All I ever wanted to do was to make food accessible to everyone to show that you can make mistakes - I do all the time - but it doesn't matter.

I wanted to be a great white hunter a prospector for gold or a slave trader. But then when I was eight my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers beatings and rotten food. But what it also had was a library full of books.

I wasn't passionate about food until I'd been cooking for a while. I started long before food became part of the mainstream media. I just wanted to cook period.

'The Food Network' was just starting in New York and I was getting lots of attention from Mesa Grill. They had no money so if you couldn't get there by subway you couldn't be on. It wasn't like TV was something I really wanted to do - but I knew it would be great publicity for my restaurants.

I went in saying I wanted to be the food guy.

At one point I had to shove as much food in my body as possible to pack on calories. My trainer wanted me to do six meals a day and not go two hours without eating. If I would cheat on eating one day I could tell - I'd drop a few pounds.

I don't like food that's too carefully arranged it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting.

My Daddy liked physical fitness and wanted me to be a prizefighter.

We wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.

I wanted to make Jerusalem as feature film. But we couldn't finance it only through theatrical release we couldn't get all the money we needed. We had to get some money from television. So we said ok let's do it both ways. So we did it in four parts.