C- Could you first tell us a bit about your journey in terms of becoming an entrepreneur?
I always use one reggae word and that’s ‘fabulocious’ and that’s something better than fabulous, because you know it’s all about the merging of the music and the food and those two are my two greatest passions. I always say if you can have your two passions and put them together then I say I have the best job in the world because while I’m at work I’m still at play, so it’s brilliant I’ve managed to do that and it’s worked quite well.
C- How has your music and the food came together?
Music was always my life for about 30 years. I started off in the great Coxon Sound System as a sort of DJ then I turned to singer, I formed my band Matic 16 back in the 80s and we had some great hits. The band broke up and I went on to a solo career but food was something that was always underneath. You know I’d be cooking while we were stringing up the band doing sound checks. I would have a little pot and pan somewhere in the dressing room cooking up some delicious food whenever we were on tour.
C- I wish I’d been on tour with you, I’m also a musician and I never had anyone doing anything like that.
Yes, you know, my real food experience started at the Notting Hill Carnival. It was 1991, I set up my first stall called the ‘Rastarant’ and that was the beginning of everything. People used to come and I would get the guitar out and sing a few Bob Marley songs. But I was really stuck in the comfort zone of music and thought if I’m ever gonna make anything from my life it’s going to be from something to do with that.
But there’s always that time when you’ve gotta get outta your comfort zone, and you’ve gotta recognise when things aren’t working. I didn’t recognise that for a long time because I wasn’t making any money from music, it was just for the love of it. As my kids got older and they wanted more of these £200 trainers kids seems to want nowadays I realised I gotta get outta the comfort zone and do something else. It was at that moment I thought I would merge the music and food together and put my 30 years of experience into my newfound enterprise of the sauce.
C- What would be your advice to young entrepreneurs now?
I always said there’s four things to becoming a dragon slayer and the first and easiest one is to have a good plan. But it doesn’t stop there because your plan has to have a USP (unique selling point). Mine is that I came on to Dragon’s Den with a guitar to sing the praises of my sauce and that was pretty unique.
The second thing you need to do is to be able to focus long-term. I know a lot of young people find that difficult because you’ve got your peers, TV, friends, music, all just baying for your attention. So it’s difficult but any entrepreneur will tell you that a plan usually involves a five-year stretch.
The third one is to be able to have that passion, you know because I think the dragons saw the passion when I came up the stairs singing the praises of my sauce. They probably thought he should be on Pop Idol or something but certainly not on a show about business. If he’s passionate enough to do that he will definitely have something the public will want.
The fourth thing, and most important of all, is it’s not about the money.
The last and final one is about advice, it’s about mentoring, get yourself a good mentor because that person will show you how to get the finance, legal advice, and how to get around patenting. I can’t stress enough about getting a good mentor for kids to listen to somebody else who knows much more than them. I’ve been in the business now for three years and the sauce has sold millions but I still have a mentor in Peter Jones. He still shows me how to overcome certain hurdles that I’m not used to in business.

C- Tell us a bit more about your grandmother and her influence on the fantastic sauce and the business you have developed.
She was a brilliant lady. I didn’t really know my parents because when they left to come to the UK, being the youngest I was the last to come over and I didn’t understand I wouldn’t see them again for years and years. My grandmother was there as mother and father to me and taught me everything she knew. She probably knew that once I had gone finally that would be it and she wouldn’t see any of us again because she was pretty old at the time. I suppose she wanted to install everything she knew about plants, about cooking to me.
When I eventually came to the UK my mum continued to teach me using other herbs and spice we didn’t have in Jamaica. My style with the sauce and with the cooking was a fusion of Caribbean food but with a typical ingredient that people in the UK would be used to. I would say my grandmother taught me the fundamentals.
I tend to think I created Reggae Reggae Sauce at the carnival, it’s a Notting Hill Carnival sauce. Because I had to put things like coriander in it to make it something that isn’t a hot pepper jerk sauce it really was a fusion of Jamaican sauce with what I’d picked up from my mum.

C- You sang for Nelson Mandela and you must have had some great times with Coxon Sound System. Tell us a bit about that and your experience with James Brown and Bob Marley.
Coxon Sound did everything for me, with them I managed to meet some great people, like you say Bob Marley was a friend. We played football regularly in Battersea Park when he lived here after his exile from Jamaica. Nelson Mandela, I met in 1992 when he came to Brixton on his birthday and I was lucky enough to be spotted by one of the security guards in a crowd of thousands, as a local Brixton boy, they asked the crowd to crowd surf me into the auditorium. As President Mandela came down the steps I was to sing Happy Birthday Mr President in the sexiest Marilyn Monroe style (laughs). When he got through I shook his hand and I didn’t wash mine for a week.
James Brown is someone I worked with when I used to play at the Essential Festival in Brighton and Finsbury Park. One of the funniest things with him was we were rehearsing together, we were in this room together, he brings about 23 musicians with him, two of everything. I was in the dressing room and thought James Brown was rehearsing because this man was in the room really licking down this style. I was watching this guy for ages thinking it was him but after about an hour the real James Brown walked in, because he always works with a double. So I was in the room for an hour thinking I was watching James Brown and really enjoying it, and then the real thing walks in.

C- What’s next for Levi Roots?
For me, it’s not about Levi Roots, it’s about Caribbean food. So I’m hoping to put Caribbean food up there with the rest of the cuisines we see on our TV all the time. If I can do that and help to put my cuisine up there then I think it’s a bigger job than just doing Levi Roots. I’ve just been re-commissioned to do another TV series so I really see my job to be pushing the cuisine forwards.