Out of the frying pan

Loud, rude and at times ungrateful - but they saw it through to the end. Trainee chefs Ben Arthur and Kerryann Dunlop were among the 15 who made it into Jamie Oliver's kitchen...

This time last year, Ben Arthur was unemployed, lacking direction and flat broke. "I felt in a bit of a hole," he admits. "I wasn't happy with myself." Today he is working in one of London's most talked-about restaurants and says: "Life is totally wicked, man; I've got a lot of plans - everything finally seems within my reach. You've got to turn up to work, be enthusiastic, and you can achieve anything."

For the millions of viewers who were glued to Jamie's Kitchen, the five-part Channel 4 series, you'll know that turning up on time was the one thing the trainee chefs rarely did, prompting the normally genial Jamie Oliver to announce halfway through that the whole project was going "tits-up".

Ben, 19, admits to being one of the guilty ones. In the fourth episode, the finalists were summoned to cook a dinner for 30 guests. Several failed to turn up, including Ben. With only an hour to go before they had to serve the food, the voice-over announced, with barely concealed glee, that Ben had finally bothered to show up - eight hours late.

We watched him amble apologetically over to an exasperated Jamie, whose lower lip was positively quivering in fury. Ben's excuse? "I'm really sorry; I completely forgot about today." In the ensuing row, Jamie announced that "there's only so long I can keep covering your ass", before telling viewers once Ben was out of earshot that "it's a blatant piss-take; he is acting like a half-wit".

When I remind Ben, he smiles apologetically. We meet in the deli at Fifteen in Old Street, the triumphant result of £1.3 million of Oliver's money and commitment in the face of tears, rows and ruinedpudding panic. Fifteen bolshy, under-privileged Londoners were whittled down from more than 1,000 applicants whose only qualifications were to be between the ages of 16 and 24, unemployed and not in full-time education.

Although Ben is 30 minutes late for our interview, he swears that he hasn't been late once since that fateful day. When the episode was shown on TV, there was a collective sigh up and down the country at Ben's seemingly ungrateful behaviour. In reality, he deserved nothing but admiration. Because the real reason Ben "forgot" was that he was homeless, and had been trying to find a bed in a hostel.

Ben had been moved from one school to another, left at 15 with no qualifications and, as he admits, "got in with a bad crowd". Life at home was difficult. He says he never really knew his dad, and his mother was left to bring up four children on her own - Ben was the eldest. "Things were very tense at home; I wasn't bringing any money in, and me and my mum had a huge row."

She threw him out of their Islington flat, and he spent the weekend being shuffled from one hostel to the next. "At the hostels, they wanted to put me in a room with heroin and crack addicts," he says incredulously. "I lost a lot of hope." He pauses, then adds quietly. "It was definitely the low point of my cooking career. I was terrified I was going to get the sack. But Jamie was really understanding."

Happily, Ben is now back home with his mum after three very stressful weeks living in hostels (to his credit, says Jamie Oliver, he was never late again). When his training period at Fifteen is over in June (to make way for the next 15 students), he wants another year's experience in London before travelling abroad. Last week, the trainees were flown to Tuscany for an olive-oil tasting session; it was the first time Ben had been in an aeroplane. "Oh, man," he grins excitedly, "I was shouting, 'look at those clouds'." He plans to write a book about his experiences, and his dream is to open a decent Caribbean restaurant - "one with proper flavours and real ingredients".

Downstairs in the restaurant, decorated in bubble-gum pink and dark plum, some of the contestants are beavering away in the kitchen, under the watchful eye of the head chef. There's Michelle Marie Cooper 24, the fish-hating single mum; and Elisa Roche, 24, is confidently carving up ham.

The 15 are now down to 10: Dwayne Montford, 18, who had been excluded from comprehensive school 126 times, and Michael Pizzey, who is dyslexic and has an attention deficit disorder, are both back at catering college and will rejoin the project. Sadly, three more students were told to leave the restaurant this week for continued absenteeism. They are also back at college.

Far from abandoning these students, Tony Elvin, the liaison officer (and saint of the show) says we shouldn't judge them harshly: "Most have problems, ones I'm not going to discuss. Many viewers might have written them off as ungrateful but they're young, many with housing, home or money troubles. They need support and we haven't given up on them."

One person who didn't quit is Kerryann Dunlop. She was the real star of the show with "hair restrained like a terrier on a leash", as one broadsheet put it. She was the only one to stand up to Jamie: you couldn't help but laugh when she greeted him in front of a room full of diners, "Oi, bitch", then later had the nerve to text him, "You're a c***sucker". (Which, to his credit, Jamie took good-naturedly.)

You can't help thinking she enjoyed winding Jamie up. In episode one, she described pumpkin ravioli as "sweet and nutty"; six months later, she described it, to Jamie's dismay, as "slimy".

Far from falling out, they are practically in love - "I could go on holiday with these guys," said Jamie Oliver. Today Kerryann is whipping up a carpaccio and rocket salad for Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox. (The restaurant is fully booked until March.)

"I've got a lot of respect for Jamie," she says, plonking herself down with a yawn (she's been up since 7am and won't get home to Hackney until 12.30am). "He's a great boss." The pair weren't always so cosy, nor did Kerryann always listen. We saw Jamie reduce the 19-year-old to tears after she failed to turn up for a week, blaming lack of money, despite a weekly allowance of £40 from the Government and travel expenses (they are now paid the minimum wage). I ask if this was true. "Yes, I'd missed getting our weekly travel allowance, and my mum couldn't afford to lend me £20, so I stayed at home. I did call." Tony Elvin rolls his eyes.

"The lowest point was Jamie telling me off. I felt so ashamed for letting everyone down." So what did she think when she finally saw herself on television. "I thought, what a lemon - all that swearing and smoking. My mum and all the others on the housing estate told me off.

"It's only just starting to hit me," she continues. "One minute doing nothing, the next opening the most famous restaurant in London."