by Neil Simpson
Another potential rising star had also been spotted at the Glass House: new recruit Ian Waddell. ‘I can’t believe you’ve only been cooking for three months. You’re a fucking natural,’ Gordon said after seeing the youngster at work. Equally inspired by Gordon’s behind-the-scenes encouragement, Ian followed Claire down to London and was offered a job as demi chef de partie at Gordon’s flagship restaurant at Claridge’s – one of the most prestigious dining rooms in the capital. Unfortunately, Ian didn’t last long in Gordon’s long-hours culture. ‘Ian had a natural gift and was definitely a great chef in the making and I am gutted he didn’t last the course,’ his former boss, Neil, said when he heard that the lad had left the Ramsay empire and gone off to work for an outside catering company in London’s Canary Wharf instead. ‘He came from a kitchen where things were a bit of a laugh,’ Neil said, and 19-hour-days just repeating the same task in London turned out to be anything but.
Sadly, Claire was also finding things tougher than expected in London. She left the Connaught just after Ian left Claridge’s. But Gordon said neither move would stop him offering similar opportunities to any other high-potential staff he spotted while filming future episodes of the show.
And the resignations could hardly take a new smile off Gordon’s face anyway. For something far more important than a mere catering career was happening on the other side of the world. Having lost more than a decade of his life, his brother Ronnie was finally off drugs, out of rehab and in the pink.
The total turnaround had begun almost exactly a year earlier, when Ronnie and the Ramsay family had all appeared to be at their lowest point. ‘I hope Ronnie finds happiness, but to preserve ourselves we’ve had to stop contact,’ his heartbroken mother had said, as yet another tough-love battle began. ‘It’s so sad what has happened to him. He has had the best of help, but it hasn’t made any difference.’
‘Ronnie is on his own now,’ Gordon had confirmed back in the summer of 2004, supporting his mother and accepting that he might never see his younger brother again. At that point, Ronnie, who had once weighed the same as fifteen-stone Gordon, was clocking in at little more than a sickly seven and a half stone. He was believed to be spending £100 a day feeding his drug habit. Gordon was convinced the phone call saying his brother had died, the one he had secretly dreaded for more than a decade, could come any day, and the whole family was braced for the worst.
But, as it turned out, no phone call came. Instead, Gordon received a mysterious letter from a stranger who had just come home from Bali. The writer, known only as Mark, was a reformed drug addict himself and he had first heard about Gordon and his brother Ronnie while working as a Red Cross volunteer after the bombing in Bali in 2002. One night, a chef on the island had been talking about the foul-mouthed Scottish chef with the troubled brother and on a whim Mark wrote to Gordon explaining how volunteer work had helped him kick his habit and build a new life. He suggested that Ronnie might benefit from something similar.
Gordon remembers sitting at home in Wandsworth talking about the letter with Tana. Was it a hoax? A joke? Too good to be true? And wasn’t Ronnie finally past saving? The whole family had recently decided that there was no point in giving Ronnie one more chance and that they should now keep their distance and leave him to sink or swim. Should Gordon go back on his word and re-engage him? Gordon and Tana talked even later into the night than usual and they both read and reread the letter dozens of times, trying to decide what to do. The next day Gordon decided he would take action. His brother was always going to be worth one more try.
Gordon tracked down the letter writer, who had since come back to Britain. He rang him, met him, got to know him and then put a proposition to him. In short, he wanted Mark to be his brother’s full-time buddy, 24 hours a day, seven days a week if necessary. Tell him your story, try to inspire and support him, Gordon asked. See if one day he can become like you. Mark agreed, but everyone knew things were going to be tough. Before the mentoring could even begin to work, Ronnie had to get clean one more time, so another gruelling period of rehab was on the cards. This was to be Ronnie’s seventh major attempt at rehab, and experts say that in many cases the process gets harder every time it is faced again.
This time, Gordon picked Clouds House in Wiltshire, another serious therapy centre lumbered with a frothy celebrity reputation. (Robbie Williams, for example, says it got him off drugs in his post-Take That days.) As with the sessions at the Priory five years earlier, Gordon was called on to play a full part in the recovery process. In the autumn of 2004, he would quietly leave his London restaurants and television commitments behind for the drive down to Wiltshire so that he could sit in on the group and individual therapy sessions Ronnie was involved in. And once more it was harrowing stuff.
In previous therapy sessions with Ronnie, Gordon had been told he had just as driven and addictive a personality as his brother. The only difference was the direction in which this relentless nature had been channelled. With Ronnie, it had been towards the destructiveness of drugs and all the illegal activities that go with them. With Gordon, everything had been focused upon his work, his reputation, his status and his achievements. In a nutshell, Gordon was told, he was obsessed with proving his self-worth. Having spent a lifetime thinking he had failed his father, he was now addicted to perfection, the experts said.
Whatever he had felt about this revelation at the time, Gordon was forced to face up to it again when Ronnie attended Clouds House. And he had to do it in public. ‘I had to stand up in front of a doctor, a psychiatrist and about 15 recovering addicts and say, “My name is Gordon Ramsay and I am an addict.” It was a humbling experience. I talked to them for two minutes about what I readily admit is my own serious addiction. That I am addicted to perfection.’
Strange as it sounds, the medical view was that Gordon was also addicted to pleasing people. Desperate to make his father happy as a child, psychologists said, he had never lost his desire to be liked by everyone else – and this actually explained the unpleasant behaviour in his kitchens and on television. The theory was that, by shouting and swearing at his staff during service, Gordon was subconsciously making sure that they would pay him compliments afterwards by saying he was ‘a decent bloke’ or that ‘he’s a million times nicer’ when the heat was off.
Doctors said it was the same with complete strangers. The worse Gordon behaves on television, the more likely it is that people will say they like him when they meet him in person. By lowering people’s expectations of him to the level of the gutter, the psychologists said, Gordon ensured he would always come out looking better than his reputation and win the compliments and warmth he had never got from his father. Driving out of Clouds that autumn, Gordon had a lot to think about as his brother’s treatment progressed.
And in subsequent therapy sessions that year, Gordon found that his own quest for perfection and praise had inadvertently pushed Ronnie back on to drugs in the past. It was a horrifying lesson to learn. ‘I hadn’t realised how hard it had been for him,’ Gordon said afterwards, his voice slower and quieter than anyone who heard him speak in a kitchen would ever recognise. ‘He used to tell me how awful it was for him, with me being so successful. But I used to think it was just addict’s talk and wasn’t really prepared to listen. Then he started saying, “You know, your success has been hard to deal with. It put me in hiding, made me hibernate.” I knew then that he really did need to talk about it and that I needed to listen.’
Fortunately, every worrying, sometimes humiliating, moment of the ten-day detox programme and all the subsequent work proved to be worth it in the end. The still-skeletal Ronnie had at last managed to put on some weight, rather than continuing to lose it. And, when Gordon finally drove his brother out of Clouds, Mark was ready to step in for the next part of the recovery process.
‘They just went everywhere together as planned and it worked,’ said Gordon, jubilant. In a strange kind of way the full-on, full-time support Mark was offering Ronni
e was similar to the equally all-encompassing guidance and direction Gordon had received from the likes of Marco Pierre White, the Roux brothers, Joel Robuchon and Guy Savoy when he had been working 16-hour days with them in their London and Paris kitchens. Having what was in effect a father figure, an experienced, enthusiastic mentor to look up to and learn from, seemed to work wonders for the Ramsay boys. It was just that in Ronnie’s case they were finding this out a little later than they all should have done. And everyone had their fingers crossed that Ronnie’s amazing progress could be sustained. ‘Gordon had lost the brother he once had,’ Tana had said, as the latest attempt to rescue him unfolded. ‘But hopefully he is coming back.’
This change couldn’t have been proved more effectively than when Ronnie at last felt well enough to take his nephew and nieces to a football match in London while Gordon was away filming in America. ‘He took all three of them in the car, went to the football, got them an orange juice and a muffin for breakfast. I would never have thought it possible 12 months ago,’ said Gordon, unable to hide his pleasure. And soon it wasn’t to be just football that linked the brothers again. A love of food was to bring them full circle as well.
Following in Mark’s footsteps, Ronnie elected to do some Voluntary Service Overseas charity work as well. In early 2005, he headed east to help with the massive Tsunami relief effort in Thailand. And Gordon says he had to laugh when he found out what job his little brother had been offered out there – and how much he seemed to be enjoying it. ‘He’s working as a fucking cook, for fuck’s sake!’ Gordon told friends, tears sometimes forming in his eyes at how perfect it all was. ‘He’s serving food from the back of a lorry on some island. On the phone he starts talking to me about all these exotic ingredients and how he is grating fresh coconut into Thai curry and I’m thinking, Wow, that sounds nice, I want to do that too.’
Helen Ramsay said receiving news of her recovering son was ‘like winning the lottery’. And everyone in the family was looking forward to seeing the changes in the man they had once given up on. ‘Being out there has brought a sense of justice to Ronnie’s life. His confidence has come back. He has got fit, stopped smoking, his eyes are bright blue, he has got a girlfriend now. It’s fantastic,’ Gordon said.
On a less kindly note, Gordon reckoned he had something else to smile about as Ronnie’s recovery gathered strength: the fact that ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen wasn’t doing very well without him. As far as Gordon was concerned, the fun had begun as soon as the producers started scouting around for a replacement presenter. Early rumours said his old rival Antony Worrall Thompson was being considered for the job. Gordon says he could hardly stop laughing at the prospect. ‘Worrall Thompson is nowhere near hellish enough,’ he began. ‘Maybe if he grows another five foot so he can reach the hotplate he’ll stand a chance.’
In the end, the producers decided that without Gordon in charge they would have to dramatically change the format of the show to make it work. Out went the celebrity hopefuls, in came members of the public wanting to make it as chefs. And out went the single host and lead chef, as ITV decided that in the 2005 show they would have two chefs in charge and selected Gary Rhodes and Jean-Christophe Novelli for the task. Gordon was unimpressed from the start.
‘For me it clearly didn’t work with two chefs because there is only one boss in the kitchen – there’s never been two bosses. In 2004, Hell’s Kitchen was an amazing two weeks for me but I didn’t ever see it as a programme, I saw it as running a restaurant. And I think everyone could see that I treated that restaurant as I would my own. That was the one fundamental mistake that Gary and Jean-Christophe made. They fell in love with the show and not the objective of running a top-class restaurant. It was also clear that they were letting sub-standard dishes leave the kitchen. I don’t think it was as real as when I did it. Twice the number of chefs, half the number of viewers, so draw your own conclusions.’
In all honesty, Gordon had to admit that it was only really his ego that cared whether or not Hell’s Kitchen had succeeded without him. His bank balance was managing very well without it because, while Gary and Jean-Christophe had been auditioning for his old role, he had been busy selling the show’s format to America. As his 38th birthday approached he was about to cross the Atlantic and try to crack the most lucrative entertainment market in the world.
SEVENTEEN
GET READY, AMERICA
Gordon was sitting by the sparkling blue pool at the A-list Chateau Marmont Hotel, just off Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. Hours earlier, he had been at Robbie Williams’s LA house, chewing the cud and kicking a football around the singer’s vast back garden. Later that day, he would have a drink at the hotel bar with Matt Damon before joking along with chat-show host Jay Leno on the Tonight Show. It was all a long way from the tenement blocks of Glasgow and the council estates of Stratford-upon-Avon.
Gordon was in Hollywood for one more set of meetings before the American Hell’s Kitchen finally began filming, and everyone involved was nervous. If the show succeeded and his contract was renewed, Gordon stood to collect a staggering $1 million for a month’s work over each of the next five years. Not a bad little wage for someone whose first overseas job in Paris had paid him less than £100 a week and forced him to wait at tables to make ends meet. And, while Gordon admits that money was the major factor that persuaded him to accept the American job, he didn’t actually want it to spend on fast cars or wild living. The idea was to pour as much as possible back into Gordon Ramsay Holdings to fund a stream of new Michelin-star-winning restaurants around the world. Even from his Hollywood pool, Gordon had a game plan in place.
But, before he could rely on this new income stream, he had to find out whether the team really could turn a hit British show into a stateside success. The producers of TV hits such as Coupling, Cold Feet and Men Behaving Badly could attest that a lot can be lost in translation when the attempt is made. So the pressure was on and, while the budget was high, so too were the stakes.
In the early days, when he had first begun speaking to the Fox executives about Hell’s Kitchen, the idea had been to pretty much replicate the British show. A series of meetings took place with Hollywood agents and a stellar cast of hopeful celebrity chefs was put together. Actress Cybill Shepherd was one of the early names mentioned and at one point even ex-President Bill Clinton was marked down as a possible player.
But Gordon was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole concept of teaching famous – or formerly famous – names. ‘All those celebrities desperately trying to relaunch their careers …’ He fell silent, almost in horror at the thought of going through the same problems in America as he had in Britain. But, if he was to be coaching ordinary members of the public instead of celebrities, he thought the show would need some other extra ingredient to spice it up. Fox was happy to come up with an idea. The contestants would indeed be real people. But the winner wouldn’t just walk away with a ‘Best Chef’ title, having donated some money to charity, as they had in Britain. In America, the winner would get the keys to the $2-million restaurant itself. It would be like winning a culinary lottery and Gordon loved the idea from the start.
The restaurant in question was a former television news studio on La Brea Boulevard in the LA suburb of Willoughby. Over the past two months it had been fitted out as the kitchen, restaurant and accommodation block for the show. On the driveway outside, the obligatory red carpet would be rolled out when the first group of diners arrived – their cars being valet-parked, of course. And Gordon’s own tough-talking reputation was being pushed to the maximum as the countdown to the first episode began. ‘He’s world-renowned – and he’s terrifying,’ said the billboards. ‘His show is dramatic, unscripted and he serves helpings of terror, tears, tantrums and triumphs. Ramsay will slice and dice his contestants. They will be tossed into the cauldron, working under Ramsay and fighting for survival.’ And forget the ‘Demon Eyes’ scandal in Britain when the Conservative Party was attacked f
or its posters which made Tony Blair look like the devil. The icily scary blue eyes on the massive promotional posters of Gordon Ramsay in America made Tony look like Bambi.
And Gordon was ready to let rip the moment the cameras were rolling. After a huge amount of internal debate, Fox had accepted that bad language was likely to be part of the Ramsay deal. ‘It’s just as well because I can’t change the way I am or the way I work. I would have walked away right at the beginning if they had started any of that “Let’s tone things down” bollocks,’ Gordon said of the decision.
The other difference between the British and American versions of the show was the way they were filmed and broadcast. The British idea of two weeks of live daily shows had been rejected by the more perfectionist Americans. Instead, they wanted time to edit down the footage from a month’s worth of filming, before putting the well-polished result on screen. Instead of cooking every night, the Americans would be cooking every other day, if that. And there would be less real instruction in America. The amateur chefs would be able to focus far more on their own choice of dishes, however simple they were. The idea of trying to replicate Gordon’s more complex creations was dismissed. ‘We made it clear that this would not be a foodie show,’ said Paul Jackson, head of LA’s Granada America, which was producing what many saw as a ‘dumbed-down’ show for Fox. ‘In the British version, the splitting of some lobster ravioli became a major talking point. That is not what this show is going to be about.’