Gordon Ramsay (20 page)

So could Gordon recreate those sorts of transformations on a far larger scale? Could he teach a group of people how to cook and run a top-quality restaurant in a matter of weeks? He decided he would like to have a go – and the production company Granada International decided to put up the money and let him.

The ultimate idea behind
Hell's Kitchen
turned out to be almost as simple as Gordon's initial late-night musings. While cameras watched every move, ten celebrities with little or no experience of cooking would go on a culinary boot camp with him. He would try to pass on a career's worth of information and knowledge so they could create meals fit for a Michelin star. And they would serve them in a specially created restaurant where real diners would be expecting the very best.

Getting a project like this up and running was going to take a huge amount of time, effort, money and planning. ‘Viewers normally have no idea just how much goes on behind the scenes on shows like these,' says television production manager Alison Sheppard, who has worked on major reality shows for ITV and Sky One. ‘You can often summarise the show in a couple of sentences but the actual
logistics of turning those words into reality are terrifying. With something like
Hell's Kitchen
, where the contestants are effectively on set 24 hours a day, you need a really strong team of planners to consider every eventuality. And you really need to get the contestants and the other onscreen players right.'

Early on, Gordon decided to keep his side of the show in-house. He wanted Angela Hartnett and Mark Sargeant, two of his longest-standing colleagues, to come on board to help train up the contestants, though Angela in particular wasn't keen. ‘It could have opened us up to a lot of criticism and in the first place I didn't want to do it,' she says.

But in the end both chefs were won over by Gordon's enthusiasm. ‘I pretty much knew Gordon wouldn't dive into anything that was wrong,' said Mark. ‘The big scare about this was: “Oh my God, it's a reality show.” But this was so different. You weren't just sitting around doing nothing waiting for someone to have sex. It was about running a proper restaurant and that was exactly what we did. There was no set-up. No farce. It was real.'

The next challenge was deciding which celebrities should be Gordon's guinea pigs. ‘You need to walk a dangerous tightrope here,' says Sheppard. ‘You need people who are soft enough in some ways so viewers get to like them, but hard enough to create some tension and some controversy as well. You need some of them to be opinionated, some of them to be a little bit wild, you need plenty of sex appeal and as much baggage as you can get into the room. A little bitchiness doesn't normally go amiss either.' Fortunately, former MP Edwina Currie was ready to provide that from the start when she ran through a list
of her fellow chefs. ‘In all there were three actors, two singers, a comic, a disc jockey, an ex-Olympic runner and me. Oh yes, and Abi Titmuss,' she said disparagingly.

Gordon was hoping that among that mixed bunch there would also be someone else – a great chef. But finding them sounded like it would be a painful, gruesome process. ‘If people take my advice and put away their own egos, we could have a magical kitchen. I'll strip away everything they know then build them up from scratch and discover their inner strengths. Among the ten, I know that there will be a naturally gifted cook, a real surprise. I want to show them the blood, sweat and tears that go into creating memorable food – and the drama of day-to-day life in a kitchen. I want them all to get turned on to the passion of cooking, to smell the fragrance of herbs, to see a pan of live young eels jumping, to chop liver, remove a pigeon's heart, disembowel a prawn, put a knife through a live lobster.'

It was starting to sound a lot like the worst bush-tucker trials in
I'm A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!
And as the celebrities arrived for the first day of training Gordon finally admitted he was nervous. Nervous as in terrified.

‘I'm crapping myself,' he admitted. ‘There is a lot resting on it for me, not just because I've got three Michelin stars, but because the show is going to be live. I don't really know what I have let myself in for. This is turning out to be one of the most daunting tasks I have ever had. We have ten individuals and fifteen days, so we don't really have any excuse to fail. But I am already having nightmares about it.' He also had low expectations of the behaviour he could expect from the celebrities – and typically forthright, if illegal, ideas of how he would deal with it. ‘I expect to
encounter laziness, lack of ability and bad attitude every day. I don't expect to be questioned and, if anyone rubs me up the wrong way, they're going to get pummelled. They'll have their backsides seared on the charcoal grill. I'll brand them – criss-cross their butt on the burner.'

Unaware of the painful threat that was hanging over them, the whole group got together for the first time at Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College's restaurant Taste – coincidentally, the place where Jamie Oliver had recently filmed the far more critically acclaimed
Jamie's Kitchen
, of which more later. The ten celebrities were having their first few days of back-to-basics, preparatory training in the student kitchens and they were the exact mixed bunch that Sheppard had predicted. Gordon stood back and looked at them, the frown lines on his forehead even deeper than usual.

Alongside Edwina Currie and Abi Titmuss stood the three actors,
Gimme Gimme Gimme
star James Dreyfus and Amanda Barrie and Jennifer Ellison, formerly of
Coronation Street
and
Brookside
respectively. The two singers were Belinda Carlisle and Matt Goss from Bros. The ‘Pub Landlord' comedian Al Murray was standing next to controversial former sprinter Dwain Chambers. The veteran investigative journalist Roger Cook was the last of the group, though after falling and injuring himself during the initial cooking lessons he was replaced by the equally veteran DJ Tommy Vance.

Gordon's first task was to explain how tough things were going to be. ‘You will have to sweep the floor ten times an hour, peel a bucket of onions, cook for the staff. You will also scrub clean your own pans because this stops you from
burning things. You'll be amazed how careful chefs are if they know they have to scrape the burned gunk off the bottom of their own saucepans. I don't give a damn about diplomacy or delicacy. The more honest I am with you the better you will become.'

One noticeable thing about Gordon's opening speeches to the team was the relative lack of swearing. When he laid out the ground rules, he kept his language pretty clean. But anyone who thought he had changed his ways was in for a shock. The effing and blinding was back the moment the celebrities cooked their signature dishes for his analysis. And it wouldn't go away. When the final count was done, broadcasting authorities said there had been just over 5,000 swear words in the show – almost all of them from Gordon.

Back in the calm before the storm, Gordon introduced the celebrities to his co-chefs, Angela and Mark. They would head up the blue and red teams, which would compete against each other as the early skills of food preparation were learned and the first real meals were cooked. And, after the first few days of training, as the teams got ready for the pressure of pulling off a real restaurant service, Gordon was convinced that everything was going to go well. ‘If the celebrities were soppy and a little bit up their own arse, then I would be concerned,' he said, when asked about his early impressions. ‘But they are so eager. They are starting to come to terms with the pressure valve and the highs and lows that go on in the kitchen. I really think they'll get into fifth gear when they need to.'

Unfortunately, storm clouds were already building up on the horizon. ITV had constructed a massive, purpose-built kitchen and restaurant in London's East End for the main
part of the show. It was sited just off the increasingly trendy Brick Lane, more famous for its curries and lagers than for its fine dining. And, by the time the celebrities arrived there, several of them had long since become fed up with the boring, repetitious nature of their early tasks. They were also tired of all the standing up, disoriented by the heat and increasingly angered by Gordon's perfectionist demands. Mistakes were made, tensions were mounting – and when Dwain Chambers nearly sliced off his finger with a knife the first drops of blood were spilled. It was turning into
Hell's Kitchen
indeed.

What some of the television critics – and the celebrities – said at this point was that Gordon was pushing everyone too hard, shouting too loud, asking too much and playing up for the camera at every opportunity. But he refused to compromise or apologise.

‘Everyone was being paid a fortune to be on that show, so I wasn't going to allow anyone to think they didn't have to work,' he said when asked to justify his tough stance afterwards. ‘This show is not about celebrity status and all I am concerned about is their cooking ability or the lack of it. I had seen from day one that they were all out to launch their biographies, careers, CDs, whatever it is, but I wasn't taking any of it. They are not celebrities on this show and I am not a celebrity chef. I'm a fucking chef. Period. I don't have a long shot, a wide shot and three times to rehearse the fucking Gordon Ramsay pastry. Everything I do is natural. It's live. It's me.'

The one allowance Gordon did make for the celebrities in his charge was that they were like fish out of water in the kitchen – and that he could just about remember how
that had felt himself. ‘There are two sides to me when I deal with them all. There is the ugly monster that craves perfection and then there is the other individual who understands what they are going through. I can understand because I've done what they are doing now. I was in love with football, but I had to find something else and work at it. I know how hard it is to start again.'

Gordon's fellow chefs also made the point that his high-profile pupils were hardly shrinking violets who needed to be handled with kid gloves. ‘All of these celebrities are people who have succeeded in their own fields; they are not people who do things lightly. They are in a situation where they are no longer top dog and they are going through emotional turmoil; they are going through hell, but that is what a kitchen is really like,' said Marcus Wareing.

Mark Sargeant also pointed out that the trainees should be able to see through Gordon's rages and appreciate how desperately he wanted to inspire them. ‘If he reduces someone to tears, it is not because he has just decided to pick on you. Half the time the people are crying because they know he is right. If you weren't learning and there wasn't a flip-side to it, then no one would be interested. But, while the bad side is very bad, the good side is fantastic and that's why he can make people cry but gain their loyalty in the end.'

A small number of outsiders also argued that Gordon was being more constructive than many critics thought. ‘His full-frontal aggression is as shocking as a smack and if Ramsay used it in the unpredictable manner of a bully it would diminish him as all bullies are essentially weak. But he wields it only to sharpen people up and get the job
done,' wrote journalist Colette Douglas Home in the
Daily Mail
. And a closer analysis showed there was a lot more to Gordon's dialogue than an endless stream of swearing. When he tried to describe the texture, colour, taste, appearance and potential of food, there were flashes of real sensitivity and passion in his language. He was desperate to communicate his own feelings for food to the others and there was real poetry in his praise when the trainee chefs did make progress.

And progress was very important because the clock was ticking and the temporary restaurant's first diners were about to take their seats on the other side of the kitchen wall. One of the extra ingredients which made
Hell's Kitchen
work was the contrast between the crises in the kitchens and the rubber-necking that could go on in the main dining room when the evening's guests arrived. While it may not always have seemed exactly like the hottest ticket in town – the celebrity levels rarely rose above the B-list – the comings and goings of the diners themselves made great television. Angus Deayton had bounced back from being sacked from
Have I Got News For You?
after a series of newspaper revelations about his private life and was interviewing the diners as they ate. Or, more often, as they waited to eat.

On the first day that Gordon and his celebrities attempted to cook for a full restaurant, just 32 of the 72 diners were served a meal. The late Mo Mowlam left to buy a curry in Brick Lane after waiting two hours for her main course. Even more embarrassing for Gordon was when rival chef Antony Worrall Thompson also gave in to hunger and left the restaurant to try to find food
elsewhere. ‘They can't cope,' he said of Gordon and his team as he left.

Royal correspondents Jennie Bond and Nicholas Owen were also seen going hungry, while comedian Vic Reeves told Deayton that Gordon had ‘taken umbrage' when he had asked for egg and chips. ‘I don't know what his problem is. It was quite a simple order,' he said sarcastically. Throw the arrival of some newspaper food critics – or ‘fucking food critics' as Gordon preferred to call them – and the tension could hardly get higher.

‘Disgrace. Fucking disgrace. Fucking ashamed of ourselves. Fucking awful performance. Fucking pissed off' was his considered opinion of the night. And things didn't get better very quickly. Over the next few days, arguments in the kitchen got even worse as the celebrities tried to please Gordon and their other mentors in the day and serve all their customers in the evening. What made matters even harder for everyone was that Gordon was starting to feel the pressure of running all his restaurants and fitting in all his other business and family responsibilities.