WORKING as a chef at a top restaurant in London or France is not as glamorous as it's often cracked up to be. Long hours, constant pressure and having to cope with raised voices and objects flying across the kitchen are all part of the learning process which tests the mettle of those in the trade.

Now one of the country's top pastry chefs has returned to his roots in the North West to work with an old friend who took a different culinary path and ended up as a TV celebrity.

But Michael Shaw, head chef at the Feilden's Arms, Mellor Brook, says people should be under no illusions about how hard it is to reach the top of the profession and admits he has made sacrifices and mistakes along the way.

Michael is now working with Nigel Smith, his friend for more than 15 years, after a rollercoaster career which has seen him working for top chefs such as Raymond Blanc and Gordon Ramsay.

Nigel, meanwhile, has spent most of his working life in the North West, where he has carved himself out a career on TV -- including regular stints on Channel 5's Open House with Gloria Hunniford.

He stayed in touch with Michael while he was perfecting his pastry in top restaurants.

After college training Michael, who is from the Saddleworth area, and Nigel worked together for six months catering for thousands of visitors to the Glyndebourne opera house in Sussex.

"We were only 16 or 17 at the time but we decided we would always stay in touch and work together somewhere or go into business together," Nigel said.

"We both had different strengths but the main things we had in common were quality, consistency, passion and high standards." Michael's first venture abroad was working for a chocolatier in Switzerland but he had a desire to be a top pastry chef and worked for several years at Hambleton Hall, Oakham, in Rutland, with Michelin star chef Aaron Patterson.

Once a week Michael would travel to Covent Garden in London to select fruit and vegetables and decided to ring top chef Gordon Ramsay to see if he had any vacancies.

Ramsay asked Michael to talk things over at a breakfast meeting and offered him a job as his pastry chef without seeing or tasting the product.

Ramsay is renowned for demanding perfection and Michael found he was working long hours -- but was happy to do it because he felt his career was progressing.

However, at the time he had a beautiful French girlfriend in the restaurant trade who was to throw a spanner in the smooth-running works.

"She said she wanted to go back to France and gave me an ultimatum -- her or the job," Michael said. "On this one occasion I put my girlfriend first."

Ramsay was upset and disappointed that Michael wanted to leave, as were Michael's parents.

"I felt afterwards I had made the worst mistake ever.

"But I loved her to bits.

"Her parents were passionate about cooking.

"In France it is considered a real job," he said.

Michael's girlfriend, who had asked him to "give her a bit of space and then come over," went to work at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes but within a week rang him in tears saying she did not know anyone and begged him to go to France for a week. By this time Michael was working for Aaron Patterson again, at a new restaurant in Nottingham, but he went to France and by coincidence, in a town with 600 restaurants, met a friend with whom he had previously worked in Oxford who offered him a job.

"I was thinking, I can get comfortable here," he said, thinking of the sunny Cote d'Azur and its beaches. Michael secured a job for himself, but it was no bed of roses.

He cycled to work on his first day along the seafront, enjoying the atmosphere, but had a rude awakening when he got to the restaurant.

"All the produce had been dumped at the back door. All the fish were whole and the game birds still had their feathers on.

"I thought 'There are four of us and all this to do'.

"Later I got 45 minutes off and went to the beach.

"I thought, 'At least I'll get a suntan'.

"I finished at 11 o'clock at night and went and got sozzled at the cafe over the road which was open until 4am."

Michael's girlfriend was still working at the Carlton and they shared an apartment. But