BBC cooks up Nigel Slater TV drama

Nigel Slater's childhood memoirs are being turned into a BBC One drama which will show the TV chef as "the Billy Elliot of the kitchen".

Ruby Film and Television, which was behind the BBC's acclaimed drama Small Island, is making a 90-minute adaptation of Toast.

Ruby co-founder Paul Trijbits told Broadcast magazine: "This is the Billy Elliot of the kitchen, it's about ambition in the face of huge hindrances."

He added: "Slater is iconic - he represents a lot of things we love about Britain."

Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall is penning the screenplay, which will chronicle the chef's childhood, as he began to develop his passion for cooking against the backdrop of the death of his mother.

Nigel is quoted on Waitrose's website recalling: "My mother died when I was nine.

"My father, an engineer, who was very strict and Victorian, fell in love with our cleaner, and they ran away to the country from Wolverhampton.

"We moved to a cottage on the Worcestershire-Herefordshire border, roses and honeysuckle round the door, but it was in the middle of nowhere, and I didn't see anyone from one day to the next."