What often separates the good from the great is a layer of innate ability, a gift, so it's partly that. There's many people with great gifts who don't work hard enough, or perhaps take it for granted, and therefore they don't have the passion and the commitment for it.

You need good energy and you need to be fit because it's very tiring. A lot of the work is quite heavy and quite smelly. That's why girls drift out of the kitchen because they get fed up smelling like fish and vegetables and things like that.

There are many different types of people that end up coming to me and saying 'Yeah I want to cook.' Some of them successful, some not. There's no one formula, but if I get someone coming through the backdoor who knows that they want to get into the cooking field, they feel this inside-out love for it, this attraction to it, that person is an awful lot easier to work with.

The work element comes into it as well - how much you train and how much work you put into your craft, in the same way a carpenter would perhaps work under a great teacher, etc.

It really helps if you've got something like cycling, walking, running or swimming that can let your body release all that tension and keep your muscles fit.

The thing that gave me most pride about it was to see the smiles and the pride on my staff's faces, because a restaurant is a team thing, and for the whole team it's very much that touchy-feely thing that I could have helped them achieve such an award.

One of the great awards from a chef's point of view are Michelin stars. The ultimate is three Michelin stars. For example, Gordon Ramsey has three Michelin stars. Having one Michelin star is a big deal, two is incredible and having three puts you in a bracket of maybe 30 chefs worldwide.