Alexia Robinson is the founder and organiser of British Food Fortnight.

She had a ‘Swallows & Amazons’ childhood living in a wood in Dorset where her parents kept Jacob and Soay sheep and rabbit, trout, duck, pheasant, rook and even squirrel regularly graced the family table. She now lives in South Gloucestershire with her horses, Spellbound, Mischief and Maverick.

On leaving university she worked as a management consultant for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) in London and Hong Kong in order to fund her passion for horses. On returning from Asia she set up her own consultancy advising the Ministry of Defence on introducing project management practices to the 5,000 staff responsible for buying ships, tanks and planes.

She then worked with friends to set up an internet business to rival Ticketmaster but was a victim of the dotcom crash. Tiring of commercial pursuits, she crossed the Amazon on her own and returned home wanting to save the rural way of life she enjoyed as a child.

She started by managing the promotion of the Countryside Alliance’s March-that-had-to-be-cancelled-due-to-foot & mouth in 2001 – one of the biggest and most high profile events ‘not to happen’ in Britain.

Later that year she established a marketing programme for the game meat industry – Game-to-Eat – that has been credited with increasing game sales by 58% (MINTEL Report 2006) and was described by DEFRA (Dept of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) as ‘one of the most well-run national projects operating under the Rural Enterprise Scheme’.

Alexia founded British Food Fortnight in 2002 in response to the Foot & Mouth crisis. It is now established annually as the biggest national celebration of British food. As a result she has been nominated for Farming Personality of the Year and NFU Farming Champion.

She describes herself as an accidental foodie – she prefers eating food to talking about it.