Acknowledgements

My foremost thanks go to Trevor Laffin, former Head of Division of Business, Enterprise and Management (School of Arts and Social Sciences) at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, where I work, who allowed me sufficient time to prepare this monograph during 2015 and 2016. It took much longer than initially planned, but it would never have been possible without his support and belief that it would one day be done. During this time, my colleagues in the Gastronomy team unfortunately bore much of the weight of our new programme development, preparation and teaching. I would especially like to thank Charlotte Maberly, my colleague and programme co-leader, who was always very accommodating to my constant lack of attention to various tasks that needed doing in order for the programme to run smoothly.

My former doctoral supervisor, Ruth Wodak, first accepted my proposal for a PhD on “Jamie Oliver as a lifestyle promoter” almost a decade ago and upon completion encouraged me to develop it into a book. The PhD has ended up very far away from where the proposal promised to go, and this book much further on from where the doctorate ended. I am grateful for all her advice and encouragement over these years. This book, as a consequence, relies on some of the information compiled during my doctoral years, so I would also like to thank Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) who funded my PhD research at Lancaster University during 2008-12.

Many friends and colleagues took time to read and comment on various sections of this book. I am particularly thankful to Bernhard Forchtner, John Heywood, Phil Lyon, Krištof Savski, Göran Eriksson, Tanja Kamin, and Andreja Vezovnik – the last three from the FoodKom group – whose insights into various topics as well as suggestions for improvement have been very valuable. I appreciate enormously the time they have taken to offer constructive (and sometimes painfully realistic) feedback on my writing, in some cases literally overnight. Of course, as always, they are not responsible for any pitfalls in the final text.

Many thanks also to Mhairi Barrett, my PhD student, who has kindly helped with assembling and formatting the reference list. I am also grateful to our MSc Gastronomy students who asked many sensible questions during Food and Communication classes regarding celebrity chefs, television cooking and also discourse analysis and whose determination with their own dissertations, deadlines and cul-de-sacs of academic writing has always been inspiring. Many other colleagues at Queen Margaret University were also very supportive during the years, but I would particularly like to thank Claire Seaman and Rebecca Finkel, who were always available for a chat about this and that to do with writing up.

Much of Chapter 4 (Food advice in socialist Slovenia) analysis is based on the material held in the Archive of Radio and Television (RTV) Slovenia, whose staff was always very helpful and our discussions extremely informative. I thank them all for their time and patience during my visits. A very special thanks also goes to two brilliant mathematicians, Julija Tominc and Severin Mejak, who cast a spell on my manuscript and it created an index! A witchcraft of a special kind!

Families usually come last, although they should really come first: thanks to my parents, grandparents and my sister Julija for all their support – emotional and financial – over the last ten years since I started working on this topic. It was my parents’ mixed attitude to Jamie Oliver’s TV show that initially triggered my interest in this topic; but although fascination with Oliver is long gone, we still like to talk about food, complain about today’s TV cooking and remember the “good old days” when “chefs still knew how to cook properly”.

Finally thanks to my husband, Mr. J., who had to put up with this project for too long, and in particular over the last summer patiently listened to my endless monologues and excuses about “the book”. But although it was the final deadline in the form of the imminent arrival of our first child, due in about a month two week’s one week three day’s time from the final send off of the manuscript to the publisher for review that really triggered finalising the manuscript I dedicate this book to Mr. J. who knows more about it than anybody else. Although by now he is almost certainly fed up with CDA (but fortunately not food!) he will be pleased to see this project finally coming to an end.