Dyslexia symptoms and warning signs after Jamie Oliver shares diagnosis that upended school career
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Jamie Oliver is opening up about his own health battles ahead of launching a new campaign, this time focusing on books instead of meals. The famed chef and childhood nutrition champion, who transformed school dining in the 2000s, is making a foray back into schools as part of a forthcoming Channel 4 documentary - but he's staying away from the lunch queues.
Instead, Oliver is aiming to help kids grappling with dyslexia, a challenge he knows all too well from his own academic and adult struggles. Opening up to The Sun, Oliver explained: "It's no secret I struggled at school - but I was one of the lucky ones. I knew I wanted to be a chef so had somewhere to go, catering school, where I could thrive. The kitchen saved me.".
His new programme, set to air later this year, intends to uncover ways to better support neurodiverse students in schools and to assess how educational success is measured today, while also pressuring the Government for reforms. Jamie has previously been open about his dyslexia diagnosis after leaving school with just two GCSEs, and with nearly 30 cookbooks and a children's book, the chef explained how he writes to accommodate his difficulty.
In a chat with the BBC, Jamie revealed: "I wrote most of my stuff on a dictaphone, just record it. It's nice to buddy up with someone, whether it's Mum or Dad, or a friend. Just to bounce stuff off of. I love using stickies, colour-coded stickies. I like to visualise. I like to see things, so stick them up. Simple stories, think about characters. Pull a face you like the look of off the internet, put it up there.
