A thing I started writing about 2 years ago but never finished. I'll bung it here anyway, for a laugh. This was notes for a first draft, written half-drunk, so excuse the mess. Just want to clear it out of the archives.
The Fragile Psyche of Gordon Ramsay
"Fuck me."
A few weeks ago, in his Telegraph column, Max Hastings veered from his War remit to discuss the Gordon Ramsay phenomenon. "...." [I was going to quote the article here, but now I can't find it, or remember what the quote was. I think Max was damning Gordon for lowering the standards of English etiquette by saying "fuck" a lot on TV, as if that was the sum of all he did.]
Max, Max, so many mistakes!
Let me first relate personal experience of Max Hastings who I, to an extent, admire. Just over a year ago I attended a Harpercollins publishing junket and was placed on the same table as Sir Max. We were being entertained by the ... Hotel, perched on the edge of Kensington. The food, incredibly, was awful. For example, the first course involved pine nuts, parma ham and apricots, in a twisty, stewy combination that sat, like a lump of sewage, in the middle of a square white plate. For all I know, this is gastronomically and aesthtically justified - but I sensed immediately that it was a hideous concoction and proved, in mouth and gut, to be. And it got worse: bland chicken etc.. Each course, however, Max guzzled and got seconds. Oblivious to taste, when a WH Smith rep from lower Essex was hiding hideous scraps in her napkin because she was disgusted by the food but embarrased to show it. This was due, I think, to his rapid booze consumption: the wine was average but he excelled me glass for glass, and I was, shall we say, enjoying it. Also, he wasn't very interested in eating because he was too busy talking at the pretty, blonde, and bored publishing strumpet sat next to him. Delivering wisdom and knowledge, which is legitimate, but with indulgance and arrogance, and that disappointed me. After the last course, the liqour cabinet came out; everybody refused, tucking into espressos or milky coffees, except Max and I. Brilliant brandy, what can I say? Actually, I adored him that night. I can't say I behaved any better, and looking back, it was all slightly slovenly, nearly sleazy.
This to say, fuck off, Max. Gordon Ramsay is a better man that you or I, not sordid and self-indulgent in any way.
[This is where I defended Gordon in more detail, but I didn't get around to it. He' a great teacher. This whole piece was going to be about my admiration for him in the UK Kitchen Nightmares series.]
And there's Gordon's nemisis, and it will always shadow him, show him up. His relationship with Marco Pierre White is part of Gordon's story, or Legend, certainly a defining factor of his character, amongst other Male Beasts who tortured and twisted him into what he now is.
Catch MPW in the kitchen, then: he ties a PLO bandana across his head Rambo style. "In the kitchen," he says, "you have to rule, be a leader and a warrior. You have to be like this." So he strikes the pose. His eyes: hunched, hooded, full of hard determination and hate. Friends and colleagues become subjects to be terrorised until deserts leave the hot, horrible kitchen. Gordon apes this in his own arena, but what we see on TV is the bullied boy becoming the bully, his tantrums tinny, his threats thin and risible. The little blonde Banshee. Check out MPW in action, though: it's visious, and visionary. Actually terrfifying, elemental. Jesus Christ, man! It's just food!
Everything Gordon does, his kitchens, his TV shows, Ramsay Holdings, his rivalries, and marriage, reduces to the question: am I worth a fucking fuck? Or, to put it another way: do I deserve to live? He gets the affirmative answer by transcending his obvious limitations: first with football, where he failed, next with gastronomy, in which he succeeded wildly. His life is clearly an unending nightmare. He takes it out on public sub-chefs, but teaches them too.
This is not part of MPW's mental make-up, however. He's comvinced he's a hero, or, at least, a depressed and inspired anti-hero. But there's no self-doubt, no fragility. Everything he does is self-affirmation, about power and perfection. He is loudly (and quietly) in complete control. Gordon tries very hard to keep control: to control things, his kitchens, his "victims", his psyche. MPW, meanwhile, remains, without effort, massive and indomintable: a veritable obelisk, a menhir. Gordon, still the blonde boy, with all the projected aggresion attempting to disguise it, is always, as ever, in every situation, even romping and raping America, just fragile. Hard to pin down. Hard to find. Hard to love. Hard not to love. Easily despised. Inevitbaley honoured with...a strange sort of loyalty, a brittle loyalty.