ES News email The latest headlines in your inbox twice a day Monday - Friday plus breaking news updates Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive lunchtime headlines Monday - Friday plus breaking news alerts, by email Update newsletter preferences

TV chef Jamie Oliver has complained that diners at his restaurants have developed a taste for items that are off the menu - linen napkins and toilet flush handles.

The 15-Minute Meals star said that thousands of napkins go missing every month at his chain of eateries and that he had been forced to weld the handles on to his toilets.

Oliver, whose business empire is worth £150 million, linked the thefts to the recession.

He told the Radio Times: "Thankfully, we're ridiculously busy. But I have noticed things in this recession.

"Like people nicking the linen napkins from our restaurants. We now lose about 30,000 a month.

"And there's another thing: every restaurant of mine has the old-fashioned Thomas Crapper toilets because I've always thought they look wicked.

"But they're really expensive and we've had to have the handles and flushers welded on because people were unscrewing them and nicking them.

"Honestly, some people were coming out for a meal and going home with half a toilet. Bonkers!"

The star, 37, also slammed Government ministers, saying that he had "given up" on them.

Oliver, who has campaigned for better school meals, told the magazine: "I am turning into a grumpy old man where the Government is concerned. I'm not one of those people who fart around outside the UK to avoid paying tax.

"I'm actually proud to pay my whack. But I've met Government and education secretaries and I'm just so bored and underwhelmed by them. And every year when I'm doing my tax return and putting that figure in the box at the bottom, I can't help thinking: 'I wouldn't give it to them. I wouldn't even employ them.'

"So I've sort of given up on them, really. All I do now is say how I feel and that's it. I'm just concentrating on work."

Oliver said that his new 15-Minute Meals show on Channel 4, which followed 2010's 30-Minute Meals, would be his last to go against the clock.