Quotes from Gino D'Acampo

With me and my family, we have nothing to hide.

I get asked for cooking tips all the time.

My wife often goes out with male friends for dinner and I go out with female friends. We have different holidays. We're together six months of the year and when we're together, we're together.

Hearing other celebrities moaning about the bad things about being famous - there is no worst thing. If you don't want to be famous, just stop it and go and be a doctor or a teacher.

People should always have a good bottle of extra virgin olive oil, a packet of pasta, tinned tomatoes and a good cheese somewhere in their fridge.

My wife is a very clever woman. She knows when to say something and when to bite her tongue.

I'm very lucky because I can say to my wife, 'Is there any chance we can have shepherd's pie or this or that tonight,' and she does it very well - especially as I don't always want to cook!

I think if you're a good person and you show that you learned from all the mistakes that you made you move on with your life. Everybody will accept that. Only an idiot will not accept that or keep reminding you of it and keep pointing that finger.

I don't do cookery shows to show off, I do it to encourage people. What's the point in going on TV and doing a recipe that no one can replicate?

Nowadays, everyone writes a cookbook. Models, singers, whatever, everybody thinks that they can do it and cook on TV. What they don't understand is that if you want to do it well, you need to put in the hours.

For many, the gastronomic heart of Italy is the Emilia-Romagna region. Its capital is Bologna, which is often overlooked by tourists but has a beautiful historic centre and a lively yet chilled-out atmosphere.

My mother would never say anything I cooked for her was great. She was always a 'Yeah, but' person. When she tasted my food, I used to say to her 'Don't tell me too straight, lie to me!' She couldn't even understand why I was on television.

The problem that people have is that they eat too large portion sizes. Italians have been eating pasta for hundreds and hundreds of years, and we've never been an obese nation. We do the pasta, the pizza, all the cheeses, but it all has to do with how much you eat.

I always travel with my iPod and I've never read a book in my life. It makes me tired; my brain is not set up for reading.

You'll never see an Italian go on a diet.

Very few Italian restaurants in Britain do a good job. They're too scared to show you what real Italian food is like because they think you can't handle it, so they dilute it.

The problem many people have with Italian food is they over-complicate it. Italian food is extremely simple.

My only ambition was to have a restaurant and bring real Italian food to this country. Television was never even part of my idea, so I can say without hesitation that I am living someone else's dream.

We Italians respect food and ingredients more than anyone else.

I am still around too many Italian people to start speaking like a guy from London. I live in Italy for six months of the year, all the people in my restaurants are Italian and it means that when I speak, it is always with an Italian accent in my head.

I always go back to Italy for holidays because I live half my life on the island of Sardinia.

Italy is a hot country. Wherever you feel heat, your excitement and passion come out. We're hot-blooded, and where there's passion there's love, but also anger, hunger, excitement.

I never tried to convince my wife to move to Italy. She wouldn't have liked that.

The best place to go in Italy for a summer holiday is the island of Sardinia.