'I arrived here as a child refugee now I'm a chef at top restaurants'

As This Day Foundation gives £900,000 to our appeal, we share a remarkable story

- BY DAVID COHEN

MASTER CHEF Nestor, who worked his way up from being a kitchen porter

When Nestor was a teenager and living in the Democratic Republic of Congo, he became a target for armed militias recruiting child soldiers.

They came to his school, pulling pupils out against their will. As the conflict escalated and with his life in peril, his uncle flew with him to Scotland, doing his best to get him to safety - but then left him to his own devices at a Glasgow train station.

Nestor was only 16. He didn't have any money, didn't speak any English and had never been outside the DRC. His father, a prominent political journalist, had died two years previously and Nestor was estranged from his mother, so when his uncle left him on that railway platform, he was utterly alone in an alien world. His uncle later passed away, and they never saw each other again.

"It was a very dark moment in my life," he says of that day at the station. "I was scared and couldn't find anyone who spoke my language. After wandering around, I saw a random black man who I approached for help. Luckily, we both spoke a little Swahili and he directed me to the Scottish Refugee Council."

More than a decade later, Nestor - now 29 and a top chef who has worked at Michelin-star restaurants in Edinburgh and London - recounts his extraordinary story. There are things "too traumatic" to talk about, he says - including the circumstances surrounding his father's death, which he describes as 'political'. But there is much he does want to speak about, starting with how the Scottish Refugee Council - and later cooking - saved his life.