From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
Although his show is called The Naked Chef, the closest Jamie Oliver, a 25-year-old Londoner, has ever come to cooking au naturel was the time he prepared a romantic dinner at home clad only in an apron. "Not a good idea," he recalls. "The steam from the convection oven got through and burnt me old fella." The title of Oliver's BBC series, now showing stateside on the Food Network, worried him at first: "I was afraid my mom would think I was a porn star." But the name really refers to his stripped-down culinary style—simple ingredients, no fancy sauces. Some viewers find Oliver himself plenty saucy. "Suddenly," says his sister Anna-Marie, 24, "I have a lot of women friends asking if they can come 'round when we have a family barbecue." Unfortunately for his admirers, Oliver—the son of Essex, England, pub owners Trevor, 47, and Sally, 49—became officially unavailable in June when he married model Jules Norton, 25, his sweetheart since both were 16. "You'd never know he was supposed to be a sex symbol," she confides. "He's not vain at all." The 5' 11" chef, who was trained in London and Paris, describes himself as "scruffy," explaining that he tends to wear "some secondhand sweatshirt for a year. One day you look at it properly and realize it says 'Dallas Girls' Hockey Team.' " In a hot kitchen, however, he turns seductive. "If you really want to get your missus going," Oliver suggests, "do something delicate, like a bit of fish stuffed with herbs, olive oil and white wine. Bake it in tinfoil. You break that open and the smells go everywhere. And then you say, 'This is what I made for you.' Girls like that. They think you're the salt of the earth."