Jamie Oliver: Under starters orders

THERE is a close-up of Jamie Oliver which is taken from his forthcoming TV series. If you look carefully, you can see tears running down his cheeks. Or at least that's what the caption claims.

So what was it that touched the normally upbeat Essex boy so deeply he broke down in front of the cameras? Was it the intractability of the conflict in Afghanistan? Or images of starving orphans in the debris of Haiti? No, it was the fact that the fast food guzzlers of Huntingdon, West Virginia – dubbed the fattest town in America – couldn't tell the difference between a potato and a tomato. Also that – for once – the natives were failing to heed his message and let him into their hearts. "They don't understand me. They don't know why I'm here," he reportedly sobbed to his crew.

It's always been easy to mock Jamie Oliver: there's his ridiculous barrow boy pretensions, for starters; the "mockney" phrases, the "bish bosh" this and the "pukka" that, even though he is the son of pub-owners and a former grammar school boy. He hasn't much sense of irony, accepting a 1 million contract to be the face of Sainsbury's, while banging on about the iniquities of supermarkets. And he is such a bizarre blend of do-gooder and self-publicist that it is often difficult to see where the marketing exercise ends and the social mission begins. Like a Bob Geldof for the prosperous West, the 34-year-old swaggers and swears his way through his ambitious attempts to Feed the World (a little bit better).

Now the meatball Messiah is bringing his brand to another city known for its poor eating habits: Glasgow. Last week, he announced he would be opening a 250-seater restaurant – the first of the Jamie's Italian chain north of the Border – in the old GPO building in the city's George Square. But with a succession of celebrity chefs, including Gordon Ramsay, Nick Nairn and Gary Rhodes opening – and then quietly closing – Scottish ventures, will Oliver succeed where so many of his predecessors have failed?

The consensus seems to be yes, probably. Ever since Oliver began his money-making career flogging sweets from school lockers, he has exhibited an extraordinary talent for making a go of things. Whether it's his ambition to wipe Turkey Twizzlers off the face of the earth (Jamie's School Dinners), or his dream of transforming the lives of 15 alienated young people by turning them into chefs and giving them a restaurant (Fifteen), he has the determination to drive the most improbable project forward.

Apparently unpretentious and reasonably priced, the restaurant seems particularly suited to Glasgow, known for its long-standing love affair with Italian food and its canny ways.

Of course, no-one is as confident in the Oliver's ability to succeed as Oliver himself, and such self-belief can begin to grate after a while. In 2003, he came Number 28 in a poll of 100 worst Britons, as his supersize ego, his constant pontification and his determination to turn his entire life into a product began to pall. The most nauseating aspect of his rampant narcissism is perhaps the way he commodifies his homelife. He married his wife, former model Juliette "Jools" Norton, in a ceremony which included an Elvis impersonator singing I Can't Help Falling In Love, in 2000. Their happiness was briefly tarnished by the news that Jools was suffering from polycystic ovaries, but IVF treatment has brought them a hat-trick of children – Poppy Honey, seven, Daisy Boo, six, and Petal Blossom, nine months. Since then, Jools has set herself up as a children's author – with her first book The Adventures Of Dotty And Bluebell published in 2008 – and she and the girls are an integral part of the Oliver brand. Open any of his cookbooks and there they are, eating at a rustic wooden table in their house in Primrose Hill or having a picnic in the countryside around their Essex home.

As if Oliver didn't already have a big enough platform for his personality, there is also the bi-monthly Jamie Magazine, featuring Jamie's diary, Jamie's recipes, information on Jamie's books and Jamie's DVDs and lots of lovely photographs of, you guessed it, Jamie. It feels as if it ought to be a Private Eye parody, but it's for real.

However, where Gordon Ramsay so often uses his fame to humiliate and patronise others (see his latest show, Gordon's Great Escape, where he tours India like a throwback to the Raj and telling eminent chefs they're the "dog's bollocks."), Oliver seems to have a genuine respect, both for the food he cooks and for those whose diet he's trying to transform.

His lack of academic ability (dyslexic, he left school at 16 with no qualifications), is more than compensated for by an innate ability to get on with people. It was the affectionate, though sometimes fractious, relationship he struck up with dinner lady Nora Sands that made Jamie's School Dinners such a hit. And though he called rebel mum Julie Critchlow "a big, old scrubber" when she passed fish suppers through the gates of her local school in protest at his attempts to get children to eat more healthily, it wasn't long before they were muckers, and she was spearheading his attempt to teach the town of Rotherham how to use a saucepan.

He also has a way of getting people to pay attention to him. Having started cooking at the age of eight in The Cricketers, his parents' pub in Clavering, and trained at Westminster Catering College, Oliver joined Antonio Carluccio's Neal Street Restaurant as a pastry chef. When not working, he played drums with his band Scarlet Division, a fixture on the London circuit in the 1990s. Then – while working as a sous chef at the River Cafe – he took part in a documentary and was spotted by a sharp-eyed TV producer.

He has been getting people to sit up and take notice ever since. He persuaded the then Prime Minister Tony Blair to invest an extra 280 million in school dinners, getting a MBE for his efforts, but declining a role as Britain's hospital tsar.

Now the richest celebrity chef in the country – worth an estimated 40m – he seems to be an unstoppable force. No-one has been able to unearth any skeletons in Oliver's closet, despite their best efforts. Way back, when Oliver was starting work on Fifteen, a reporter secured a place as one of the "underprivileged" youngsters in an attempt to dig the dirt, but found a life free from sleaze.

Perhaps – given the negative pre-publicity – Jamie's Food Revolution will be his downfall. But then the notion that the US's unhealthiest town is actively resisting his advances may simply be part of the spin; the bigger the backlash, after all, the greater Oliver's triumph when he finally persuades them to embrace his world view. Heck, they might even elect him mayor.

• Jamie Oliver claims to have recently discovered he is sixth generation Sudanese.

• In 2003, fellow chef Clarissa Dickson Wright, right, called him a "whore" for endorsing Sainsbury's Scottish farmed salmon and accused him of "selling his soul" to the company.

• "As soon as I was old enough to peer over the worktops, I remember being fascinated by what went on in the kitchen. It just seemed such a cool place, everyone working together to make this lovely stuff and having a laugh doing it." Oliver on his love of cooking.

• He is a great advocate of eating road kill. His TV production company Fresh One made the programme Road Kill Cafe for the BBC featuring recipes such as badger meatballs and wild squirrel stew.

• "Many kids can tell you about drugs, but do not know what celery or courgettes taste like." Oliver on children's poor eating habits.