Being a sport star and a chef both require passion, commitment, work and natural ability.

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.

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.

Sometimes someone coming in doesn't have the natural passion for it, but they find it through the coaching or mentoring I give them. I'm sort of opening curtains or blinds and all of a sudden they see it, they get it.

Chef means boss and in France you get an office chef and you get a chef on a building site, etc. So I'm a chef de cuisine, chef of the kitchen, and that means that I'm in charge of a team.

This is wonderful for a young person, no matter what profession they're in. When you can see something and you can feel this attraction to it, then it becomes less of me trying to teach them as they teach themselves. They've got it and bang off they go.

We [chefs] are competitive, although I think you need to be careful with competitiveness as it can become quite negative.

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.