Oh Jamie, this is like a show with a star who can't sing

I don't want to name-drop," a pal said, as he finished a story about partying with will.i.am. "But Andrew Lloyd Webber said to me last week, 'look, it's Jamie Oliver. He'll automatically get a spanking from the press. Be kind." Perhaps. As it is, Google News records 64 positive Oliver press stories from the past week which - call me a cynic - smacks of publicity bods flooding the internet in the hope of hiding bad reviews. Banning Turkey Twizzlers aside (worse than Maggie and the milk, I reckon), Oliver's been a target since the 2019 crumbling of his British restaurant empire, which left debts of £83 million and a reported 1,000 staff out of work. The chef himself was ruined.

- David Ellis

Jamie Oliver Catherine St

6 Catherine Street, WC2B 5JY. Meal for two plus drinks and service about £180. Open Monday to Sunday, noon10pm, jamieolivercatherinest.com 

Wait, hang on, sorry. He actually took a £5.2 million payout that year while settling into his new £6 million Elizabethan pile. "I don't know if you guys have ever had a second chance," he said sombrely at Catherine St's launch, "but this is mine!" Given it's a second chance where Lloyd Webber is the landlord, there were plenty of dry eyes in the house. And yet Oliver helped change the way many of us see food. His recipes work. He's likeable, sincere, appealingly emotional. "It would make much more of a story, really," I said as we shivered up to the door, "if this were a rave review".

Oliver grew up in his parents' pub, was on the pass at 14, and Catherine St is serving food inspired by those days, and those that followed at the River Café, Fifteen and Barbecoa. "I don't want it to be cool. I want it to be predictable," he says.