TOM KERRIDGE is one of TV’s most popular chefs, but at one point his wild boozing nearly got the better of him and he feared he would be dead by 50.
Now the Michelin-starred cook has revealed just how bad his drinking got, admitting he would start epic sessions with a swig in the SHOWER.
And the star, who turns 51 in July, detailed his shocking daily intake of at least 16 pints of lager, two pints of cocktail and half a bottle of gin.
Tom even had to give up socialising in pubs after the familiar smell of non-alcohol beer triggered him into necking eight pints of it in just 20 minutes.
The now-teetotal restaurateur details for the first time the huge quantities he was downing every day before getting up just hours later for work and boozing in the shower.
Tom eventually kicked the habit but admits he remains vulnerable to slipping back into it if he is not careful.
The chef, who has won two Michelin stars for his pub, The Hand & Flowers in Marlow, Bucks, says: “I never drank during the day — ever, ever, ever — ’til the last main course had gone.
“Last main course had gone, everyone would start clearing down.
“We then get a round of beers.
“I would probably drink a pint of Negroni (a cocktail of gin, vermouth and Campari).
“I would probably do two.
“Then maybe six pints of Stella, six pints of lager, then there was a pub down the road that would be open til like late, one or two in the morning.
“So we’d get all the kitchen out, and I’d get in there, and then I could easily do another six to eight bottles of Grolsch, but the pint-sized ones, or pints of lager.
“Then I’d go home and I’d do a gin and tonic, but it would be a pint glass filled with ice and I’d pour the gin all the way to the top. And then I’d top it off with tonic.
“I could do half a bottle of gin, 12 to 16 lagers, two massive Negronis every day.
“And that would be every day. And then some days it would be more.
“There was a point where, if I had an evening off and I finished work in the afternoon and I was going to go for a few beers in the evening, like I’d go home and I’d be drinking lager in the shower as I was getting washed to go out.
“It was next level, like it was beyond, it was massive.
“I was just trying to release the energy and the levels of pressure.
“It was a challenge.
“It was like, ‘If I’m going to drink, we drink proper’.
“I was the real deal.
“Like anything you do, you get better at it — and I was very good at it.”
But approaching his 40th birthday and weighing 30st, Tom realised he “needed to change” because he would not make 50.
So he gave up alcohol and later had to avoid the pub entirely.
He says: “If I then had an evening off I couldn’t go to the pub.
“I wouldn’t go to the pub and then just drink a Diet Coke because I was in that environment and I wouldn’t put myself in that space because I couldn’t trust myself.
“I had to find new releases.
“Going swimming was a big thing, walking the dogs was a big thing, trying to just be a bit more connected to my wife, trying to be a bit more connected to the world.
“The first year was really, really difficult trying to find new social habits and removing yourself from those social environments.
“There was a point actually — it was one of the scariest moments from being a non-drinker, about two and a half years into not drinking.
“I was working at the Hand and I rang Beth (Tom’s wife) up.
“It was about 9.30pm, and we’d just sent the last main courses, and said, ‘Look it’s quite quiet, do you want to meet in one of the pubs in town?’
“We went into town.
“Beth had a glass of wine or gin and tonic, and I went, ‘Do you know what, I might have a Beck’s Blue, non-alcoholic beer’.
“It was the connection of the process, the opening of the beer.
“It still smells like beer, the taste, everything just suddenly connected — I did eight of them in 20 minutes. I was on it.
“I found myself in this whole world again.
“It was terrifying. I was in that zone of chaos again.
“I’ve got to remove myself.
‘Zone of chaos’
“That was the final point of just going ‘That’s it, I cannot associate, I can’t have anything non-alcoholic’, because it takes you into this world.
“There’s this like demon thing that’s in there’.
“That was the point that made me go, ‘I can’t go near it’.”
Speaking to the High Performance podcast, Tom adds: “I’ve got to be honest, I think probably a lot of the guys in the kitchen were quite relieved because I wasn’t making them go to the pub.
“They circulate to new things.
“It was either, I don’t know, strip clubs, whether drugs came into it, whether things happened, they all found their own different . . . whether it was gambling.
“It has most definitely moved in the ten years since I stopped drinking.
“If you go there now, we pay for gym membership.
“On their days off they’re all bench-pressing, they’re all going to the gym.
“They’re not drinking, they’re taking much more care of themselves.”
Tom says he needed the heavy drinking to ease the pressure from his drive for perfection.
He explains: “That drive for perfection, it’s a flaw in my personality that then hit an addiction issue.
“You go, ‘Right, I’m in it, but I need a release’.
“If I’m driving to this point and I’m pushing myself from 6/7am to midnight every single day, like it’s a seven-day-a-week operation.
“It was my business — myself and my wife making this work.
“You always need that release.
“A lot of people who are that driven will always find a release.
‘I don’t regret it’
“It might be running, it might be going to the gym, or if you’re in that world and you’re slightly attracted to that world, it might manifest itself in an addiction issue.
“Whether it’s gambling, whether it’s drugs, or whether it was alcohol. So mine was always a release — it became boozing.
“It was part of the circle, it was a part of the drive, it was a part of that life of connecting.
“We wouldn’t be where we were if I wasn’t that person, so I don’t regret being that person at all, because I think without that release I wouldn’t have been able to push myself that far.
“Without that up and down there wouldn’t have been any point.
“I needed to go there and then get massively drunk and self-indulged.
“It was like this amazing whirlwind of five, ten years of chaos — I absolutely loved.
“The fact that I have complete control over it now . . . I love the fact that I can do that.
“The head chef I was working with at the time said, ‘You’re never going to do that’. I was like ‘I’ll show you’.”