Phil Howard, the chef and co-owner of The Square, Mayfair on life and work after quitting crack cocaine
I was born and grew up in South Africa until I was eight. I was a good swimmer. Like most people in South Africa I could reach the end of a length. Then as a teen at boarding school in the UK, I swam and ran and played fives, but I certainly wasn’t a sports nut. The concepts of “health” and “wellbeing” didn’t cross my mind and wouldn’t until I was 30 years old.
At university I spent more time partying than doing anything particularly constructive. I studied microbiology and my friends were all anthropologists and archaeologists who were burning the candle at both ends – which I did too, but I struggled more with work. Yet I discovered the joy of cooking at university. I travelled afterwards for a year then came back, hit the top restaurants with begging letters and started rapidly, aged 22, on the journey of cooking professionally. It took over my life. At 24 I opened The Square – I wasn’t qualified and had no clear strategy – and for the next 15 years I worked full-tilt, six days a week from 7am to 11pm, or midnight, on four hours sleep per night. I’d sleep harder on my day off but eat hard and party hard, too.
Ever since my crash and burn I’ve worked hard, but not to the point where I do nothing but work. Work became secondary
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