Anissa Helou (born 1 February 1952) is a London-based cookbook author, teacher, and chef specialising in the cuisines of the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa.

The daughter of a Syrian father and a Lebanese mother, Anissa left her native Lebanon at the age of 21 to study interior design in London.

Following completion of the Sotheby's Works of Art course, she started working for the auction house, becoming their representative for the Middle East. In the 1970s she divided her time between an antiques shop she owned in Paris, and an art and antiques consultancy based in London. Between 1978 and 1986, she lived in Kuwait acting as an advisor to members of the ruling family, returning to London in 1986.

Encouraged by a friend in the publishing world, and inspired by the Lebanese civil war, Anissa wrote her first cookbook, Lebanese Cuisine. In 1994, Lebanese Cuisine was published. It was short-listed for the prestigious Andre Simon Book Awards.

In 1999, Anissa changed her life by selling a number of collections at Christie's. She also sold her Victorian house and bought a two-storey warehouse loft in Shoreditch, which she converted into a modern minimalist living and working space. It is here that she teaches in her state-of-the-art kitchen.

Damien Steven Hirst (born 7 June 1965) is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists (or YBAs), who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist, with his wealth valued at £215m in the 2010 Sunday Times Rich List. During the 1990s his career was closely linked with the collector Charles Saatchi, but increasing frictions came to a head in 2003 and the relationship ended.

Death is a central theme in Hirst's works. He became famous for a series of artworks in which dead animals (including a shark, a sheep and a cow) are preserved—sometimes having been dissected—in formaldehyde. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot (4.3 m) tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine (clear display case) became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s, and the symbol of Britart worldwide. He has also made "spin paintings," created on a spinning circular surface, and "spot paintings", which are rows of randomly coloured circles created by his assistants.