The e-mail of tips from the Naked Chef includes recipes for “huge Yorkshire puddings” and “salmon with herbs in newspaper”. Also featured are “chicken breast baked in a bag” and “the easiest sexiest salad in the world”.
The e-mail has become a global phenomenon over the past two weeks, with excited office workers from Britain to Australia believing they have been sent the proofs of a new, unpublished Oliver book.
The recipes are presented in the form of an attached file, which appears to be 133 pages of professionally produced book proofs. One message claims they were accidentally leaked by Oliver’s publisher ahead of publication.
The first page features a picture of the mop-haired chef grinning and eating an apple, above which are the words “Jamie Oliver — The Naked Chef 2”.
Penguin, Oliver’s publisher, confirmed that although the recipes were genuine Jamie Oliver creations, the supposed proofs were not. “It appears to be a kind of pirate version made up of lots of recipes from previous Jamie Oliver books,” said a spokesman. “First of all there is no new book, and we were able to track down that the e-mail did not originate from any part of the Penguin group.”
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The company says that Oliver’s copyright has been seriously infringed and it will consider legal action if it ever tracks down who is responsible.
The culprit, it appears, has spent many hours typing Oliver recipes into his computer to create the fake book and launch it into cyberspace.
Peter Matthews, a 31-year-old environmental consultant from Stoke Newington in northeast London, was among the internet users to have received the recipes and forwarded them to friends.
“I’m particularly looking forward to cooking the ‘cellophane noodle salad’,” he said.
For Oliver, it is another mishap he could do without. Last week he was hurled from his moped when he was hit by a van in London. The chef, who was filming the title sequence to a new cookery show, was left nursing cuts. “I put my tooth through my top lip, which hurt, but luckily that’s all that happened,” he said.