Jamie Oliver’s dyslexia meant that his new middle-grade novel took more than four years to write

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Jamie Oliver has written almost 50 books, but has only read one, and that was back in his mid-30s (he’s 48), a fact attributable to the severe dyslexia he’s struggled with all his life. So it’s notable that he recently published not only a new cookbook, 5 Ingredients Mediterranean, but also a middle-grade novel, Billy and the Giant Adventure.

Aimed at the 7-11 set, it’s an environmentally minded adventure revolving around a group of four friends (one of whom, Billy, is dyslexic) who discover a portal into a magical world called Waterfall Woods. Sprites, fart jokes and, yes, food abound (there are handy recipes at the back).

The first in a planned series, Billy took Oliver four and a half years to write (a cookbook typically takes him between one and two and a half). He’s particularly proud of the audiobook version, created by Vancouver’s Vaudeville Sound, for which he provided narration and composed music, and that also features the voices of some of his children and his wife, Jools.

How did you discover you had dyslexia, and how has it affected your life?

We didn’t really know until I was like 14, 15. At school I was the slowest in the class by quite a long way. When I was reading, the words would flicker and certain words were always the wrong way around. And when I’d write them, they’d be all in the wrong order. I was dragged into a class called “special needs,” and you can imagine what that was like in an all-boys school.

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Back then it wasn’t a science. It was just something I had to live with. To this day, no one asks me to do an autocue [teleprompter] because they know I can’t. Doing the audiobook to Billy was two days of solid reading, which to me is hell.

When I left school, I had chips on my shoulder when it came to my relationship with words. It was only through becoming a dad and going through the stuff life throws at you that you start to realize that words are like superpowers.

There are benefits to being dyslexic because you think differently and you problem-solve differently. I’ve always been grateful for that because I feel it. If I’m honest, writing Billy and publishing it in the U.K. was the moment when the last couple of chips got off my shoulder.

When celebrities write children’s books – and I use the term ‘write’ loosely – they’re often picture books. You’ve written a middle-grade book, which is very ambitious given the challenges you just described. Why this age group?

It’s such a beautiful age. Such an impressionable age. There’s code in this book: about relationships and overcoming things that you think define you. About the beauty of how joyful food can be. Every time we’ve tried to do cooking and kids, it’s like Percy Parsnip!, Cyril Carrot! It’s all a little bit “woo-hoo!” [gestures]. With Billy and the Giant Adventure I wanted to get the idea through that cool things happen over the dinner table or through food.

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The only thing I have a superpower in is I know how to be a dyslexic kid. There’s secret little dyslexic things that I have in there from the editorial point, like when it came to the fonts in the book, or the fact that chapters never open on any old page, it’s always on the right. But I knew that the dyslexic kids would get the audio book. And I wanted to make it as immersive and visceral, almost like I could smell it. I’m really proud of it. And hopefully it will get more kids cooking. That’s the dream.

What was your writing process?

I wrote book one on dictaphone. This book was never meant to be, by the way. Because of my bad reading, when my kids got to like 8, 9, and were reading better than me, they’d say, “Just tell me a story from your head, Dad.” So I’d start telling stories from my head, and I recorded them. Not because I thought I’d make a kid’s book, not in a million years. It’s because the next day, I couldn’t remember where I was.

What, if any, books did you enjoy having read to you as a child?

Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven books. Roald Dahl. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. From a filmic point of view, The Goonies was really powerful for me. I knew in my heart that this book could be something like that. You know, best friends, nature and adventure. Stranger Things, that kind of genre.

How much of you is in Billy?

A fair amount. There’s a lot of truths from my childhood. But I also see Billy in Buddy, my son, who’s like a better version of me. But the best friends and scenarios and things that they’re into, they’re all pretty much real. There’s less made up than you would imagine, bar the sprites and the Boonas [hairy, club-wielding cat-sized creatures].

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Tell me about the cookbook.

I wrote a cookbook five years ago called 5 Ingredients, and it was a massive hit around the world. What I was trying to tune into is that we’ve never cooked less than now in Britain. I imagine in Canada it’s probably not much different. It’s certainly the same in Australia and in America. I think that’s really bad for public health. It’s bad for humankind. It’s bad for the environment. It’s bad for the economy. Nearly everything in our world around food, food legislation and public health – and I’m generalizing – is based on bad data.

I’ve been lucky enough to spend some quality time with Mark Carney, a great Canadian who used to be the head of the Bank of England. He knows that a better connection with food and nourishing our children is better for GDP and better for productivity. He swears by it. He’s not a silly man. But no governments really take it seriously.

As a dyslexic, I fight for white space. I don’t want to put extra words in my books. So you’ve got the nutrition there: just five ingredients. But as usual with me, it’s not as simple as that. Cooking is a dying art. And I’m not exaggerating. Cooking is like a rare breed pig or heirloom tomato.

The truth is not good. The truth is not even close to good. The truth is heart attacks, obesity, diabetes, more Alzheimer’s. More pressure on health care systems. It’s clear as daylight.

There’s a whole new generation of parents and young people that don’t cook. Who were never taught to cook at home or school. What’s stopping you cooking tonight? Time, speed, money, but also, there’s just choice everywhere. We’re not living in a pro-cooking environment. We’re marketed to from the second we’re born. Our biggest sporting events are owned by the biggest junk food companies. The Olympics are as well. Danone and Nestlé and McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and Domino’s are, like, the most important people in our culinary life.

We’ve got to a point where some of the most honest food we’ve got is cake. Cake has never lied to you, has it? The problem we’ve got is if you go down the breakfast aisle, it should be called the cake aisle.

With Five Ingredients, I’m just desperately trying to get people to try to cook.

This interview has been condensed and edited.