Gordon Ramsay: a nightmare in the kitchen

  • by Nicky Tatley 

Choice quotes

  • “Who likes being told at 19 you're not good enough? So I suppose when people say, ‘You're so focused and driven now’, I could never afford to fail”
  • “When these things hit France, the French just have a field day laughing at us. So I'm looking for that scumbag; I'm going to fuc*ing grill his arse.” Indignant reaction to the revelation that a hotel in Scotland is doing a deep-fried Nutella sandwich
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Scottish-born king of the expletive Gordon Ramsay should, by rights, be strutting his stuff on the pitches of Glasgow Rangers FC.

But a teenage career cut short by injury was professional football’s loss yet ultimately cookery’s (and fast and furious reality TV’s) gain.

True to belligerent form, Ramsay left Aubergine after a bust-up with its owners and blazed on in 1998 to create his eponymous eatery in Chelsea

Ramsay limped from the pitch to the kitchen and after completing a HND course in hotel management moved to London, where he worked under legendary chefs Marco Pierre White and Albert Roux. Perfecting his skills over the next few years in Britain and France, Ramsay emerged in 1993 as chef of the newly opened Aubergine and earned, among other accolades, two Michelin stars in the restaurant’s first three years.

True to belligerent form, Ramsay left Aubergine after a bust-up with its owners and blazed on in 1998 to create his eponymous eatery in Chelsea, the only London restaurant to achieve three Michelin stars.

Opening restaurants in Claridges and the Connaught, as well as the acclaimed Petrus in Mayfair, Amaryllis in Glasgow and Verre in Dubai, Ramsay’s fearsome kitchen management has recently earned him a sideline in reality TV cookery shows. Channel 4’s Hell’s Kitchen saw him reduce the stoniest celebrity contestants to blubber as they struggled to cook under his iron fist and filthy mouth, and the current Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares makes The Osbournes seem like a night in with the Waltons.

It’s not that the pugnacious Ramsay just bullies his underlings. Many of his peers and other celebrities have been on the receiving end of his barbs. He called Anthony Worrall-Thompson a “squashed Bee Gee” for example. Joan Collins was kicked out of his restaurant. Food critic A A Gill, who suffered the same indignity, said Ramsay was “a wonderful chef, just a really second-rate human being”.

Even his own wife confesses that she “couldn’t stand him” when they first met. But strip away the public perception of him, she says, and he is “charming, caring and decent”. There are certainly explanations why this abrasive kitchen persona emerged: the curtailment of his football career, being abandoned by his father over his career choice, his brother’s heroin addiction, and simply the heat and stress of his working environment.

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