THE easy way to describe Marco Pierre White will always be "celebrity chef".

If you're looking to stick the knife in - having read a few tabloid newspaper headlines - you could try "misanthrope" and "scourge of journalists" - one well-known food critic reported he had Marco "screaming" down the phone at him after a review.

But in my experience it always pays dividends if you take people as you find them, and that becomes especially true when you actually sit down and talk to them.

I was able to do that today and can report with confidence that the cliches do no justice at all to the man I met on a sweltering afternoon in his rebranded, relaunched and re-invigorated restaurant in Hoylake.

The Hell's Kitchen star's tabloid rep goes before him of course, and I was rather nervously expecting a grumpy, begrudging and frankly awkward chat with the unpredictable genius, who once held three Michelin stars - the first chef ever to do so.

In 1999, at the height of his fame, he retired from the kitchen and returned his stars saying the process of winning them "belittled" him.

He has run kitchens in some of England's best restaurants, trained up a team of top chefs - most notably Gordon Ramsay and Curtis Stone - and became the prototype celebrity chef.

His early days were notorious, ejecting patrons from his restaurants if he took offence at their comments.

But your humble correspondent is happy to report the interview went like a dream.

Beforehand, I sat and took notes for fully two hours as Marco, ebullient and charming, signed autographs for dozens upon dozens of mums and dads, staff and carers of children from Claire House Hospice.

A line a mile long snaked out of his King's Gap restaurant and across the gardens as the chef once branded the "enfant terrible" of the UK restaurant scene - and recognised as the godfather of modern cooking - happily chatted away and signed his name on specially-designed aprons.

Marco has been a patron of the hospice for the last three years.

So when I was invited to sit at his table with three of four other local hacks, the first question I asked was what that meant to him.

And I felt a bit sorry for him then. Because this day was supposed to be a public relations excercise about his restaurant, and I was making him talk of things that go much deeper than business.

But he said: "It means everything. It's sometimes quite hard going there, I went there today.

"It always makes me feel very humble, the emotional impact is extraordinary and I always leave filled with the utmost respect for the parents and the staff.

"When I got back to Hoylake, I had to take half an hour just to walk across the beach towards the tideline and be with my own thoughts.

"I do whatever I can for Claire House and whenever I am in the Northwest, which I guess is four or five times a year, I make an absolute point of visiting them."

On a wider note he said: "I love Wirral, its coastline, the people, the sense of community I see around Hoylake and beyond.

"The beauty of what I do now, which is setting up restaurants, is that hopefully they will become places people want to visit again and again and, very importantly, places where we can create jobs for local people to really learn the skills of the kitchen."

There will be much more about Marco Pierre White's relaunched restaurant Marco’s New York Italian and a review in the Globe next week.