British chef Jamie Oliver calls on followers to help solve the ‘grater cheese heist’, ET BrandEquity

British chef Jamie Oliver (Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP, file photo)

British chef Jamie Oliver investigates the case of the stolen cheddar.

Oliver, who rose to fame on TV as ‘The Naked Chef’ by stripping food down to its essentials, got cheeky in an otherwise serious plea to his social media followers to solve the mystery of the missing 22 tonnes (48,488 pounds) of food help solve. award-winning cheddar worth 300,000 British pounds ($390,000), which was stolen in a scam.

Oliver called it the “grater cheese heist” and told his 10.5 million Instagram fans to be on the lookout for “truckloads of very fancy cheese.”

Nearly 1,000 wheels of fabric-wrapped artisan cheddar were swiped from Neal’s Yard Dairy by a scammer posing as a wholesaler for a major French retailer, the company said. The cheese disappeared before the company realized it was a scam and reported the theft on October 21.

“If the deal seems too golden to be true, it probably is! Let’s find these cheese stealers,” Oliver wrote.

Cheddar, named after the village in south-west England where it originates, is the world’s best-known cheese because it does not have the protected status of other regional products such as champagne and is therefore produced in many countries. But there are only a small number of genuine British cheddar makers, Oliver said.

“These are some, or most, of the cheeses that were stolen,” he said in a video accompanying his post.

The cheeses were from three makers: Hafod Welsh organic cheddar, Westcombe cheddar and Pitchfork cheddar.

Detectives from Scotland Yard and international authorities are looking for the perpetrators.

Neal’s Yard Dairy, a distributor, wholesaler and retailer of British artisan cheese, has asked international cheese traders to be on the lookout for the stolen cheese, especially in blocks of 10 kilograms (22 pounds) and 24 kilograms (52 pounds). .

“If anyone hears that expensive cheese is being sold cheaply, it’s probably untruths,” Oliver said.