'Watching myself on TV, I cringe; it makes me feel sick'

For a lot of people who work front of house in the catering industry there's a reason it's called "waiting". They're waiting for someone to offer them a better job, whether it's on stage or screen, or just somewhere where your income isn't subject to the capricious generosity of your customers. But for Michel Roux Jr, chef-patron of the Michelin-starred Le Gavroche, waiting on tables isn't an economic stop-gap on the way to celebrity, it's a route to fame in itself. The eight young trainees he'd assembled to take part in Michel Roux's Service, he told us, could be "stars of the future" and the trade they were being trained in a key to great privileges. "Wonderful locations, great experiences, beautiful palaces, that is what this career can give you," he assured them. At every one of which, you'll have the opportunity to be treated like dirt by merchant bankers, I muttered at home, finding it a little difficult to get into the spirit of the thing.

No matter how fancy the food, a meal in a top-class restaurant can be ruined if the front-of-house staff aren't up to scratch. And in a new BBC series, three-starred chef Michel Roux Jr will teach a group of trainees exactly what that means

My parents were ... very strict when I was younger. They were disciplined with homework, you had to do it straight away, and they were always striving to get the best out of me. Now, I appreciate that; at the time, you just think mum and dad are mean!

Intimate Edwardian country charm comes with the latest modern luxuries, says Minty Clinch

There are tough times ahead, but Roux at Parliament Square is more classy coalition than culinary compromise

Waterside Inn celebrates Michelin success with 25-course meal for culinary royalty

'I love taking a canoe down the River Ardèche'

School meals tsar wants children kept away from fast-food outlets

Michel Roux Jr answers your Christmas Food and Drink questions including: What can I do with a surfeit of goose fat? Where do you stand on sausages in bacon? And what’s a ‘coherent plate of food’?

It was an offer no foodie could refuse – to cook in the kitchen of Albert Roux. Could John Walsh's bavette steak pass muster with this titan of haute cuisine?

When Marcus Wareing became a chef he decided that his favourite childhood pudding made by his Lancastrian grandmother Emily was worth recreating for paying diners.

The fact that Common People is spread across three CDs betrays its fault, which is to have expanded a scene that could be more cogently accommodated on a single disc into something that includes virtually every British pop act of the 1990s, regardless of aptness, worth or narrative shape.

'I was very good at metalwork'