but it could go tits-up at any time.

You run a restaurant business, you do TV, books, the Fifteen Foundation, advertising work, and you’ve got a young family. Does it ever cross your mind that you might have taken on a bit too much?
Yeah. But you can’t help who you are. And I’m a fucking liability. I’m hyperactive, I love anything creative, I’m constantly coming up with ideas, and if I like it that much I’ll do it regardless of anything or anyone. And that’s just what makes me happy. In the last year-and-a-half I have had quality time off with my family. Weekends are absolutely untouchable, I have a proper amount of holiday. My missus demanded that and she got that. It was hard at the start but it’s easy now, I love it. I feel really happy, but I still can’t help the fact that I’ve an avalanche of shite every week. Every week I’ll come up with new things, new concepts or developing new breads.

Do you ever develop stuff that turns out to be rubbish?
Yeah, all the time. But without portraying myself as a genius, which I’m not, once you understand the construct ion of a dish, or writing an article, you shouldn’t go too far wrong. You might just be average, but there will be very few absolutely awful mistakes. Then again, there’s nothing worse than average. You try and do fantastic things, life’s too short to do steak and chips all the time, you’ve got to try and find new things. You’ve got to look at old, old hand-written cookbooks, food from different ethnicities, other people’s habits or likes, texture, soft, crunchy, chewy, melt-in-the-mouth, salty, sweet. There’s only so many strings on a guitar, but look at how many songs you can play. It’s exciting to experiment, but yeah, I fuck up. Not that often, but I do.

Of all of the projects that you’ve done, is there one that you’re most proud of?
I think it’s got to be School Dinners. It’s not a written-off pride, because we’re still at the beginning, really. I reckon I’ll be doing this for another ten years, representing, working, researching and being among School Dinners. You can work to get commitments from the government, but then you have to sit back and watch the government deliver. You have to be quite patient to wait for that to be done, and I’m trying to be patient.

What did you make of the fast food mums who took orders from the kids and bought them burgers and stuff, which they passed through the railings?
Anything renegade at school will be embraced, because that’s cool. We’ve all been there. But morally I don’t think it was right. There’s always two sides of the coin. According to our research, that school lacked the equipment, help, staff, support to be able to be able to produce good food with fresh ingredients. But I definitely don’t agree with what the girls did, it’s like bootlegging, really. But if I ever wanted to imply that there’s an army of knob-ends out there who are willing to do all sorts of shit regardless of the health of their kids, I would struggle to put that into words. But those images of those big old birds selling their sloppy old shit, and all those little hands poking out through the railings, said it all really.

Do your friends ever cook for you?
No. I’ve been cooked for by friends twice in the last ten years. Not including family. Partly because a lot of my friends are lazy bastards, and are fucking useless. They’re not very good at doing domestic things. And also just fear of cooking for me. Jason Flemyng – you know the actor? – he was the first person who’s cooked for me in the last ten years. He cooked me a very nice dinner. Bang and cheese – a West Indian dish.

Because I interviewed Richard and Judy last weekend…
…Yeah, they’re the second people who have cooked for me.

So what’s Richard’s cooking like? I reckon he fancies himself as something of a chef.
He was very good actually. It was very funny – lovely dinner, he cooked a lovely bit of beef, and he cooked it just perfect. He did all the veg and all the trimmings, and out of pure politeness I went into the kitchen to say can I carry anything or give you a hand. He told me to fuck off! I thought ‘Richard, you’re the face of daytime telly, you can’t tell me to fuck off! I’m the one with the foul mouth!’

Do you ever think about going back to basics, jacking it all in and cooking in a pub, buying your own ingredients, getting on with it?
No. I think life changes, you get older, you get married, you have kids, your opinions change and evolve. It would be very lovely for me to do what I originally dreamt of doing, which was to run my own brilliant pub in the country that was quite small and lovely and quaint. But life changes, and as other opportunities present themselves, sometimes you have to do them.

How long are you going to keep on going for?
I don’t know. Everyone’s asking me what I want to do next year, and do you know what the truth is? I haven’t got a fucking clue. But it’ll come, and hopefully it’ll be remotely interesting. Will I still be working this hard on this many things when I’m 55? I don’t know. I want to get to a point where I’m having more holiday, but don’t we all. I really enjoy the people I work with, I love the industry that I work in, and I’m really enjoying being able to work across such a broad expanse of things. It’s really exciting and really rewarding, and being hyperactive I can’t put a stop to it.

Jamie’s Chef starts on Channel 4 on Wednesday 31st January at 9pm.