Andy Richardson: Marco’s all-White with daddy day care

No one has revolutionised gastronomy quite like Marco Pierre White. During the late 1980s, he developed a reputation as a stunning cook. But he was also a rock’n’roll sex God, a man with a temper like Vesuvius who could put Gordon Ramsay back in his box with no more than a stare.

And when Marco had become Britain’s most decorated chef ever – he was the youngest to win both two and three Michelin stars – he hung up his apron because he realised it still wasn’t enough. Achieving more than anyone else ever had didn’t fuel his fire. So he walked away in order to reinvent himself and start again. The word ‘maverick’ doesn’t come close.

Marco – or, MPW, as he’s known to fans – has wit sharper than a Miyabi Kaizen knife, is as dazzling as Halley’s Comet and has a personality as forceful and untamed as Hurricane Wilma. There was, in fact, a Hurricane Marco that swept across Cuba, Central America, Jamaica and Flordia in 1996. And rumours that the 75mph blast was named after Britain’s coolest chef can start right here.

You’d think, therefore, that meeting Marco would be three things: intimidating, scary and daunting. And yet, like so many things in life, the truth was the polar opposite. Charming, funny and inspirational is more accurate.

I’m guessing most interviewers meet with Marco wearing a tin hat, being mindful of their ps and qs and offering deference from the word go. I didn’t. I went with a ginger-haired four-year-old who asked the nation’s greatest chef if he fancied a game of Cars 3 – and had even taken a miniature Lightning McQueen for the cook to play with. Daddy Day Care doesn’t get any better. Marco obliged, of course, laughing at his own adventures in parenthood and sharing stories of his remarkable and beautiful daughter, Mirabelle, a ballerina with the Royal Ballet School. Four-year-olds with toy cars don’t ruffle the feathers of Britain’s greatest cook.

Our interview was probably supposed to last for 10 minutes. It didn’t. After twice that length of time we were still going.

“Do you know who you look like?” said Marco, 15 minutes in.

“No, chef.” I responded, happy that he hadn’t said Glenn Hoddle or Peter Beardsley.

“Paul Newman.”

“Paul Newman?”

“Yes. Paul Newman. Has anyone ever told you that before?”

“No, chef.”

“Well you do. You ought to do a range of pasta sauces, you’d make a fortune.”

The interview continued. Or, more accurately, the student sat at the table of the prophet and absorbed his wisdom while Little Ginger Bonce played cars with Marco’s PR. “He’s adorable,” she said, later.

“Yeah, and when he grows up he’ll look like Paul Newman and make a fortune from pasta. . .”

Marco chatted about his restaurants, about his love for Birmingham and The Cube, about his passion for simple cooking and about the driving factors that had propelled him to impossible heights. In the final analysis, it was all about fear, rather than ambition. That’s what made him great.

At the end of the interview, I did something I rarely do: I asked Marco to sign my copy of his iconic cook book, White Heat. He obliged.

“Thank you, chef,” I said.

And then something strange happened. “Don’t call me chef. Call me Marco.”

“Yes, Marco.”

I showed him another cookery book. It was by one of his old boys, a chef who’d worked with him at the legendary Harvey’s, in Wandsworth, at which location Marco became the youngest ever chef to earn two Michelin stars. He liked it. He read it. He thanked me for the book.

“I tell you something,” he said, eyeballing me with a stare hotter and more intense than a CO2 laser.

“What, chef? Sorry, Marco?”

“I like you. I like you.”

He beckoned to the Ginger Boy In A Cool Red Check Shirt.

“Stand him on the table,” he said. My son thought that was a great idea. He’d never been allowed to stand on a table before, let alone stand on one while having his photograph taken with Britain’s best cook.

Marco leaned in, Little Ginge beamed and – uncharacteristically – I broke into a smile. A day that ought to have been straight from the page’s of Hell’s Kitchen was, in fact, transcendent. My kid thought the guy with the curly hair was great, Marco thought the kid with the ginger hair was cute, the work got done and everyone went home happy.

Marco Pierre White might have a reputation for being Britain’s hardest cook. And, quite probably, he is. But any man who shares stories of Harvey The Rabbit with an unexpected four-year-old guest while showing the charm of Jimmy Stewart is a gentleman in my book.

A morning with Marco was anything but Hell’s Kitchen.