IT WAS not the golden sand, crashing surf or the lure of the West Country that persuaded Jamie Oliver to set up his latest restaurant on a Cornish beach. It was a 66-year-old grandmother who refused to take no for an answer.

Among the hundreds of guests at the launch party for Oliver’s restaurant Fifteen was Betty Hale. For two years Mrs Hale pestered the chef, saying that Cornwall had all the ingredients to make it the ideal location for his first branch outside London. Fifteen was set up by Oliver as a charity to put under-privileged young people in the kitchen to learn a trade and earn self-respect.

Cornwall, with its second homes and wealthy pensioners escaping from London and the Home Counties, was not somewhere he considered needed his help. Mrs Hale knew differently. Having seen the television series about his first Fifteen in Hoxton, East London, she was convinced that it was just what Cornwall needed.

Cornwall is Britain’s most economically deprived region, with high unemployment, low wages and few prospects for less academically gifted school leavers. She was so convinced that it was the right place for Oliver’s next venture that she even sent hampers of local produce and paid for air fares for his advisers to visit.

Oliver paid tribute at the opening of Fifteen Cornwall at Watergate Bay, near Newquay, this month to Mrs Hale’s persistence. He admitted that without her the project would never have happened. “We had offers from all over the country, all over the world,” he said. “Everyone wanted us but she would not give up. When someone calls or sends e-mails every day for months on end you eventually have to listen.”

Fifteen Cornwall is run by professional chefs helped by 19 trainees, whose backgrounds range from under-achievement at school to homelessness and petty crime. All will be trained to a high standard with the skills to set up on their own.

The £1 million cost of setting up Fifteen was met by the South West Regional Development Agency and Objective One funding from Europe. The restaurant is expected to generate £60 million for the Cornish economy over ten years.

Mrs Hale, from Padstow, said that she had been determined to see a Fifteen restaurant in the county to give young people the chance of a brighter future. “I started chasing up Jamie for a Fifteen here because Cornwall is such an ideal place for one,” she said.

“The sand, sea and surf image fit his laid-back attitude, and there is some fantastic food down here.

“But more importantly there are a lot of kids who can really benefit from something like this. Because Cornwall is a poor county there are not many opportunities here. I found a new excuse to get in touch with Jamie’s office every week. They could have given me the brush-off but for some reason they didn’t.”

Oliver said that opening a restaurant in Cornwall had not occurred to him until he was won over by Betty’s determination. He said that her e-mails and phone calls stood out over the 2,000 requests he receives from officials every day because she was so polite.

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