Antony Worrall Thompson's passage to culinary stardom has not exactly been smooth. Abandoned by his father, a Shakespearean actor, when he was just three, Antony was sexually abused and maltreated throughout his childhood. His extra-curricular activities at boarding school included pushing teachers' cars into the swimming pool and throwing paint over parents' Rolls-Royces.
Antony's story very nearly came to an abrupt halt at sixteen when his face was crushed in a horrific rugby accident, which left him badly disfigured and chronically insecure. But pioneering surgery saved the day, enabling him to pursue what was to become the enduring love of his life - cooking.
After much hard graft and some close encounters of the violent gangster kind, AWT's flamboyant style as a restaurateur soon brought him to the attention of cookery's cognoscenti. Things didn't always run according to plan, however - he once had to serve Heinz tomato soup, tarted up with croutons and basil, to the customers in his restaurant because there wasn't time to make his own from scratch. (They loved it.) And today Antony is to the culinary establishment what a bull is to a china shop. His no-nonsense style in the kitchen is loathed by a few, but loved by millions.
Stuffed with hugely entertaining anecdotes and lightly sprinkled with AWT's no-holds-barred opinions, 'Raw' is a heart-rendingly honest story of triumph over adversity. Along the way we go behind the scenes with the foodie mafia and Antony lifts the lid on a few triple-Michelin-starred scandals. The knives (and the forks!) are very definitely out . . .
