Jamie Oliver has broken down in tears when recalling that he 'got cocky' before the collapse of his restaurant empire.
The 44-year-old chef opened up on Channel 4 documentary Jamie Oliver: The Naked Chef Bares All, in which he admitted to his non-restaurant staff the mistakes he made before a majority of his outlets were plunged into administration.
Addressing his staff on the episode, Jamie admitted: "It's a really tough one. For many, many months now I have been walking around the office and you have been like 'Jamie, are you alright' and I have gone 'Yes' but the truth was no I'm f*****g not, it's f****d.
"I am utterly devastated, financially I have exhausted everything I could, I used every card, I used every trick, I used every contact."
Jamie went on to admit that his attitude may have not helped. He continued: "We got cocky, we thought anything we did would work.
"Massive lessons learnt, I will never make them again, never again, never again, never again."
Jamie broke down in tears when speaking to documentary host, Davina McCall, as the pair visited the site of his first Fifteen restaurant, in London.
Standing in the abandoned venue, the chef said: "It is really eerie and I don't like it.
"I don't know, it is like in the films when the bomb has gone off and everyone has to leave and everything is just left.
"My god, it's tough. I have been so stressed, I have been, it's gone.
"Over there on the pillar, there were two plaques from students who had died."
Jamie opened up about how quickly the business collapsed and how that meant that staff were unaware until it was too late.
He continued: "Sadly you can't practically give employees notice that you are about to make them redundant in administration.
"It is just not practical, administrators take over executive control, we are appointed by the court.
"So what happened was we had to move quickly. The hard part of this particular case was that only a relatively small number of employees, percentage wise, were there at that particular time."
Jamie then explained how he shared the news of the business going under: "We invite all employees to conference calls which we lead and we give people the bad news sadly, which is awful.
"But there is no other way to do it."
Jamie then added: "The staff got paid up to the date, I made sure of that.
"I just did my best and I couldn't do it this time.
"Without question the most painful regret when a business dies is having to tell staff that you care about , that have worked really hard for you, that they haven't got a job anymore."
Jamie explained to Davina what he thought had gone wrong: "To survive in this industry is really tough, I was very naive at the time.
"I was good at running one restaurant but I wouldn't call myself a businessman.
"I'm good at quite a few things but not necessarily brilliant at everything and I we did plenty wrong.
"I opened a lot of big restaurants and I think people like small-medium sized restaurants.
"You have these big cathedrals that you can't fill."
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