Rick Stein: My second wife has saved me from my father's shadow

YOU'LL know him as the TV chef, part bashful schoolboy, part grumpy dad.

ACCOMPANIMENT Jillis still Rick s business partner despite their divorce ACCOMPANIMENT: Jillis still Rick’s business partner despite their divorce [JON LOVE]

You might also recall the stories of him leaving his wife of three decades for a blonde 20 years his junior after a five-year affair. But what you'd never imagine is that Rick Stein, the colourful, charismatic restaurant entrepreneur and presenter of numerous cookery programmes has suffered from low self-esteem his entire life.

In his new memoir Stein writes poignantly of his often tumultuous relationship with his bipolar father that resulted in deep-seated insecurities.

"My father thought I was like him and this similarity made him very uncomfortable. It wasn't as if he was particularly hard on me, it was more that he deprived me of confidence."

Even at Oxford, where he was the party animal who started a mobile disco, Stein remembers he was uneasy in the presence of Martin Amis and journalist and broadcaster Tina Brown, whom he didn't know but would have liked to. "I felt I was quite dim and shouldn't really be at the university in the company of all these bright people so I tended to hide under the cover of being a bit of a heavy. There's a perception that everyone else is cleverer and more handsome than you are. In some ways being at Oxford is as stressful and competitive as trying to make your way in Hollywood."

This lack of confidence doesn't appear to have held him back, at least not in a professional capacity. On December 9 he will cross from screen to stage to perform a live show at the London Palladium. "It's a two-hour show with lots of cooking, an interview and a reading from my book," he explains. "And my middle son Jack will come out and cook Christmas dinner with me on stage.

Rick Stein, TV chef, wife, father, Sarah, Jill Newstead, bipolar, Martin Amis, business, partner Stein is still close with ex- wife Jill pictured [REX ]

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"I still get nervous. Stage fright is a vital part of it. I was watching a programme about Jimi Hendrix - not that I'm comparing myself to him - and apparently he was a very shy and quiet guy yet once you got him on stage there was no stopping him.

"I think for shy people it's away of forcing yourself into doing something outrageous and then you really enjoy it."

Ten years after the bitter end of his first marriage to Jill Newstead, following a five-year affair with Australian publicist Sarah Burns, who is now his wife, Rick has finally found contentment at the age of 66, perhaps for the first time ever. And this, he says, is mostly down to Sarah or "Sas" as he calls her.

His book seems more like an exercise in self-help and discovery than an intended Christmas bestseller. It's a moving memoir, articulated by the nostalgia-inducing descriptions of meals he had as a child in Cornwall and Oxfordshire. Each dish or flavour evokes a certain memory, from the intense "salty-sweet" flesh of Cornish lobster to a type of cottage cheese known as "cherry-curds", so-called because it was made from the first milk after a cow had newly calved and contained traces of blood.

He balks at the suggestion of a ghostwriter. "I wanted to do it myself, I was determined to do that. I've always liked writing," he says in a slightly gruff regional accent that belies his boarding school and Oxford education. "Food memories worked out to be the most important way of remembering things for me."

He does however skim over the sensitive topic of his divorce and you rather feel for Jill, the pretty girl who dumped a young Stein only to come back to him during his Oxford years, the shrewd business partner with whom he built his foodie empire and the mother of his children.

"I felt very bad about breaking up with Jill but I wanted to stick to the good bits," he says. "I wanted to be absolutely honest about my life with Jill and how valuable she was but didn't want to talk about the divorce."

Rick Stein, TV chef, wife, father, Sarah, Jill Newstead, bipolar, Martin Amis, business, partner CONFIDENCE: Sarah helped celebrity chef Rick Stein finally find contentment [REX]

Jill remains Stein's business partner in their "Padstein" empire and still lives in the house they shared in Trevone, Cornwall. They are civil but Rick admits the situation is not always entirely comfortable. "Jill was recently awarded an OBE and she went to pick it up from Prince William who asked her what it's like working with your ex," laughs Rick. "She told him it has its moments and I can second that. It's not easy a lot of the time. A lot of our early time was spent building the business and we still agree broadly, although we're not always the best of friends."

When Stein was 17 tragedy struck that would alter his path for ever. His father threw himself off a cliff, finally carrying out the much threatened act.

"I was nearly 18 when he committed suicide," says Rick. "My reaction on the one hand was to try to be tough as a teenager, to try to be a man and act like it didn't matter and I wasn't hurting. On the other hand it's the most dreadful knock to your own confidence. Your late teens are a terribly difficult time anyway - you're trying to flee the nest and take on the world - so for the family to be blighted with this overwhelming darkness is terribly disconcerting.

"One of things was the sheer embarrassment of having a loony dad but writing the book was my way of trying to set the record straight, to show the massively charismatic, articulate, well-read side of him, the man who was adored by friends and family."

After his father's death Stein fled to Australia, where his jobs included working in an abattoir "sweeping blood down drains".

"I was broken and wrote to this family friend who said no one ever regretted running away to sea. So that's what I did. It seemed to be the sort of country where people didn't die. I felt free of my family.

But I loved Cornwall, England and my mother. She had just lost her husband and then allowed her son to travel, it was the ultimate self-sacrifice. So I did go back. If I hadn't I wouldn't have opened the seafood restaurant and wouldn't be where I am now."

Australia was also where he fell in love with Sarah while judging a restaurant competition. "I felt bad but I fell in love. It happens. Sas and Oz are inextricably entwined, every time I get off the plane I feel 10 years younger. Sarah was always valued as a child whereas my father never valued me. Her unfaltering confidence was irresistible.

"I was always lacking in confidence and always thought of Australia as this centre of total optimism and sunshine. Sarah was the embodiment of that." Today their lives are split between the UK and Australia, where Stein has a restaurant in New South Wales. "We're going for Christmas," he says. The weather's lovely, the restaurant's at its busiest and I'll be in Sydney cooking Christmas lunch for Sarah and her family."

He sounds like he is happy now.

"Yes," he says. "I am."

Rick Stein Live is at the London Palladium on Monday December 9. For tickets visit www.ricksteinlive.com or call 0844 874 0666.

Under A Mackerel Sky, by Rick Stein (Ebury Press, RRP £20), is available at £16.99 with free P&P. Please call 0871 988 8451 or visit expressbooks.co.uk. You can also send a cheque or PO (payable to The Express) to: Express Orders Dept, 1 Broadland Business Park, Norwich NR7 0WF.

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