Gordon Ramsay (25 page)

Heading to the ‘big five’ hills around Durban for the Comrades challenge wasn’t the only trip Gordon made to Africa, however. The Comic Relief charity asked him to visit a village in Tanzania alongside Lenny Henry in December 2002. At first, pairing the two men seemed like great fun. In the 1900s, Lenny had famously created the character of Gareth Blackstock for his sitcom
Chef!
Gareth
was described as ‘The
enfant terrible
of culinary art, impossibly difficult to work for, anally fastidious about his creations and possessing a volcanic temper and savage tongue.’ It is like looking in the mirror, the pair had joked when they had first met shortly after the show had aired. But they both found very little to laugh about when they got together again for the Comic Relief fundraiser.

The idea behind the trip was for Gordon to use local ingredients and cook as good and nutritious a meal as he could for around a hundred street children – but he and Lenny had to do so without a kitchen, without running water and without outside help. What they saw in Africa shocked them from the moment their plane landed. ‘It was Christmas in London and eight and a half hours later you are in the bleakest place in the world,’ said Gordon. ‘We saw kids of three or four sleeping in the gutters by a sewage pipe with no caring adults anywhere around to look after them. It was awful, just awful,’ said Lenny.

Determined to hide their feelings, the pair threw themselves into the job in hand, chopping wood, building fires, putting together the huge pot of flour, oats and water to make ugali, the street kids’ favourite food, then washing everything up to stress the importance of basic hygiene.

The men said none of it was easy, either mentally or physically. ‘I know it probably sounds a bit wet, but I cried for four nights on the trot,’ Gordon said afterwards. ‘I was close to tears, big time, during the day, but I was determined not to cry in front of the kids. So you needed to break down in the evening, after you’d finished work, to get it off your chest so that you could get through the next day. To make matters worse, it was not just the poverty that
was so terrible. The kids sniff glue to comatose themselves when darkness falls, because that’s when they get attacked and abused. Guys terrorising youngsters, waiting to pounce. Come midnight, it’s evil. Night-time in Arusha is like Baghdad in the middle of war.’

As is so often the case in such terrible situations, it was the individual stories that hit home the hardest. ‘I met a young guy called Alex who had been sexually abused by his grandfather. His dad had got another woman and his mum had run away, so he was on his own. We just clicked when he grabbed my hand, tried to speak in broken English. He was dying for his mum – he described her as his best mate – and he hadn’t seen her in seven years. I know how important my mum is to me. But I made a big mistake. I gave him some money to buy shoes and he was beaten up for it.’ Later, when serving food to the villagers, Gordon gave Alex some seconds – and nearly caused a riot. Throughout the short trip, Gordon says he was haunted by the contrast between life in rural Tanzania and life back in London.

‘I had come from Claridge’s just before Christmas, where it was all Champagne and caviar. Yet, when we cooked for these kids, it was the first time many of them had eaten properly in so long. The culture shock was extraordinary and, while I don’t regret anything I have ever done in my life, I wish I had experienced something like this a little earlier on. It has taught me so much and given me so much new perspective.’

Feeling physically sick, unable to eat surrounded by such poverty and suffering, and unable to forget what he had seen once he was back in London, Gordon says he
ultimately lost two and half stone as a direct result of the experience. When Alex Ferguson came into his restaurant one day shortly afterwards, he said the chef looked ‘as rough as a gypsy’s dog’. And, as a consequence of it all, Gordon changed the way his family ate at home as well.

‘Little Alex is a legend in our house now. I told the kids all about him and we all watched the videos from Africa so they know how fortunate they are. They know they’re lucky to have food. Megan had a bowl of Honey Nut Loops but she only ate half of them and I got upset. Waste now makes me sick, knowing how appreciated that would be over there. So Tana and I decided that we’ll give the kids half portions. If they want more, they’ll ask.’ That Christmas, having seen and heard about Alex and the other children in Africa, the Ramsay children were also asked to give up some of their own toys for charity before being given their presents. Gordon says he nearly cried again when none of them hesitated for as much as a second before doing so.

‘Come on, Doodles.’ More than three years after his African experience, Gordon swings a giggling Megan on to his shoulders before taking her to the local public pool for a Sunday-morning swim. Sundays are her morning – after Gordon takes Jack to his tiny tots’ football training on a Saturday. And, whatever Megan, Jack, Holly and Matilda do, Gordon tries always to remember to praise and support them.

‘What happened between me and my dad will never happen between me and my children,’ he says, his voice uncharacteristically quiet, his intention clear. ‘I hope to be the one they will remember as having always been there to
pick up the pieces for them. Not as one who said “I told you so” when things when wrong. Whatever they choose to do in life I will be behind them one hundred per cent. All I want for them is that they’ll be happy, doing whatever it is that they themselves choose to do. Kicking a football. In a kitchen. Whatever.’

That said, Gordon’s fatherly advice for his son, in particular, can still be typically blunt. ‘I tell Jack if he doesn’t eat spinach his widger won’t grow’ is just one nugget of Ramsay wisdom that leaves Tana rolling her eyes at tea-time.

‘The Gordon Ramsay that strangers read about or see on their televisions is not the Gordon I see at home’ is how Tana sums up their unconventional but successful domestic life. And she says her famously rude, insensitive and chauvinistic husband really does have a sensitive side. ‘He tells me he loves me several times a day. And when one of the children says, “I love you, Daddy,” he always has the same reply. “Not as much as I love you.”’

SIXTEEN

S
everal thousand delegates representing the cream of the country’s restaurant trade were on the P&O cruise ship
Oriana
in 2005 when they were asked which famous chef they thought was the most positive role model for their industry.

‘Jamie Oliver,’ said six out of ten.

‘Gordon Ramsay,’ said one in ten.

‘Well, that’s a load of bollocks,’ said Gordon himself, who was one of the keynote speakers on the cruise and left the boat shortly after the survey results had been announced. More than a decade after starting his catering career, Gordon was as ready to speak his mind as ever.

His problem, however, was persuading people that his straight talking always came from the heart. ‘With
Hell’s Kitchen
I was in danger of becoming a caricature of myself,’ he realised after watching the tapes and reading the press
coverage. All the onscreen anger and the frustrations had been genuine, but he detected a whiff of Anne Robinson in some of his putdowns and people were asking if he was acting for the cameras rather than really caring about the quality of the food. His lifelong fear of losing credibility resurfaced – and this turned out to be one of the major reasons why he turned down ITV’s £1-million offer to host a second series of the show.

Giving up such a huge pay cheque was made ever so slightly easier by the fact that an even bigger rival offer was waiting in the wings, however. Channel 4 had stumped up a reported £1.2-million deal to take in more
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
and any other shows the chef wanted to make. ‘It let me out of the straitjacket,’ he said when asked why he accepted it. He also said he loved the pure challenge of
Kitchen Nightmares
: heading out on the road, finding out how close the chosen restaurants might be to disaster and working out if they could be saved. Fortunately for everyone, the next set of restaurants the producers had found for him turned out to be crackers.

‘He’s back, and he’s as angry as ever,’ screamed the posters as the second series of
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
prepared to hit the screens in the summer of 2005. For once, the advertisers weren’t exaggerating, and the first show of the series introduced viewers to a chef who would become almost as infamous as Tim, from Bonaparte’s, a year earlier. ‘The show casts Gordon, quite unmistakably, as Freddy from the
Nightmare on Elm Street
franchise,’ wrote Pete Clark in the
Evening Standard
after watching a preview tape. ‘Freddy, you may recall, invaded the dreams of impressionable young people in order to butcher them.
My understanding was that the Gordon Ramsay franchise was a kinder and more caring operation, but there were times last night when it seemed likely that Alex, a young and impressionable chef, was about to make history by being served to his customers, pan-fried in his own juices.’

Alex, it turned out, had big dreams, the main one being to produce ‘modern Italian food in a modern style’. Unfortunately for his customers, this seemed to involve taking vegetables straight from the local Tesco to his microwave, using packet sauces and failing to fully defrost any of his puddings. ‘This is about as authentic as a fucking Chinese takeaway’ was Gordon’s initial assessment of Alex’s La Lanterna restaurant in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. And things soon got worse.

‘It looks like two penises on a plate,’ Gordon said when the 29-year-old chef put one of his favourite sausage dishes in front of him. He also found out that Alex’s taste buds left a little bit to be desired. From his early twenties, Gordon had been obsessed by training his palate to recognise the best foods and the finest flavours. Alex, it is fair to say, had never really thought much about his palate. So, when Gordon conjured up a fantastic piece of television theatre and arranged a blind tasting test where the youngster had to pick the best between a Gordon Ramsay signature dish and a Pot Noodle, the result was never really in doubt. Alex said he much preferred the Pot Noodle.

He also refused to accept Gordon’s criticisms of his food. ‘I learned everything from a well-respected Italian chef,’ he claimed, outraged that his Italian dishes weren’t considered up to scratch. Not quite believing it, Gordon tracked the man down – and found him working as a taxi driver.

Maybe all this would have been just about acceptable to Gordon had Alex been more aware of his shortcomings. But, with the cameras rolling, he found out just how out of touch the youngster was – he had paid a fortune to attach the number plate A1 6HEF to his car, even though Gordon said he was a million miles from the A-list. It was the final straw and Gordon was ready to let rip with his early assessment of everything he had seen. ‘The whole place is straight out of an eighties fake trattoria,’ he said in despair. ‘The food is fucking disgusting and this place is in such meltdown that he’s even let the most basic standards of hygiene slip. It’s a breeding ground for rats, mice and all kids of pests. The biggest one is Alex. He’s been scurrying around in his own filth for far too long. And I’ve got a good mind to get that number plate off his car and stick it up his arse sideways.’

As usual, what he did instead was to coach and coerce Alex into raising his game. The pair started off with a massive cleaning job in the kitchen and a clear-out of the long, fussy menu that Alex could never hope to handle. All the staff – including the unlikely combination of Alex’s best mate and his ex-girlfriend, who were in charge of the front of house – got shouted into shape. Amazingly, one of Gordon’s chief rivals inadvertently stepped in to help. Gary Rhodes opened his chequebook when Alex agreed to sell his A1 6HEF number plate to help pay off the restaurant’s ever-growing overdraft and provide some funds for a relaunch. But would it all work? As usual, one of the best parts of the programme came when Gordon returned six weeks later to see if the nightmare was over. And at La Lanterna it looked as if it was.

‘This is exactly the kind of food Alex should have been serving all along,’ said Gordon, stunned and happy when he returned to find the chef making fresh ravioli, spaghetti with meatballs and genuine Italian desserts.

Alex was smiling just as broadly. ‘It has been an amazing experience. Where we were taking in £2,000 a week we have now doubled it and are beyond our break-even point. I hadn’t seen the first series of
Kitchen Nightmares
when I signed up to take part but friends who knew the show said, “Are you mad? He’ll slaughter you.” But I am so glad I did it. Gordon’s an amazing guy and he’s helped me save my business.’

But not everyone was as happy. As part of the original turnaround of La Lanterna, Gordon had gone out into the street offering pizza to passers-by to try to show Alex how well they would respond to simpler, better Italian food. On camera, Gordon assured one vegetarian volunteer that the pizza on offer was meat-free – before admitting that the base was in fact covered in Parma ham. ‘Good luck with the Vegemite,’ he yelled after the pedestrian, triggering a massive wave of criticism. As fate would have it, the programme was aired in National Vegetarian Week and the Vegetarian Society was up in arms. Its top brass said they believed Gordon had broken European law by tricking the vegetarian into eating meat on camera and were desperate to trace the man. ‘We’d like him to get in touch as there could be a test case under the European Convention on Human Rights,’ said a spokesman.

While nothing ever came of the claim, it wasn’t the first time Gordon had annoyed the Society’s members. A couple of years earlier, he had joked about telling a table of
vegetarians that the artichoke soup they were eating had been made with chicken stock rather than vegetable stock, even though it hadn’t. He had also defined a bad day as ‘one where 25 vegetarians turn up unannounced’ at one of his restaurants and said people who don’t eat meat are ‘a real pain in the arse’.