There is always a hint of excitement when you find the owner of a restaurant in their kitchen. That moment when you walk into, say, the River Café and find Ruth or Rose in their whites, or spot Richard Corrigan behind the counter at Bentley's, or into any one of the countless places up and down the country whose patron is visibly at the stove. Then of course, there are those who are only at their post when there's a film crew or a photographer with them, but we are not going there today. Some well-known chefs make no bones about having hung up their aprons and slipped into a suit, swapped the chopping block for the boardroom table and now find themselves more concerned with profit margins than putting something on the plate. And who can blame them? Cheffing is hard graft, no matter how glamorous it might seem. At the end of the day even the starriest of chefs still goes home with the whiff of the kitchen about them.

In this sense I have always had a certain regard for Marco Pierre White. From that first black-and-white photograph in the first-ever edition of British Elle, looking like the wild stallion he was, all tousled-haired and throbbing hormones, he had the look of a Roman god. Now of course, with his striped suits and fedora hat, he looks more like a member of the New York mafia. Still strikingly handsome, but older, wiser and oozing gravitas, his recent appearance on Hell's Kitchen (or whatever the damn programme is called) saw a man who has swapped sex appeal for a certain dignity, who encourages rather than humiliates his team and doesn't have to shout to get people's attention. I have never met him, (and am willing to bet he doesn't know me from a bar of soap), but I find something about him perennially fascinating.

So, it appears, does Lynn Barber, and in this issue she interviews the man who, in many ways, started the whole subject of chefs being more than just 'someone behind a stove'. I can't help wondering what she will find when she peels away the Savile Row suit. Does he still have any of that excitement and passion he had when he was in the kitchen?

Also in this issue is Jay Rayner's introduction to our annual food awards. Your chance to vote to get your favourite producers, restaurants and food people recognised. As always, this is the vote for those others may not have heard of, and the chance to give a higher profile to those who are doing something exciting, interesting and worth telling others about.