If you can't stand the heat...

I was a waster in Seventies Fulham. My life alternated between the snooker hall, the pub and the betting shop. Then one day the social-security rug was pulled from under my feet and I found myself in need of a job. Having neither vocation nor qualifications and with the other options being driving a van or teaching English as a foreign language, the post of grill chef at an exciting new venture (they are always 'ventures' and always 'exciting'), seemed quite enticing. I liked cooking, I used to copy Elizabeth David recipes and I had always liked my food. I did not, however, know how to cook, nor had I ever previously imagined that I might earn my living doing it.

I started work at The Rock Garden, a glorified burger joint in Covent Garden, two days before it opened, and very quickly found myself deep in the s*** trying to cope with the initial rush on the first night. The hamburgers were either burnt, raw or simply stuck like barnacles to the grill. My chopping board would have made Tracey Emin's bed look tidy, my fingers were burnt and bleeding and my spectacles kept sliding down my nose as I sweltered in the incredible heat.

Then, in the chaos of my first day, the extraction system went down. Acrid smoke from 'overgrilled' bacon and burning toast filled the room. Visibility was down to 18 inches. It seemed that I was about to restart the Great Fire of London as flames languidly danced off the grill towards the grease-laden extractor fan. My head chef loomed in front of me with a fire extinguisher and an inane grin on his face. 'So how do you like the restaurant business?' he asked me, once he managed to stop laughing.

It may seem weird but I did like the restaurant business. In that chaotic maelstrom that constituted my debut I became hooked. It was scary, but it was also hilarious. I really wanted to be a better cook and the social life was incredible. I moved onwards and upwards. I got a job with the Roux brothers and survived for three weeks until I went down like a sack of s*** right in front of the boss, il capo di capo, Albert Roux. He asked me to turn some vegetables and change the oil in the fat fryer: after I'd drained the hot oil all over the floor and Albert's shiny loafers, and he espied my risible handful of misshapen carrots, he sacked me. I complained furiously and talked myself into a transfer to what was then, undisputedly, the best restaurant in London, Le Gavroche, on an apprentice's wages.

The first Gavroche, in Lower Sloane Street, had a tiny kitchen. It had something I never found at Cambridge University, a group of people utterly intent on learning. They were mostly French, half a dozen Japanese, one American and one other Englishman. The dedication and intent were total. Our best was rarely good enough for Albert and we strived to do better. Service was an orchestrated performance, inaugurated by a glass of champagne for the chef and manager and an explication, in French, of the evening's menu. Occasionally Albert would lose it, as he was in the habit of rejecting dishes that were not perfect, thus necessitating the whole table's food being cooked again from scratch. To me, however, the quality never appeared to waver: it seemed impeccable and I had not realised that this was possible in a restaurant kitchen.

Albert succeeded where many teachers had failed: he galvanised me into seeking perfection and never to accept second best. However determined we may be, I believe we all need a mentor to teach us that anything is possible as long as you are prepared to take a risk.

Good kitchens have a rhythm and a swagger. You get into trouble, but you get out of it too. Equipment fails, waiters charge into each other losing platefuls of food, cooks burn themselves and need to be taken to hospital, customers send back runny omelettes and underdone steaks, and the sauce cook tells you he has two portions of seabass to cover the 11 on order. You stay cool and pretend it's all in a day's work. It's called exuding confidence. The pace of a busy restaurant races through the gears in a screaming frenzy of activity. Extraction systems can still fail and the manure can still hit them.

You have to coordinate and expedite - that is, make sure all the dishes for one table come together at the same time, that all the elements are ready - and be able to spot in an instant an overcooked steak or a raw French bean. You can't do it if you're not interested, and that is the spur to stay thinking and continue coming up with new ideas. I love food, but I have to communicate that love in the dishes and in the service.

You could think of it as a kind of school in which the classics and 'signature' dishes exist as yardsticks or steps in a course that runs from a GCSE in cold larder, through an A level in sauce and finishes with a BA in kitchen management. Whatever I say has to be accepted, without question. To be honest, I've never had to be authoritarian - everyone just does what they're bloody well told. The only job that comes close to the sort of autonomy enjoyed by a chef is conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. No wonder I sometimes get a little over-excited.

The job does have its drawbacks. At one point when I was working for Albert, it was not unusual to start work at 2.30am and to finish at 7pm. Nightwork is antisocial, you live in a twilight world cut off from ordinary life. The job coarsens the vocabulary, ruins the complexion and nobody invites you to dinner. But the truth is, we like what we do. We can be dyslexic and tone deaf, we may have left school with one O level in art, or failed to make it even as a gym instructor, or have simply been thrashing around in a career void, but we have found our vocation. We aspire to the 'creatives' side of the fence.