Jamie Oliver’s guide to a stress-free Christmas - Recipes included!

If you’re the one doing the festive menu this Christmas, you could do a whole lot worse than have someone like Jamie Oliver hold your hand.

Note that he says “scrumptious”, not calm, smooth or controlled because Christmas doesn’t go like that – not even for Jamie Oliver. On the dedication page, he honours his late Nan, Betty Marjorie Palmer, and recalls how she managed to set her paper crown – and her heavily hair-sprayed blue rinse – on fire one year, while moving too close to a candle in an overenthusiastic lunge for the stuffing.

“I clearly remember recoiling in horror at what Dad had to do to put her out,” he recalls, though when she was extinguished, the meal carried on with gusto.