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Whatsapp While working as a private chef, Dan Lepard had a client pay him $200 a day to cook a poached egg each morning.

Private chefs exist in an intimate domain of rare extravagance. Now a celebrity in his own right, Australian chef Dan Lepard says life cooking poached eggs for the rich and famous can be bizarrely disorienting.

It's totally obscene, but for a brief while, Dan Lepard would travel across New York every morning to poach an egg.

They really see you as a paid member of the family.

For this service, his billionaire client would pay him $200 a day. Even if money is no object, that's still a staggering extravagance.

Lepard suggests such clients are 'not necessarily comfortable in restaurants'.

'They want to control the environment,' he says.

Lepard has since gone on to enjoy a high-profile career as a chef, baker and television personality, but before that he worked as a private chef for the likes of artist David Hockney.

On some days, that involved preparing food for Hollywood celebrities' beach parties. On others, it meant being the person responsible for fetching a glass of orange juice or a piece of toast.

'You're part of their family, in that you're cooking their breakfast, lunches and dinner,' says Lepard.

'They want you to be there. They really see you as a paid member of the family.'

That can make for a strange somewhat disorientating lifestyle, however.

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Whatsapp Chef Dan Lepard is a world-renowned baker and has appeared on the The Great Australian Bake-Off

'You're part of their life. However, it's not your life; it's their life,' says Lepard.

'You're so close to them and you're so intimate with them that you start to think, "This is my life." It gets very confusing.'

Lepard began working as a private chef in the early 1990s after abandoning his rookie position in a London restaurant.

He says there remains a certain degree of animosity between private chefs and their restaurant counterparts.

'The two roles are like the kitchen equivalent of the bodyguard and the soldier; one is looking after someone personally, the other is out in a troop.

'The soldiers look down on the bodyguards and vice-versa.

'A lot of chefs think being a private chef is getting away with it easy.

'"They're just doing whatever they want, they're highly paid." That's just not the case.'

Far from the brash, personality-driven restaurant chef archetype, private chefs have to be far more subdued.

'[Clients] are not interested in your ego or your opinion about the way you think they should live their life,' says Lepard.

'So many restaurants I go to, I really enjoy a meal but I think that I could only eat it once a month.

'As a private chef, you're cooking the food that they can eat every day.'

Ultimately, though, it was the lucrative $200 poached egg that prompted Lepard to leave that world.

'I thought, "This isn't me. I want to get back to kitchen cooking."'

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