Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver is on the case of 22 tonnes of pricey British cheddar that has been stolen in a daring heist.

Oliver, who rose to fame as TV’s The Naked Chef by stripping food down to its essentials, got cheeky in an otherwise serious plea to his social media followers to help solve the mystery of the whereabouts of the award-winning cheddar worth £300,000 ($588,275).

Calling it the “grate cheese robbery”, Oliver told his 10.5 million Instagram fans on Saturday (British time) to be on the lookout for “lorry loads of very posh cheese”.

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

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

Detectives at Scotland Yard and international authorities are searching for the culprits.

The cheese was stolen from Neal’s Yard Dairy, a distributor, wholesaler and retailer of British artisanal cheese.

“The theft involved a fraudulent buyer posing as a legitimate wholesale distributor for a major French retailer,” the company said in a Facebook post.

“Over 950 wheels of Hafod, Westcombe, and Pitchfork Cheddar were delivered before the fraud was discovered.”

Neal’s Yard Dairy has asked international cheesemongers to be on the lookout for the stolen cheese, particularly in 10-kilogram and 24-kilogram blocks.

Managing director Sarah Stewart said she was shocked when she realised what had happened.

“I felt sick to my stomach,” she told ITV News.

She said she was angry but also “embarrassed because we feel like we are sensible people, and we got scammed”.

In an update on Sunday (local time), the dairy company said it had been overwhelmed by the support it had received since revealing the theft.

“Many of you have asked how you can help. To that, we say: continue to support British and Irish cheese … Eat them. Celebrate them,” it said in the Facebook post.

“We will be here, championing British and Irish cheese, for a long time to come.”

Cheddar, which is named for the village in south-west England where it originated, is the world’s best-known cheese because it does not have the protected status of other regional products like champagne and, thus, is produced in many countries. But there are only handful of real British cheddar makers, Oliver said.

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

“If anyone hears anything about posh cheese going for cheap, it’s probably some wrong’uns.”

-with AAP