I was talking to a supposed top chef (not to be confused with a TV Top Chef) and the conversation got around to Gordon Ramsay. My customer said, “He’s a prick.” I had to agree with that because Ramsey very much seems like a prick’s prick, but I said that I had seen a couple of his Kitchen Nightmares shows and found Ramsay to be the very model of restraint because I would’ve killed those restauranteurs while dialing the Health Department. He then said, “In the past few years four people who were on Ramsay’s shows have killed themselves.” Unlike the man’s endless namedropping (The Bushes? The Bin Ladens? I can’t remember everybody he’s fed) this registered so I tried to find out more about his victims. So far I have only found two: Joseph Cerniglia and Rachel Brown, but those are just Americans and that just takes us up to 2010. Have there been more? Is he a serial inspirer of suicides?
ETA: He didn’t buy anything yet but I put a note in his file for the next person who calls him to NOT get him talking. Which may be impossible.
You really are not being any fun tonight, Banquet Bear. I’m looking for scandal, character assassination, and unverified factoids, not an understanding and open-minded look at mental illness.
I might find his tv programs a little more watchable if it weren’t for the perpetually constipated look on his face. Sort like watching “Maude” all over again.
…there is nothing remotely funny about suicide. Both of the deaths were pretty tragic and had nothing to do with Ramsey. If you really want to know what happened there is a fair amount of information out there on the net.
As one who has seriously considered it many times, sometimes with the intent to make the method as silly as possible, I did not know that.
Note to self: Suicide is not funny. Check with Banquet Bear if accidental death and dismemberment are still funny because I will need to rethink my entire sense of humor if they are not.
He’s a prick’s prick’s prick; a preter-super-prick, if you will. - his metaprickery knows no bounds.
His was a failed soccer player, the team he supported and played for (though he somewhat exaggerated his career with them as he was never actually signed to them) are one of the most sectarian and bigoted teams in soccer.
And he’s apparently BFFs with Jeremy Clarkson, but the universe doesn’t implode when they are in the same room. Maybe if you add Piers Morgan to the mix…
I don’t know why, but I started watching an episode once. It was a two hour long episode. The family hamburger joint was a train wreck of hazardous materials flown into with CDC level 4 samples of Ebola crossed with avian flu. I could not take my eyes off of the episode. I wanted to kill all involved. Ramsey mediated the compulsive idiocy better than any professional mediator I’ve worked with, and that numbers in the hundreds. In this episode he was an f’in genius of diplomacy. The promo spots for the show were cut to make it look like he was aggravating the problem. Maybe the other shows are that way.
I hear that they are golf partners and frequently play Pol Pot and Justin Bieber. When this happens they force Richard Hammond to caddy for both of them.
I like Gordon Ramsay. The only times he really acts like a prick are in the two Nightmare shows and Hell’s Kitchen (haven’t seen much of Top Chef). And most of the time, those jerks on the nightmare shows deserve what they get and eventually lighten the hell up and realize he’s trying to help.
To see another side of him, check out the show (Great Escape) where he travels the world, sampling the cuisine, and then attempting to prepare it the way the locals do after just the one taste. He’s got some humility in him (he wrecked a car once right in front of the whole village) and it’s funny to watch the locals make bad faces at what he has prepared for them and see his reaction to that.
