Jamie: I'm conceptually thick and I didn't get basics right... so my restaurants went bust

JAMIE Oliver has told how failure and pain “shape your senses” in a hard-hitting interview about losing his restaurant empire.

- By Mark Jefferies

The TV chef and healthy food campaigner, 50, admitted he did not grasp the basics of the business and was “conceptually thick” when it came to doing the maths.

Jamie, below, once ran dozens of UK restaurants and others around the world, had a TV series and it seemed that nothing could go wrong.

But in 2019 a financial crisis led to the collapse of his UK restaurant group, including Jamie's Italian and Barbecoa. It triggered 1,000 job losses and the closure of 22 of his 25 British restaurants.