Jeanne Rankin Calls it Quits in the Kitchen

JEANNE Rankin has announced her decision to turn her back on the TV chef career that made her famous.

The wife of restaurateur Paul Rankin said she will never go back to cooking in front of a camera and will concentrate instead on working behind the scenes on the hospitality side of the business she co-owns with her husband..

The 47-year-old has been plagued by a series of traumatic injuries over the past 10 years and developed a dependency on prescription drugs.

Now free of the pills and tee-total,. Canadian-born Jeanne told the Belfast Telegraph that she has turned her life around.

"I`ve channeled my experience with trauma, with addiction, with pain," she said.

"I’m not going to be a professional chef any more because my body says no, and this is a new direction that I have, so in the future I hope to become a yoga therapist."

"Yoga is my secret. It’s a whole lifestyle and philosophy for me."

Jeanne underwent treatment in 1999 for a neck injury before falling off a horse and breaking her back.

She underwent the first of two operations on her back in 2003 and, as a result of the pills prescribed to help her cope with that pain coupled with anti-depressants that had been administered earlier following the birth of her son, she got through a course of rehabilitation at the Priory Clinic in August 2005.

She said: "It has been a long haul. I hit rock bottom some time in 2004.

"I’d got out of the body cast that summer and I became desperate to get off the medication. I knew it was holding me back. So by going into rehab I started working my way back to living, not just existing.

"Now, some days are better than others. I`ve learned to listen to my body. Sometimes the pain is a four or five out of 10, on other days I would have to it’s say an eight-plus and I spend most of those horizontal.

"But I try not to give the pain power. Pain makes you introverted. It makes you very self-obsessed. I try not to acknowledge it and to give it strength.

"About six weeks ago, I started hospitality work with the restaurant management team, involving recipe development etc. I`m currently working two half-days a week, but I`m taking it very gradually.

"I`d love to be back in there and I do miss it. A big part of my learning curve was accepting the changes.

"I can’t physically do it any more. Even if I’m cooking at home, if the dish demands a lot of chopping...I’m shattered."