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Most pensioners fondly remember the time when a chef was a fat bloke in a gravy-stained shirt who was occasionally found slumped in a drunken stupor among the bins by the back door of the kitchen. Today, however, chefs are ubiquitous celebrities and it virtually impossible to watch TV or read a paper without coming across at least several hundred of them.
In general, chefs now fall into three main categories.
1. Those who swear a lot, throw things and treat their staff and customers with equal contempt.
2. Those who only use ingredients you’ve never heard of, can’t buy in any shop and add nasturtiums to every dish.
3. Those who publish ghost-written books, usually about renovating Tuscan villas.
In the past few years, however, there has been a sharp decline in the number of people from catering college becoming chefs, and the Sunday Times Insight team has revealed that up to 90% of graduates have been dipped in chocolate and eaten by Greg Wallace.