Raw: My Autobiography: The Autobiography

by Antony Worrall Thompson (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.25

  Antony Worrall Thompson's passage to culinary stardom has not exactly been smooth. Abandoned by his father, a Shakespearean actor, when he was just three, Antony was sexually abused and maltreated throughout his childhood. His extra-curricular activities at boarding school included pushing cars into the swimming pool and generally getting on the teacher's nerves. Antony's story very nearly came to an abrupt halt at sixteen when his face was crushed in a horrific rugby accident, which left him badly disfigured and chronically insecure. But pioneering surgery saved the day, enabling him to pursue what was to become the enduring love of his life - cooking. After much hard graft and some close encounters of the violent gangster kind, AWT's flamboyant style as a restaurateur soon bought him to the attention of cookery's cognoscenti. Things didn't always run according to plan, however - he once had to serve tinned tomato soup, tarted up with croutons and basil, to the customers in his restaurant because there wasn't time to make his own from scratch. (They loved it.) And today Antony is to the culinary establishment what a bull is to a china shop. His no-nonsense style in the kitchen is loathed by a few, but loved by millions. Stuffed with hugely entertaining anecdotes and lightly sprinkled with AWT's no-holds-barred opinions, RAW is a heartrendingly honest story of triumph over adversity. Along the way we go behind the scenes with the foodie mafia and Antony lifts the lid on a few triple-Michelin-starred scandals. The knives (and the forks!) are very definitely out...

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.25

  This is the autobiography of Britain's best-loved celebrity chef, revealing the man behind the recipes and lifting the lid on the bizarre world of the food mafia. Antony Worral Thompson's success has not been easily won. After an extraordinary and difficult childhood (he ran away from home aged 5), his story nearly came to an abrupt halt at 16, when a rugby accident left him horribly disfigured - and enormously insecure. Pioneering surgery saved the day and Worral Thompson found his feet as a chef, eventually helping to set up the Menage a Trois restaurant chain in 1981. Meanwhile his tempestuous love life was developing apace and his flamboyant style as restaurateur was making waves in the culinary establishment. Eventually came his big break into television and he's never looked back. With no formal training as a chef, Worral Thompson's rise to fame was unconventional to say the least, involving as it did Essex gangsters, back room brawls and some triple Michelin-starred scandals.