Fake CV chef Irvine given the chop

A British television chef has been axed by an American cable channel after it was discovered that his CV had been cooked up. Robert Irvine's show Dinner: Impossible was one of the Food Network's top-rated shows - not least because of its presenter's apparent royal connections. The 42-year-old from Wiltshire claimed to be a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. His CV boasted experience cooking for four US presidents including Bill Clinton and George Bush. He also claimed to have assisted on Charles and Diana's wedding cake and to have been given a castle by the Queen.

Yesterday, however, Irvine's channel bosses announced they would not be renewing his contract, saying they had discovered "embellishments and inaccuracies" in his resume. The British chef claims that the lies had slipped out because of social pressures. "When I first came down there and I met people with all this money, it was like trying to keep up with the Joneses," he told the St Petersburg Times in Florida on Sunday. "I was sitting in a bar one night and that came out."

Many of the false claims are repeated in Irvine's cookbook-cum-autobiography Mission:Cook!. In it he writes of cooking as a guest chef for Ronald Reagan's birthday on the royal yacht Britannia and how he worked in Buckingham Palace and as part of Charles and Diana's travelling entourage during a decade-long stint as chef to the royal household. However, neither the White House nor Clarence House was prepared to validate those claims on Sunday.