Gordon Ramsay (2 page)

Marcus dropped the bombshell in a no-holds-bared magazine interview. He said Gordon made him feel ‘constrained, confined and trapped'. He called his former mentor a ‘celebrity chef' (the worst insult you can throw at Gordon) and twisted the knife further by saying he was ‘not really part of the industry now'.

The attacks were all the more dramatic because Marcus and Gordon had always been so close. They had worked together pretty much 24/7 for two full years when they first opened Aubergine at the start of Gordon's career. Marcus had asked Gordon to be the best man at his wedding. But how quickly friendship had fizzled out and died. ‘If I never speak to that man again in my life it wouldn't bother me one bit. Wouldn't give a fuck,' Marcus said. ‘I admire Gordon. I learned a lot from him. But would I lose any sleep knowing he wouldn't be there? No chance.'

At first Gordon tried to laugh it all off. Then he and Marcus suggested they had resolved their differences and may one day work with each other again. But the magic had gone. And professional crises were about to replace personal issues in Gordon's increasingly high-octane life. There were rows over the lateness with which his company accounts were filed with the authorities in London. Then there was an even bigger row with his former employers at the five star Connaught Hotel in London. Long negotiations over a new contract there had broken down and in 2007 Gordon and his right-hand woman Angela Hartnett were replaced by – of all things –
a young French rival. So Gordon fought back – by opening a £4 million hotel of his own. He and Angela set up The York & Albany in London's Regent's Park. They created a menu of modern European cuisine with an Italian emphasis. Plus a whole new attitude. ‘They're all “lord and lady” pompous,' said Gordon of his former bosses at the Connaught. ‘Their staff walk around with their heads up their arse.' Not so at The York & Albany. Sure, there would be the finest of fine dining. But, on request, the staff there would also put together picnics for guests who wanted to eat
al fresco
in the park. Gordon, in particular, thrived on the challenge of doing something other than just food. But he accepted he was on a very steep learning curve. ‘We're not hoteliers,' he said in a rare moment of humility. ‘We're still learning. We know it's going to be a rough ride. We know the hotel critics will say “stick to what you know”. And then I'll get slagged off by food critics because I'm not here every night rolling every bit of pizza dough. But we've been through all that before – here, in New York, in LA and I'm still standing – strong as a fucking ox.'

Through it all, Gordon remained as volatile as ever. Reporter James Steen recently interviewed the chef for the Waitrose food magazine. He says Gordon certainly hadn't toned down his act. ‘In person he swears more than he does on TV,' he said. ‘The chef doesn't “pepper” his speech with foul language. It's actually the other way round. Minus the effing he would be mute.'

Steen recalls one hilarious moment when he was in the restaurant bar waiting to continue the interview. ‘Ramsay appears from the kitchen, stops in the middle of the room
and belts out nine f-words in as many seconds. He is swearing at no-one and nothing.' Later on, as a joke, Steen mentioned this to his host and asked Gordon if he felt he could describe himself as sane. ‘Of course I couldn't' was Gordon's immediate reply.

Maybe that was why he decided to speak out against none other than Prince Charles.

The row began when Gordon described the Prince's Duchy Originals products as over-priced, boring and badly made. The fact that many of the items were processed (Gordon said this was done to give them a longer shelf life) was particularly controversial. ‘I am upset with him. When I looked at his Duchy food I was gob-smacked, amazed and dumbfounded at what I discovered. Why would anyone pay that much money for one of his pies? I tried them. Just because it has a stamp and his royal crest everyone thinks it's fine but the number of sodiums and the sugar content is embarrassing. I don't think that the Royals should be producing food like that.'

The comments triggered a rare backlash against Gordon. Criticism of him came in thick and fast. ‘How much of Ramsay's £60 million is he giving to charity?' asked one reader on an internet site. ‘HRH produces excellent food which puts much money to charitable causes. Gordon just buys Aston Martins,' wrote another. Prince Charles, of course, remained tight-lipped.

However hard Gordon works, and however much controversy he generates, he can rely totally on one simple fact: his family are full-square behind him. Tana's support mattered even more when stories of Gordon's alleged affair hit the papers in late 2008 – of which more later. His kids
matter just as much. He repeatedly says they are what his life is all truly about – though his tough love approach to parenting is as unique and unusual as ever.

Recently he talked of the day Tana told him that their daughter Megan had been rejected for the school swimming team. Did Gordon rush to comfort her? Not exactly. ‘I said: “That's great”. At the age of nine that fear of rejection makes them hungry the next time the trials come round. So we're going back into the pool on Saturday and Sunday and she'll train again. The fact that she got rejected makes me feel a lot happier because you don't get it handed down on a plate.'

He was just as tough – and just as proud and emotionally engaged – with his other children. He remembers the time his eight-year-old son Jack bowled him out when they played cricket (using an upended skateboard as a wicket) in their 150-foot back garden in south London. ‘I've bowled out Gordon Ramsay, I've bowled out Gordon Ramsay!' Jack shouted, dancing around the garden. That created a minor ripple of worry on Gordon's already well creased brow. ‘I wanted him to say: “I bowled dad out.” I want my kids to see me as dad, for god's sake, not a television personality,' he admitted afterwards. More importantly, though, he wants them to see him as the one who will always be right there for them.

‘Every day I ask Jack: “Who's your best friend?” And Jack says: “It's you, dad.” And I'll ask again. “Come on, who's really your best friend?” And he says: “It's you”.' For a man who never got the love or recognition he craved from his own father, Gordon is determined never to break the strong relationship his own children have with him. He will turn
down work if it means missing key events in their lives. He will never have them written out of his professional diary. ‘Like many chefs I'm selfish on the personal front,' he admits. ‘But on Saturdays and Sundays I am devoted to my family. If I miss football on a Saturday morning Jack charges me a fiver. I've missed it just four times,' he said recently.

Whether it is swimming or soccer, Gordon also likes to join in with his kids. Now in his forties, he is proud to be as fit as ever. He ran the London Marathon for the ninth time in 2008. He has an unlikely passion for burgers (he admitted that In-N-Out burgers in LA were his secret vice – and that he once ate one in the restaurant then bought a second in the drive-through to eat in his car). But he still works out as often as he can – and reporters say it shows.

‘I arrive at Soho House at breakfast time and Ramsay bounds in, an aspirant Popeye with muscles bulging out of a blue T-shirt. He was named as television's scariest personality in a recent
Radio Times
poll because of his talent for turning big men into trembling cry babies on
Hell's Kitchen
and
Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
. Yet he is starting this particular day in a positively charming mood, politely offering me tea and keen to know whether the flight from London was OK,' recorded James Steen.

Others agree that Gordon can defy all their expectations. ‘He is taller and thinner than you might expect, a bit less profane and very friendly,' said the
Telegraph
's Neil Midgley who met him for a quick cookery lesson when Channel Four's latest
Cookalong Live
show was about to go on air. ‘Much as I plead with him to swear at me over my eggs he just won't.'

In truth, though, Midgely may simply not have known
which buttons to press. If you want to hear Gordon swear then there remains one sure-fire way to raise the temperature. Call him a ‘celebrity chef' and wait for him to let rip. It is the one description that he simply cannot bear. ‘I am a chef who happens to appear on television, that's it,' he says whenever the subject is raised. ‘I am a grafter. I work my arse off. So it is wrong to give me that title. Being called a celebrity makes a mockery of how hard I have worked. Someone comes out of
Big Brother
, they get a page in
Heat
magazine, they are a famous person. So why compare me to them? Without the telly I am a serious chef and on telly I am a serious chef.'

That's been true since the very first day he exploded on to all our television screens. Back on the day that the whole Gordon Ramsay phenomenon was born.

ONE

‘Y
ou’re a total ****wit. A complete and utter ****er and you are seriously ****ing me off.’

Four production staff in the television company’s editing suite sat and stared at the bank of screens in front of them in shocked silence. They had never been able to broadcast this much bad language before and no one thought that they would be allowed to start now. ‘Reel it along a bit so we can check the next part,’ said the producer finally. Maybe this had just been a one-off outburst that could be edited down before the show was aired.

‘Your service is crap and the food itself is a fucking disgrace. You should be fucking ashamed of yourself.’

‘Reel it on a bit more.’

‘Fuck off. I don’t want to discuss it any more. If I had my way, I’d fucking fire you on the spot and you’d never work in a fucking restaurant again if you live to be a fucking
hundred.’ Gordon Ramsay stormed out of view and the screen went black. There was another long, shocked silence from the production team. As one-off outbursts go, this one was taking a long time to run its course.

‘Could we maybe beep it all out?’ asked the researcher hopefully.

The group sat in silence once more as the sound technician did the work and then clicked on ‘play’. The angry blond-haired man on screen was back and his mood didn’t seem to have improved. ‘
Beep
hell. If you
beep
dare send food out in that kind of
beep
condition you deserve to be
beep
shot. I can’t
beep
believe this.
Beep, beep
hell.’

‘It’s not going to work, is it?’ said one of the production managers as the meeting ended. ‘All he does is swear, so if we lose the swearing we lose the whole show. Maybe we’ve just got to run with it. How bad can it be? With a bit of luck, no one’s going to notice.’

But, as it turned out, everyone did notice on Tuesday, 27 April 2004 when the first episode of
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
was broadcast to more than four million viewers on Channel 4. When they had done the sums, television critics said Gordon had used the f-word every ten seconds at the start of the programme and ended up swearing a staggering 111 times in the 50-minute show. That more than doubled the previous British record for bad language, which had been set with the screening of the gangster movie
Goodfellas
in 2001.

‘Ramsay swears five or six times a minute, uses “fuck” as a noun, an adjective and a verb, sometimes all in the same sentence, sometimes twice. It is a joy to watch,’ said the normally disapproving
Times
. ‘Gordon is a natural on
television because he is so compelling, so passionate and so unbelievably rude,’ said Lucy Cavendish of London’s
Evening Standard
.

Over the next couple of days, every paper would scream out its own opinions about Gordon’s unprecedented spate of bad language. Some hailed Gordon as a straight-talking hero and a true voice of the people. Others said he was going to be responsible for the end of civilised society as we knew it. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion and Gordon refused to apologise to any of them.

‘You brought the catering industry into disrepute,’ said one critic immediately after the first show was aired.

‘Bullshit,’ replied Gordon.

‘You bullied and humiliated a hapless 21-year-old chef,’ said another.

‘Bollocks. I didn’t humiliate him. He made a fucking tosser of himself without any help from me.’

Taking part in
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
in 2004 had been a huge gamble for 37-year-old Gordon Ramsay. When the producers first approached him about the show, he was one of the most successful and respected restaurateurs in the country. He employed more than 850 people, had millions in the bank and had won more Michelin stars in less time than any British chef in history. His name was above the door in some of the country’s most prestigious five-star hotels, with Ramsay restaurants at the Berkeley, Claridge’s, the Connaught and the Savoy.

So would taking part in a reality-television show boost his reputation as he tried to take the Ramsay brand global and open restaurants everywhere from New York and Las Vegas to Dubai and Singapore? Or would it ruin
everything if he was dismissed as a foul-mouthed bully who cared more about fame than food?

Gordon says he agreed to do the show because he genuinely thought he could make a difference to the restaurants being featured. And he was determined to stop the programme being seen as a vanity television project with him as a figurehead presenter and everyone else doing all the work. ‘I wanted to be physical and from the start I told the producers I didn’t just want to be some bloke in a suit holding a clipboard. I went into those establishments hands-on at a thousand miles an hour and grafted because I wanted it to be a one-man crusade to turn those places around. What was unfolding at a lot of the restaurants was a worst-case scenario and we couldn’t have changed it if I’d only been there for one hour a day to show off for the cameras. I was serious about putting the hours in here and serious about turning these places around.’