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Tom Kerridge is hard to miss as he strides in, tall and lanky, bald head gleaming above his trademark grin. As we settle down to chat in Kerridge’s Bar & Grill in central London, the affable 46-year-old chef is looking a little tired – and it’s soon clear why. He’s juggling so many projects that his schedule is gruelling. Tom’s latest cookbook (his seventh), Lose Weight & Get Fit (Bloomsbury £22), came out last month and he’s just finished filming an accompanying BBC Two television series that’s scheduled to air imminently.
His new Manchester restaurant, The Bull & Bear, opened in November. And then there are his pubs in Marlow, Bucks: The Butcher’s Tap, The Hand and Flowers, and The Coach (the latter two hold three Michelin stars between them), plus Kerridge’s Bar & Grill and his catering company.
”It’s fair to say I don’t do a lot of sleeping at the moment,” Tom admits. Often, he’s not home from work until 1am and gets up again at 6am to go to the gym. But that tenacity – or stubbornness, as he calls it – has enabled him to build a booming restaurant empire. And it’s also the secret to his astonishing 12-stone weight loss. Tom says his lightbulb moment happened when he turned 40 and realised he had to trim down or risk not reaching old age. “As you get older, you begin to realise you’re not immortal and have to start taking a bit more control, care and responsibility.”