Why chefs crack up

Jean-Christophe Novelli has his head in his hands. He is sitting on the lakeside terrace of his new restaurant venture, Auberge du Lac in Hertfordshire, and he finds the news that a fellow chef - the supremely talented David Dempsey - was on an alcohol- and cocaine-fuelled rampage when he fell to his death, deeply shocking. The story, though - of how a young man coped with the pressure-cooker environment of running one of London's top kitchens - is all too familiar.

Novelli, who is a remarkably boyish 42, was a Michelin-starred chef in the late 1990s, tipped to be the next Marco Pierre White. He owned seven restaurants - including Maison Novelli in Clerkenwell - and was writing cookbooks and a newspaper column. "It was an unbelievably stressful time," he says.

"The more you achieve, the more you want. I got to the point where the minute I opened my eyes in the morning, I was thinking about the restaurant. The pressure to perform these days is immense: the produce has to be fresh and high-quality, you have to manage staff, compete with other new restaurants; it was killing me."

Novelli admits he was overstretched, and as the restaurants closed one by one - at his worst point he even accepted a loan from his old friend Marco; "He saved me with a hefty cheque. I said, Marco, I am in the sheeeet" - he suffered from exhaustion.

"I was running around like crazy, I couldn't sleep so I was taking sleeping pills every night, I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, drinking whatever was around, not eating - chefs never eat properly. I even developed shingles; it was a mad, crazy time."

Although his hyperactivity meant that some in the business thought he was taking drugs, he is adamant he never touched them. "I would never touch cocaine and, if you're serious about this job, you can't take it. In my day, starting out you had to be very, very strong."

He says he actually met Dempsey, then 28, three years ago when the younger chef was working in Glasgow, and before Dempsey moved to London to become head chef at Gordon Ramsay in Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea.

"We went out for dinner and he was friendly and very calm. I didn't notice anything that would make me suspect cocaine; he was the last person I would have expected to take drugs. I have always been very strict about drugtaking among my staff. Once, I had heard rumours that one of my people was taking cocaine, so I got everyone together and said, I'm not having it. I said that when I found out who it was they would be sacked. The next day, one of my staff chose to resign."

Although he admits his industry has a problem with drug-taking, he says there are many other professions that are as bad, if not worse (he cites football and the music industry). But he does say that it's a worrying trend; that the pressure to perform well, the atmosphere of bullying and intimidation in many top kitchens, not to mention the impossible 14-hour days, leads younger staff to resort to drugs and alcohol simply to cope.

He adds, however, that rule by fear isn't the only way. "I don't shout, I go quiet. Being silent is my way of freezing people out. Now I just do what I do best - cook."

This time he is cooking in the rather more sedate surroundings of Hertfordshire. As well as whipping up his signature hot chocolate cake with whitechocolate ice-cream, and baby fig caramelised tatin with calvados crème fra"che, he makes sure he plays golf at least twice a week, and is now fit enough to compete in the next London triathlon.

He also runs a cookery school every other Wednesday which, surprise surprise, attracts large numbers of the local female population.

The one woman who has had the most influence on him, however, remains his mother, whose simple style of cooking still inspires him. Novelli, who grew up in Arras, northern France, arrived in Britain 20 years ago not speaking a word of English; cooking, he says, was his way of expressing himself.

He landed a job in Chewton Glen in the New Forest where, luckily, the head chef took a shine to him, simply because he had been a paratrooper during National Service. "I worked my backside off," he says simply. His tenacity paid off, and he slogged his way to the Four Seasons on Park Lane; it was there, at 30, that he was awarded his first Michelin star.

He is separated from his second wife, but is very close to his 17-yearold daughter, Christina. He says that now he is ready to take on a kitchen in London again, and will be opening his newest venture in the City in September. "Auberge is like my wife," he says, somewhat predictably, "but the Capital Club will be my mistress."

Is he dreading being back in the fray? "No. I will do things differently. But a Michelin star is still my ambition - that, and to have a son."

Finally, it seems, one of the most talented chefs in the business has got the balance just about right.

Auberge du Lac, Brocket Hall, Welwyn, Hertfordshire (01707 368888). Novelli in the City, at the London Capital Club, opens in September.