Jamie goes back to school

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is going back to class to transform every pupil's favourite joke - school dinners.

The culinary wizard is hoping to spruce up menus at a London school and get kids off the chips and on to the couscous.

Oliver will take up the challenge in front of the cameras for a new four-part series on Channel 4, the broadcaster confirmed.

Jamie's School Dinners, which starts filming next week, follows the audience-grabbing success of Jamie's Kitchen two years ago.

South London school

He will be filmed at Kidbrooke School in Greenwich, south-east London, where he will work with pupils and dinner ladies to improve children's diets.

And it is something close to the chef's heart - he denounced the quality of school dinners earlier this year, saying he would not allow his own children to eat them.

He said today: "I've been concerned about what kids eat in school for some time now and so I've devoted most of the rest of 2004 to actually doing something about school food.

"I've heard loads of kids and parents saying how worried they are about lack of good, nutritious and tasty food, so I'm going to tackle it head on.

"For some kids, it's their only proper meal of the day so it's crucial that school lunch provides them with something that's not just a load of old rubbish."

Oliver will see if kids can bin the pizza in favour of porcini and improve what's on offer within a budget.

And he hopes to use whatever lessons he learns to improve school dinners around the country.

In 2002, the Naked Chef gripped Channel 4 viewers with his bid to turn a group of unemployed youngsters into top chefs for his restaurant, 15.

Jamie's School Dinners is being made by his production company, Fresh One.

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