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British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has paid tribute to a former protege who was found dead three months after going missing.

Kevin Boyle appeared on the star's 2002 U.K. TV show Jamie's Kitchen, which saw Oliver give 15 unemployed youngsters the chance to work at his Fifteen Restaurant in London.

Boyle disappeared in October and his body was discovered in land near his home in south London last week (ends22Jan12), and Oliver has now spoken of his heartbreak after hearing the terrible news.

In a statement, he says, "I'm deeply saddened by this tragic news. I am proud to have been able to call Kevin a friend for 10 years.

"He was also a constant supporter of Fifteen and all the apprentices and graduates who came after him through the course. I last saw him in September 2011 at the graduation ceremony for the ninth group of apprentices and he was on good form, which makes this news even harder to take. My thoughts are with his family at this incredibly difficult time."

A Scotland Yard spokesman adds, "The death is being treated as unexplained at this stage. A post mortem will be arranged in due course."...

var brightcovevideoid = '749541656001'; English celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who relocated to Los Angeles with the hopes of bringing his Food Revolution into local schools, is getting a taste of rejection. "It's not going so well at the moment," Oliver, 35, tells People. "Currently, the L.A. School District won't let me near a single school, but we're going to try to get around that." Oliver says he's hoping parents will stand up for the cause - the same cause that won him an Emmy for the first season of ABC's Food Revolution, when he overhauled lunch menus in Huntington, W.

Jamie Oliver has claimed that his Food Revolution series has been banned from filming in Los Angeles schools. The one-time 'Naked Chef' told reporters at the opening of his new La cooking-based school Jamie's Kitchen that the city's school district has prevented his efforts to improve the quality of food served to local children during their lunch periods. "I'm locked out," he said. "I need to get into the school system, and I can't." In a subsequent interview with TV Guide, Oliver insisted that the setback will not curb (more)...

Are Los Angeles schools ready for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution? Production has just begun on the second season of his ABC series, but at the moment Oliver is not allowed inside a single one of the city's public schools.

"I'm locked out," Oliver told reporters Wednesday at the opening of his L.A.-based cooking school Jamie's Kitchen. "I need to get into the school system, and I can't."

L.A. Unified School District says no to Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution

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Michael Kuhn's Qwerty Films has hired Kyle Long to turn the hit British TV series Jamie's Kitchen, starring celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, aka the Naked Chef, into a feature film. Aaron Ryder is producing. The series charted Oliver's efforts to train a group of underprivileged youngsters to staff the kitchen of his first restaurant, Fifteen. The film is not designed as a biopic, and it will shift the action from London to New York. Oliver's character is being rewritten as an American, who has yet to be cast.

LONDON -- Ben Frow, head of features and factual entertainment at Channel 4, has left to become controller of features and entertainment at Channel Five, the companies said Wednesday. Frow, whose Channel 4 shows have included Jamie's Kitchen, How Clean Is Your House? and Nigella Bites, joins its commercial rival, which styles itself simply as Five, in the new year. He will be in charge of all entertainment programming on the channel including series and will develop new entertainment features. "I'm really proud of the contribution I've been able to make to the channel's success over the past five years," said Frow, who joined Channel 4 from the BBC in 1998. "I feel I'm now ready for a fresh challenge." "Ben's a highly individual commissioning editor who's left a distinctive mark on a fantastic array of programming," Channel 4 director of television Kevin Lygo said. "Other channels have clearly copied Channel 4's recent innovations in lifestyle and features programming in the hope of repeating its ratings successes, and much of the credit for that must go to Ben."...