Jay Rayner

Jay Rayner is an award-winning writer, journalist and broadcaster with a fine collection of floral shirts. He has written on everything from crime and politics, through cinema and theatre to the visual arts, but is best known as restaurant critic for the Observer.

For a while he was a sex columnist for Cosmopolitan; he also once got himself completely waxed in the name of journalism. He only mentions this because it hurt. Jay is a former Young Journalist of the Year, Critic of the Year and Restaurant Critic of the Year, though not all in the same year. In the 2016 British Press Awards he was shortlisted for both Critic of the Year and Specialist Journalist of the Year. In 2018 he was restaurant writer of the year in The Fortnum and Mason Food and Drink Awards.

Somehow he has also found time to write four novels and six works of non-fiction. His latest book is Wasted Calories and Ruined Nights, a second collection of his most negative restaurant reviews. His next book will be My Last Supper: one meal a lifetime in the making, which will be published in September 2019.

He chairs BBC Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet, and is a regular on British television, where he is familiar as a judge on Masterchef. He performs live all over the country, both in his one man shows, and with the Jay Rayner Quartet, a jazz ensemble in which he plays piano. He likes pig.

Find out much more about Jay, including all his live dates at www.jayrayner.co.uk