Gordon Ramsay (11 page)

That, Gordon thought, was that. The journalist thought differently. Shortly afterwards, AA Gill booked into Gordon Ramsay under an assumed name, as he always did, and took his seat with his girlfriend and the actress Joan Collins. Sensing a potential problem, the maitre d' went into the kitchen to tell Gordon who was there, and the chef came out to tackle the problem head on. He shook
the critic by the hand to say hello, no voices were raised and no threats were made. He simply asked Gill and his guests to leave and they did so.

The newspapers, of course, didn't see things so simply. They went wild when they heard that Joan Collins was among the three diners ousted from the restaurant and the story even made it on to
The News at Ten
. As the affair continued to make headlines, everyone wanted their chance to explain what had really happened. And Gill was first into print, giving his side of the story in the next weekend's
Sunday Times
when he began by posing the question: ‘Why should Gordon Ramsay take against me?'

‘In the past, I have reviewed three restaurants he has been associated with: Aubergine, where I said the food was good, but the service and the atmosphere were shocking. Then there was L'Oranger, where he didn't cook but was executive chef. I gave that a rave review. And there was some club run by a footballer where Ramsay had lent his name to the menu, which was so-so. I pointed out that in general restaurants he didn't cook in were nicer than ones where he did (and Glasgow Rangers were doing quite well now he's not playing for them). Well, that's obviously enough. Gordon says this is personal.'

Saying that it was nothing of the sort, Gill went on to claim that in Gordon's opinion he had only brought Joan Collins along to try to stop him being thrown out. ‘I understand that the concept of having friends may well be novel to Ramsay but I'm not yet reduced to touting round Hollywood for bodyguards to protect me from kitchen staff,' was his response. Now on fine form, Gill had a whole
lot more to say. ‘Ramsay said he was pleased it was the first restaurant I'd been thrown out of, because it was like losing your virginity, which tells you a lot about his attitude to sex,' was one of his other good lines that weekend.

But for all the humour there was a darker side to the critic's comments. Describing Gordon as ‘the vastly self-important, self-regarding narcissist of the culinary world', he went on to put forward his own theory about the real reason for the night's events. ‘We are looking down the maw of a recession and the restaurant business is too fat and has borrowed too much money in the belief that there would be no end to the rich suckers who will always take a table. It may well be that cold fear lay behind Gordon's tantrum. This is not a good time to have invested a huge amount of your family's money in a very small and frankly hideous restaurant in a backwater in Chelsea with no passing trade. Ramsay says it's been booked solid since he opened and is full up a month ahead. Well, we got a table, booked under a false name, that afternoon. Perhaps we were just lucky. Gordon's right to be frightened. He has a million reasons to be frightened and only 40 covers between him and a sandwich round.

‘What's really so sad is that Ramsay is a very good cook. He has two well-earned Michelin stars. The cult of celebrity chef was the worst thing that could ever have happened to him. In the kitchen he's brilliant. In the dining room he's barely house-trained.'

Gordon, not surprisingly, refused to accept any of Gill's criticism – and he enjoyed a temporary bookings boost when diners rang up and specifically asked to sit at the table from which Joan and AA Gill had been ejected. On
the night in question, however, Gordon claimed that Gill had been rude to the staff from the moment he had entered the restaurant. And that, alongside being rude to his customers, was utterly against Gordon's moral code.

‘People said I threw him out for the publicity. Utter crap. I'm protective of my family and my staff. If it was the food he was complaining about, I would take it on the chin and say I'd fucked up. I don't mind if people criticise food, or even call me a failed footballer. But over the past two or three years he's become personal and vindictive. He's a powerful journalist and I don't think journalists should write for egotistical reasons. So I just got pissed off and threw him out. But I asked him in a very polite, well-mannered fashion. Not in an arrogant, stomping, swearing fashion. I just shook him by the hand and asked him to leave. That's all. It got blown out of all proportion.'

It did, however, get Gordon in trouble with his mum. ‘Oh, Gordon, you shouldn't have put Joan out, she's such an example to ladies over 50,' Helen told him over the phone when he admitted what he had done.

But even this didn't make him change his ways or stop him speaking his mind. Months later, when Joan Collins did finally brave his restaurant a second time – without Gill at her side – Gordon was happy to serve her. But he was hardly complimentary afterwards. ‘She was very white,' he said ungallantly. ‘I think it was the make-up. She looked like she was performing in
The Mummy Returns
.'

Collins, for her part, was prepared to give as good as she got that night. She asked the maitre d' if Gordon was in the restaurant on the night she was there.

‘Of course,' she was told. ‘Would you like me to get him?'

‘Oh no,' she said. ‘Keep him in the kitchen, where he's best.'

Having weathered the storms from broadcasting watchdogs, the catering profession, the critics and Joan Collins, Gordon had one final challenge to address before the year was out. Of all people, a group of apple farmers from Kent had started to picket his restaurant and were threatening to take him to court.

Their problem was simple. Nine months earlier, when money was tight, Gordon had accepted £3,500 to replace Denise Van Outen as the celebrity spokesperson for British Bramley apples. As part of the deal, he had agreed to come up with a new recipe for the apples which he was to perform on television. But, when the show aired, it turned out that he had used French Granny Smiths instead – and, worse still, he had said that diners wouldn't know the difference.

‘Ramsay was very quick to take our money and very quick to stab us in the back,' said Jo Rimmer, spokesman for the English Bramley Apple Growers' Association, afterwards. ‘We paid him £3,500 and he said on screen that it was the easiest money he had ever earned for half an hour's work. Now we feel we have been cheated.'

Afterwards, Gordon blamed the poor quality of some of the British apples for the problem. ‘I am a perfectionist and the second crate they sent was not perfect. I was left with no choice but to use the Granny Smiths.'

Unwilling to accept this, the farmers, whose chairman, Ian Mitchell, had been called ‘a plonker' during the broadcast, decided to picket Gordon's restaurant. ‘Down the King's Road they trekked, all these apple farmers from Kent shouting: “Ramsay Out, Bramleys in!” Then they sat
outside my restaurant, covered in manure, eating sandwiches,' said Gordon.

So what finally ended the impasse, halted the legal action and caused Britain's toughest, angriest chef to apologise? Once again, it was his mother who forced him to do the decent thing. ‘I did feel a bit guilty about the plonker reference because Mum said, “Gordon, you shouldn't talk about people like that when they are being nice to you.” I don't give a toss about the farmers but I do care what my mother thinks,' he said.

It was the ultimate proof that the foul-mouthed monster in the kitchen was a very different man elsewhere. ‘I put on a different coat when I go to work, like everyone else does,' he said. ‘Yes, I get angry, yes, I swear and, yes, some people hate it. But I'm doing it for a specific reason, to get the very best results and create the very best food. I'm a different man inside and outside of the kitchen and I will never apologise for that.'

Nor would he apologise to those who inadvertently strayed into his kitchens – however important they were. While Gordon was earning some extra money running a massive outside-catering day at Royal Ascot that year, a man he didn't recognise came into the vast temporary kitchen looking for a cup of coffee. ‘I stopped him, grabbed him and said, “What the fuck do you think you are doing in here? Get the fuck out and get your fucking cup of coffee somewhere else,” and he scarpered.' The man turned out to be the managing director of the entire Ascot operation and was effectively paying Gordon's wages. He never got his coffee.

SEVEN

I
t was Millennium Eve and Gordon was, of course, working. Extra chairs and tables were being squeezed into the main room at Gordon Ramsay, where he was hosting a massive party for more than a hundred family members and friends from around the country. As it was a private affair, Gordon had let any of his staff who didn't want the overtime to have the night off. And this had turned out to be just about all of them. So, as the world got ready to party, Gordon was in his kitchen, on his own, with a massive and important task ahead.

‘Dad had died almost exactly a year before and my mother had wanted everyone together that night, so I wanted it to be a perfect evening,' Gordon said. He had gone to Chelsea at 8am to start the preparation work, pretty much like any other working day. But things didn't stay ordinary for long.

‘I was working on the canapes, roast beef, the home-made pizzas for the children who were coming and everything else when I got a call from home. Tana hadn't been feeling well first thing and I had desperately wanted to stay at home and be with her. But I'd needed to come in because I was obsessed with getting everything right for the party and now she was feeling worse.'

Not sure what to do, Gordon suggested that Tana rest before the big night and told her to call him if she didn't feel better later. But, as it turned out, he called her first. ‘A little bit later on, I rang to see if she could pick up some of the family from Euston station,' he says. Tana, so often criticised for putting up with her husband's chauvinism and insensitivity, had reached breaking point, however. ‘She told me to fuck off,' Gordon remembers.

It turned out she had good reason. Tana was carrying twins and, while their due date was nearly five weeks away, it looked as if they were in a hurry to be born. Instead of being children of the new millennium, the new Ramsays were ready to be among the last to be born in the old. Their dad, however, was in complete denial.

‘There were no staff working and I was up to my eyeballs in it, really up against it, when the phone rings. It's Tana, saying, “I've got tummy pains – I think it's contractions.” So I said, “You're having a laugh, aren't you? Take some Nurofen and call me back in a couple of hours.” I just went back to work yet again and tried to push it to the back of my mind.'

Tana, meanwhile, headed for the hospital. She called Gordon as she left but once again he failed to grasp the seriousness of the situation. Over the moon about how the
preparations for the party had gone and how good the restaurant and the food looked, he was just upset that his wife might miss the fun. ‘I told her to come straight to the party after the check-up,' he says, still convinced at that time that she would be given the all-clear. She wasn't. ‘Two hours later Tana rings back and says, “They're taking me down now” and I said, “Down where?” and she says, “Into theatre.” A doctor then came on the line and told me they were doing an emergency Caesarean in 15 minutes.'

At last, Gordon got the message and did what most soon-to-be fathers do in this kind of situation. He panicked. The family and other guests had started to arrive at the restaurant but he ignored everyone and went out into the street to grab a taxi. But it was the most important New Year's Eve in a thousand years and he couldn't find one.

‘In the end, I started running, just running blindly through the streets like a madman.' Desperate by now, he was heading north towards the Portman Hospital, where Tana had long since been booked in to give birth. The hospital is a celebrity favourite, where women like Victoria Beckham, Zoë Ball and Sarah Ferguson had had their babies. But it is nearly four miles from the Gordon Ramsay restaurant and even when Gordon did finally flag down an empty taxi he got caught in traffic and it took what felt like for ever to get there.

By the time he finally arrived, Tana had two little surprises for him: a boy and a girl, soon to be named Jack and Holly. ‘When I first saw them I couldn't believe how tiny they were,' he says, just like almost every other new dad. ‘But they are so perfect.' In typical fashion, Gordon
didn't stick around to admire the two new Ramsays for long, however. After a few tears with Tana and some hugs for the doctors and nursing staff, he was in a taxi, back to the restaurant and back to work.

Having already heard Tana's news by mobile, the family turned the party into a massive and well-oiled celebration. ‘I got there at 1.10am and people were pissed as newts. All the family were blotto. I think I must have been the only chef in Britain who didn't have a drink that night,' says Gordon, even though he had more to celebrate than most. And for Gordon work still took priority over almost everything else in his life.

After the last guests had left, Gordon spent several hours on his own in Chelsea, cleaning his beloved kitchen. And even then he didn't go straight back to the hospital to see his wife and new children. ‘It was about 7.30 when I left the restaurant. I went to a greasy spoon in Victoria and had the best cooked breakfast ever for £4.99. I was sitting there alone, it was New Year's Day, I'd had my first son and I'm thinking, Here I am, the happiest man in Britain today, having an English breakfast, and there are all these people looking at me thinking I was some sort of Nobby-no-mates and saying, “Look at that sad bastard on his own.”'