On my perfect day, I would go for a beautiful walk in University Parks in Oxford. It is the most romantic, lovely park in Britain. I go at dawn at any time of the year. Whether it’s raining or peak summer, it is always pure harmony.

When you’re a chef you’re so concerned with creating something sublime that when you relax you like the simple things. All I want to do is be with my gorgeous friends and two sons around a table with delicious food with good conversation and absolutely no sophistication.

I come from a poor working-class background and I had to work for my bread from a very young age. We had a huge garden and we spent every day helping my mama and papa grow vegetables and weed the garden. It was hard because all my friends were having fun playing football.

Growing up, the table was the heart of the house. Every Sunday the women would cook and the men would go to the cellar and choose the wine. There was something very wonderful about it. We would all eat together and then the women would sit in the kitchen and the men would talk about politics and sex, and the children would sit at the table in a cloud of smoke waiting for dessert.

We all need to search for our talent, it is inside us somewhere, but it’s not always obvious. When I left my lycée I worked in a factory, which was the most dehumanising moment of my life – you are a shadow, you clock in and you clock out. But my life changed when I walked past a restaurant near my hometown. It was obvious to me I wanted to be a chef.

It wasn’t always easy. A head chef once threw a copper pan in my face and broke my jaw. I had to go to hospital and then went to Britain. But they could never break the fire in me. I knew one day I would touch excellence.

Raymond is cooking live at the BBC Good Food Show, NEC Birmingham, 14-17 June