Marco Pierre White hits out at Jamie Oliver with a brutal swipe after refusing to sign up for new BBC show until rival chef was axed

Marco Pierre White reignited his 20-year-old feud with Jamie Oliver after he refused to sign up for new BBC show until his rival chef was axed.

The fiery chef, 64, hit out at Jamie, 51, with a brutal swipe as he promoted Gordon Ramsay's new BBC documentary, Rise Of The Rockstar Chef, which also includes Heston Blumenthal, 60.

Marco boasted about getting Jamie axed from the three-part series, which kicks off on Thursday, due to him not having any Michelin-stars. 

'I said, "Heston worked hard for his three stars. Gordon worked hard for his three stars. I worked hard for my three stars. How many stars did Jamie Oliver win?" He's not part of our jigsaw,' he told Radio Times.

Marco also told the Spooning with Mark Wogan podcast: 'They (producers) approached me.

'So the chief exec of Gordon's studio came to see me and they tell me about the show. It's called The Making (Rise) of the Rockstar Chef.

'They interview Heston and they interview Jamie Oliver and then they come to me. So they tell me it is going to be the four of us and four shows. I say no to it.'

Continuing, Marco said: 'So I said no. And then they rang me the next day and said, "If we drop Jamie, will you do the show, Marco?" I said "Fine".

The feud between Marco and Jamie started nearly two decades ago in 2007 when Marco called Jamie a 'fat chef with a drum kit'.

Marco later reignited it in 2019 when he called Jamie 'delusional' when he refused to admit he had 'f***ed up' following the collapse of his chain of restaurants.

In return, Jamie has kept a dignified silence and has never returned any hostility towards Marco.

However, last year he acknowledged that he is aware how Marco feels about him, 'Oh he doesn't like me at all, still doesn't,' he told the Louis Theroux Podcast.

'I don't know (why). I have no shared history with him.'

Earlier this year, Gordon, Marco and Heston sat down together for a rather historic meal, but there was certainly a feeling of anything-could-happen-here among those looking on.

The last time these three titans of British cuisine had been in a restaurant together, things had gone a bit soap opera. The year was 2003.

The restaurant was the world-famous and Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire.

Heston was at the helm in the kitchen when he discovered, with some horror, that both of his erstwhile colleagues Marco and Gordon – once mentor and protégé, but by then bitter rivals – had booked in for Sunday lunch, separately.

Efforts to seat them well apart – Gordon and his wife Tana inside; Marco and his party in the garden – hadn’t smoothed the path adequately.

When a furious Marco discovered that Gordon was even in the vicinity, he demanded – in a way that only the famously volatile Marco Pierre White can demand – that Heston ask him to leave. The end result? Carnage.

Gordon eventually stormed into the garden, confronted Marco with a sentence that began, ‘You fat b*****d…’

The feuding pair, both rather proud of their reputations as bruisers, didn’t speak for years afterwards, except to slag each other off in press interviews.

Who would win in a punch-up, Marco was once asked? He considered the question carefully before concluding that Gordon would triumph in the boxing ring, but he would win, hands down, in a street fight.

So were punches thrown when the two were finally reunited, and with Heston too, for a new documentary series?

We can’t reveal that, but the extraordinary reunion forms the climax of a rather delicious new three-part BBC series The Rise Of The Rockstar Chef.

Executive producer Amanda Westwood reveals that it took months of ‘conversations, cajoling and negotiating’ to get to the point where all three were willing to sit down over lunch.

Given that the series was made by Gordon Ramsay’s production company, one assumes it was Marco who needed most convincing.

He’s filmed in the car en route, and asked whether he is looking forward to seeing Gordon and Heston again. ‘It’s always nice to see Heston,’ he replies, pointedly.

‘Honestly it was a lot,’ Amanda admits. ‘I was very nervous. We were all very aware it was a once in a lifetime event. The last time they were all together it didn’t end well, so no one knew how it would play out. Were they going to turn up, and if they turned up would they stay?’

Spoiler alert: they do stay long enough to eat a splendid lunch, although even here the historic rivalry is very much on display as each chef is responsible for preparing a course.

And what a supporting cast this documentary has too. Although these three chefs are the subjects, the other interviewees – all chipping in with their memories – read like a Who’s Who of the culinary scene.

Huge names like Raymond Blanc, Angela Hartnett and Marcus Wareing recall what it was like to be a part of the world being rocked, as do stars like Lenny Henry and Stanley Tucci. All wanted invites to the reunion, it seems.

‘We interviewed a plethora of brilliant people, from chefs to journalists to movie stars, and when we told them what we had planned they all said the same thing: “Can I come, I’d love to see that!”’ admits Amanda.

The series charts how these three chefs took the British restaurant scene by the scruff of the neck and gave it a good shake. 

Leeds-born Marco was their leader, a brooding bad-boy – ‘like Jesus with a f***ing chef’s jacket on,’ as Gordon puts it, describing how he went to work for Marco in Harvey’s, the Wandsworth restaurant where he won his first Michelin star.

In the documentary he likens Marco to a cult leader, the Pied Piper, and a Mafia Don. There really aren’t enough expletives to describe what it was like to be moulded by Marco.

‘It was a sh**fight,’ says Gordon. ‘You were in Marco’s mafia and you were one of Marco’s boys. The only way to succeed was to get out alive.’

When he declared that he was striking out on his own, the relationship turned sour. On his last day in the job, big, tough Gordon Ramsay was reduced to tears.

What happened? We get the story from both men in this documentary – and it varies wildly although there was definitely a red mullet dish involved, and a contested 20 seconds during which Marco declared the fish was overdone.

Gordon says he challenged his boss on this – only to find Marco grabbing him by the collar with both fists and pinning him up against the coffee machine. He recalls glass smashing, shards everywhere, the whole kitchen falling silent.

Marco shakes his head: ‘Didn’t happen.’

What they can agree on is that Gordon Ramsay cried during that altercation. ‘Yeah, I bawled my eyes out,’ he admits. ‘I was upset, in shock. I was leaving but this level of aggression… Marco knew I could run that restaurant without him.

'It was a relationship that was coming to an end. He wanted to finish me before I got to someone else. I’ve never forgiven him, no. Was it justified? No. It was just another scenario where he wanted to prove he was better than me.’

There followed some extraordinary years where both men seem to have set out to destroy one another. There was an astonishing debacle over a stolen booking diary.

Where did Heston fit in? He had also trained under Marco, becoming the mad scientist of the operation, the culinary genius whose extraordinary experiments turned cooking into an art form.

He tells us there was chaos in his Fat Duck kitchen too, but it was a different sort of chaos. ‘On the second day after opening, I made the oven explode, which set my hair on fire, and I spent service with a bag of frozen peas strapped to my head.’

While Marco and Gordon were slugging it out to be top chef, Heston pretty much snuck in and stole their crown, with the Fat Duck being hailed the best restaurant in the world.

It’s all quite the riot, but there are some genuinely touching moments, for instance when Marco is shown archive footage of him and Gordon going fishing.

He falls silent, smiling as he watches. ‘It’s nice to hear Gordon laugh,’ he says. ‘It’s rather beautiful to watch the two of us together. Gordon and I go back 40 years. That’s a lot of life.’

Amanda added: ‘They are undoubtedly the only three chefs in the UK who can understand what they each have done and what it took to achieve such success.

'They were rivals, but also hugely respectful of each other’s achievements and we were very lucky with timing that it felt like the right moment for them all. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say there was a lot of love and affection in the room.’

Rise of the Rockstar Chef, Thursday, November 5, 9pm, BBC2.