Anthony Worrall Thompson is a restaurateur and one of the most familiar and popular TV chefs. He presents Saturday Kitchen and is a regular guest chef on Ready Steady Cook.
Known fondly as AWT or Wozza, Antony was born in Shakespeare's hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon and educated at a Canterbury public school. Afterwards, he studied hotel and catering management at Westminster College before taking his first catering job in Essex. It's rumoured that his grandmother refused to write to him because she couldn't bring herself to write Essex on the envelope.
In 1978, he moved to London and became sous-chef at Brinkley's Restaurant in the Fulham Road. One month later, he was head chef. The following year he took a sabbatical in France, eating and working his way around the local cuisine. By 1981, AWT had opened his own restaurant in London - notable for only serving starters and puddings.
Since then, the restaurants he's been involved with have been heaped with accolades. He has won the Mouton Rothschild Menu Competition and the Meilleur Ouvrier de Grande Bretagne (MOGB) - the chef's Oscar. More recently, he opened the popular neighbourhood restaurant Notting Grill and Kew Grill in Kew.
Antony has also written several recipe books and contributes to the Daily Express newspaper as well as the BBC Good Food magazine.
Despite an extraordinary and energetic professional lifestyle, he still manages to find time for art, antiques, tennis and swimming (he swam the Channel when he was 16), gardening and, of course, his wife Jay and their two children, plus a dog called Trevor, two cats, 12 pigs and a variety of fish who all live at his country cottage on the banks of the Thames. In 2003, he showed he was game for a laugh when he appeared on ITV's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.
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