LEVI ROOTS IS A PORTOBELLO HERO. HE'S SUNG FOR NELSON MANDELA AND BEFRIENDED BOB MARLEY, BUT HIS BACKGROUND IS FIRMLY IN W11.

Levi Roots started off selling t-shirts and baseball caps at the Notting Hill Carnival, until his mother suggested selling food and he opened his 'Rasta'urant' stall. For 15 years, Roots and his seven children sold his famous Reggae Reggae sauce. "It was always a family thing," he explains, "we did it from when the kids were very small."

Carnival is all about the food and the music, he says: "It's the home of jerk chicken - this is what people come to Carnival for." The sauce proved a massive success, and sold out year on year.

Following a successful appearance on the BBC's Dragon's Den, Reggae Reggae sauce is now available in all good supermarkets, but despite his new-found fame and success, Roots remains grateful to the revellers who enjoyed his sauce in the early days of Carnival: "I still go back to the market and thank the people who bought my sauce before Dragon's Den."

For a taste of the Caribbean flavours of Notting Hill Carnival at home, Roots explains all in his new book Caribbean Food Made Easy. After all, as Roots says with a twinkle in his eye, "Every woman should know how to make jerk chicken - she won't get a husband otherwise."