The saint behind St John

FULL REVIEW: St John

With his outsize glasses and tousled schoolboy crop, chef Fergus Henderson has something of the cartoon character about him - Biggles, perhaps, or Harry Potter in middle life. His vocabulary, too, is endearingly archaic; friends are "chums", good things are "very fine", and sentences tend to start with "Aha!" and trail off unfinished, with a helpless wave of the hands. So it seems quite in character that the strongest thing he can find to say about living with Parkinson's disease is that it's "annoying".

In a hot-headed profession, where a dirty fork can trigger a full-blown tantrum, 37-year-old Henderson is a remarkably laid-back character.

Diagnosed five years ago with a neurological condition which is both progressive and incurable, he has continued to work punishing hours at St John, his hugely popular Smithfield restaurant, as well as producing an award-winning cookbook and helping to raise a young family. And during that time he's gone from strength to strength, with a run of professional success culminating last month in St John winning London Restaurant of the Year at the London Restaurant Awards.

Watching him accept his trophy, many in the audience will have remained unaware of his condition. Thanks to drug therapy, it is entirely manageable. "On the whole, I don't hide it, and I don't make a big thing about it," Henderson says. "Sometimes people comment 'oh, you seem a little stiff,' and I tell them 'I've got Parkinson's.' But they look so distraught that I feel bad for them. So it's not something I make a big thing of. I don't dwell on it much myself, either."

He first realised there was something wrong when he noticed his left arm was behaving in a peculiar way. "You know how John Wayne rides horses, with his arm held in front of him? I noticed my arm was like that. I went to see a doctor, thinking it must be a trapped nerve. But they diagnosed Parkinson's."

The vast majority of Parkinson's sufferers develop the condition in later life (they include the Pope and Jeremy Thorpe). Did getting his diagnosis in his early thirties leave him bitter, or angry? "Not really. I mean, I certainly didn't welcome it in; there was a gloomy moment. But it was fairly short-lived. At first I started to drink less wine, but three days later I realised that might have something to do with my gloomy moment, and I returned to my normal, healthy level of consumption. Then the gloomy moment passed!'

Henderson initially resisted taking the drugs which control his symptoms, but found himself getting enormously tired, "like the last two horses in the Grand National". So he allowed himself to be persuaded, and found that the tiredness could be kept at bay.

Now only a slight drag of his left arm, and the occasional tremor of his left hand, betray his condition. "My hand's pretty good now," he smiles. "Occasionally it locks for a moment, which isn't great if you're holding a hot pan." His solution, "which seems to suit us all very well", is to leave the hot stuff to his sous-chefs during service.

In fact, far from slowing down, Henderson maintains an astonishingly vigorous routine. He and his New Zealand-born wife Margot, who is chef at The French House Dining Room in Soho, have three children under seven. A typical day involves getting the kids ready for school in time for Henderson to make the journey from the family's flat in Covent Garden to his Smithfield kitchen by 8am.

On the day we met, he was winding down after the lunchtime rush, then staying on at St John to do a second shift that evening. Even someone in perfect health would find it an exhausting day. And Henderson is also an enthusiastic party animal. He and Margot are often to be sighted at new restaurants, after-hours drinking clubs and gallery openings - St John is the unofficial staff canteen of the Young British Art crowd, and sculptor Sarah Lucas is a close friend.

He supplements his drug regime with therapeutic exercise and massage, and takes additional vitamins. But he deliberately avoids investigating the potential benefits of changing his diet, for fear that he might have to give up the food he loves. It would be unthinkable, after all, if the chef of London's leading meaty restaurant were obliged to become a vegan.