Jamie Oliver is to set up a chain of high street Italian restaurants. The Sunday Times

The first Jamie’s Italian will open in Bath in the spring, and others are planned for Brighton and Cardiff. The celebrity chef aims to have a chain of 20 within the next five years.

The restaurants will be open for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and offer a range of basic Italian food such as lasagne, spaghetti bolognaise and grilled steaks and lamb chops at affordable prices.

Oliver said: ‘What we're doing is really beautiful, vibrant, local, quality restaurants in great university cities . . . and hopefully we can get ‘Billy from Bognor’ trying a few things.’ He said the aim was to create restaurants with a ‘neighbourhood’ feel.