Jamie's school winner

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Tomorrow night on television Jamie Oliver will reveal his natural successor. He will be unveiled as Aaron Craze, born into a family of West London criminals and who dropped out of school at 15. Now he has been given his very own gastropub.

Millions of viewers will witness the 28-year-old clinch victory in Jamie's Chef, the reality TV series in which Oliver bestows the pub on his best student.

In fact, the Standard can reveal that father-of-two Aaron has been running The Cock, in Beazley End, in Essex, for the past six months - and making a staggering success of it since filming ended.

Aaron had previously learnt to cook at Fifteen, the east London restaurant that Oliver set up as a social experiment to train up disadvantaged kids and young adults. Aaron, who like Oliver, is dyslexic, graduated with flying colours and moved on to The Ivy and Claridge's before landing the biggest prize of all - his very own country pub and restaurant.

Not bad for a boy who describes his family as "gangster-type, wheeler-dealers".

He told the Standard: "They won't think twice about putting something over on someone, even their own family, they're pretty tough like that. On my dad's side, they're pretty bad people. To be in a family like that and the only one to break that cycle meant a lot to me. It doesn't matter where you're from as long as you know where you're going.

"My dad's got a good heart, but he's selfish, he drinks, he's borderline alcoholic. He'd disappear for a week, binge-drinking, then he'd just come back again and you'd find him sleeping on the couch.

"He never worked, he wasn't anyone to look up to. When I went to Jamie's dad's for a fortnight, it was like, wow. I got more out of him in two weeks than I did out of my dad for 18 years."

His father was frequently arrested, he says, and his cousin is currently in prison for burgling the home of the former Chelsea footballer Juan Sebastian Veron. Wayne Harley is serving life for breaking into the player's home armed a machete and threatening to kill his young family.

Aaron's own determination to be different, he says, stems from his mother Kathleen.

"My dad was a bad boy, but she shielded us," he explained, "They used to take the young boys out thieving, to jump through the windows, or sell potatoes on the motorway, but my mum wouldn't let them take me."

Aged 15, he quit school and his parents split three years later. After a succession of lowpaid jobs, including working in a factory and as a gardener in Mortlake cemetery, he became a carpet-fitter on, among other things, Mohammed Fayed's yacht. "I remember going into houses thinking, I'll never have a house. I'll never have a car," he recalled.

His change of fortune can be traced to meeting his partner Nicci, 25, the mother of his two daughters. After watching the TV series about Oliver's first intake of Fifteen chefs, she sent off for application forms and filled them in for him. Much to his surprise, he won a place. "I didn't even know who Jamie Oliver was," he said. "I'd never heard of any chefs apart from Gordon Ramsay and I didn't know anything about cooking - it was only because it looked cool on the TV series."

Aaron was able to work his way up to chef de partie at Fifteen. However, he was not the favourite to win the chef 's competition and appeared to be lagging behind fellow competitors Dennis Duncanson, a former car thief whom Oliver had once managed to keep out of jail by going to court to plead for his liberty, and Taz Robinson, a forceful Thai-born chef and the only female participant.

The judges, who included Oliver and Soho House owner Nick Jones, voted unanimously for Aaron, impressed by his plans for the run-down pub but also with his devotion to his daughters and his determination to give them a better life.

Aaron is now convinced he was born to cook - a fact the Standard can bear witness to having been invited to The Cock, which is still owned by Oliver's Fifteen Foundation. Its transformation from grotty drinking denizen to stylish gastropub has been remarkable.

Business is thriving with double the number of customers Aaron expected. He admitted there had been a few teething difficulties. "There was no holding our hands at all," he said, "It was, here's the business, here's the keys, get on with it."

The pub caught fire during the refurbishment, and before he could employ enough staff, Aaron was working from 7am till 3am daily. He now employs three full-time chefs, a reservations manager and a barman, as well as 18 other part-timers. Pretty good going for the lad from the West London sink estate. He cooks a mean roast beef too.

Jamie's Chef is on Channel 4 tomorrow night at 9pm.

 

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