This year I will be celebrating 26 years as a chef.
And I can still remember my first day as I walked into the kitchens at the Swan Hotel in Grasmere back in 1980.

Fresh faced, eyes wide open and scared out of my skin.
I was going to be embarking on a very colourful culinary journey. Even Keith Floyd was still relatively fresh faced! And I don’t even think Jamie Oliver was out of nappies yet!

Now 26 years on, I’ve been invited to Judge the Inter college cookery Challenge at Kendal College on Friday 16th March.

It’s fantastic as the young chefs who are taking part in this competition are definitely “the future" for this industry.

I’m quite humbled as well as over the moon to be asked to judge the competition as I really want to get in amongst the young competitors to encourage and urge them to do well.

I was educated as a chef at both Carlisle and Kendal colleges. So to be able to relate to the young chefs is a real stepping stone for me as well as them.

Young chefs need looking after in kitchens and nurtured as the long hours and unsociable working times play havoc with teenagers and there social lives.

But if they have got belief and respect for there future career from the people they are working with, then the future for them is a Pandora’s Box of opportunities and options.

There’s definitely the support for young catering students here in Cumbria as the colleges have links and contact with all varieties of hotels, restaurants and the people of the industry.

And, they work relentlessly to create openings for there students.

But it’s the young chefs who have to realise that opportunities don’t fall from the sky or ,
'Grow on trees'.

Hard work and determination is a passport to success in catering. Progression and promotions come from employers seeing potential in you.

And that is going to be my message to the young chefs who I will be judging this week.
I will offer them all the help I can give, support them to the end and most of all. I will respect them as they are going on that culinary journey that I set sail on all those years ago.

I have been lucky to meet, Jamie Oliver, Nick Nairn, James Martin, Simon Rimmer, and Gordon Ramsey.
I cooked live onstage with Lesley Waters and even Jean-Christophe Novelli. But all that has only happened in the last 5 years of my life.

The previous 21 years have been slogging it out in kitchens and restaurants. So nothing happens overnight and if you have a vision as a young chef it may take a few years and some twists and turns to make it happen.

You have youth on your side and your future is waiting !!