NewsGush: Mighty Morphin’ Ramsay Ranger

Old news, in fact, but it was interesting to see that there’s some doubt over whether Gordon Ramsay ever played first team football for Rangers. Surely they could have checked a programme, couldn’t they?

How has it taken all this time to uncover his pointless bullshitting?

Ramsay, 42, has said on a number of occasions that he was a member of the first team squad at the Ibrox club playing three games, before injury cut short his career.

But his claims have been dismissed as “complete and utter nonsense” by Rangers historian Robert McElroy.

Ramsay, born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, first spoke about his football past when opening his first restaurant, Aubergine, in London.

Speaking on the radio show in 2002, he explained how his career was cut short, when Rangers manager Jock Wallace and first team coach Archie Knox released him after he tore his ligament.

However at the time, Knox, 61, was the manager of Dundee.

Knox told the News of the World: “The first time I ever saw Gordon Ramsay was in 1996 when he launched his first book. But he didn’t know me from Adam because we’ve never met.”

So is he really the hard-talking, enormously-testicled, rough Scotch diamond he makes himself out to be, or is he a posh toff playing at being the real deal?

Whatever he is, he’s a prune-faced, highlight-hair lump. And he swears like a public school drip.

The F Word

 

Ramsay. He’s an interesting fellow, old Ramsay. Where Jamie Oliver isn’t just a narrow eyed, chubby cheeked berk, but actually has talent, drive and passion, Ramsay, it would seem, isn’t just a scrotum-faced sac of testosterone. He may resemble a huge testicle squirting spermy insults into the faces of innocents, but credit where it’s due, the fellow knows what he’s doing. He’s got ten michelin stars for Christ’s sake. In these foodie times that’s akin to having found ten holy chalices.But still, there are problems. I have no problem with swearing, and I have no problem with confrontation, but every once in a while the mask slips a little and we see a well of rage beneath the choreographed bad-mouthing and at any moment we sense he could smack out. Is that choreographed as well? Or is it this dangerous aspect that makes Gordon appealing? For me, it does the opposite. It makes him look like my old P.E. teacher, and he was a cunt.Ramsay teaches people, has a position of authority over them. That gives him the perfect opportunity to humiliate them. Throw in a camera crew and the opportunity multiplies. Watching a recent Kitchen Nightmare, we were subjected to Ramsay mocking a chef far further down the food chain for never having cooked mussels.

‘You’ve never cooked mussels?!’

‘No.’

‘YOU’VE NEVER COOKED MUSSELS?’

‘No.’

‘YOU’VE NEVER COOKED MUSSELS?’

‘NO. I’VE NEVER COOKED MUSSELS’

At this point Gordon proceeded to start doing a ‘joey’ impression at the chef, who reciprocated the gesture, and any semblance of adult behaviour disappeared. It’s only fair to point out that GR was berating the ‘chef’ of what was little more than a greasy spoon during this tirade, so his not having cooked mussels wasn’t exactly a massive shock.

Herein lies the problem. Walking around and calling people ‘big boy’, telling them to ‘stop playing with their doo dah and put the fucking tortellini on’ and continually (and I mean endlessly) asking them ‘where their balls are’ is exactly what a games teacher would do. And what’s the big deal anyway? Tortellini, mussels? Who gives a shit?

Now we’re into the second series of the F Word. This consists of Gordon wandering around a conceptual restaurant, teaching normal people to cook. With bursts of the worst theme music I’ve ever heard in my life buzzing in unneccessarily at any given moment.

GR arrived in the kitchen this week and slammed down the bloody carcass of a deer, shouting ‘THERE’S DINNER’. Echoes of Brando in Streetcar Named Desire. Primal man and his bloody package. Yeah – terrifying. The problem is, the highlights in his schoolboy hair rather shattered the image.

This week it was a group of ex-Etonians who Gordon quite rightly tore to pieces. They were put there for a reason – to make Gordon with his working-class authenticity (where the fuck did he get that accent then, big boy?) look good. And they couldn’t have chosen better targets from his bile – one of the chaps had an opening spiel that ran thus: ‘Yah, Dad set me up on a pretty solid share scheme so I get a pretty healthy income from that’. To top that off, he resembled a rapist.

Gordon also cooked a dessert with Natasha Kaplinsky, a woman so artifiicially constructed that I have genuinely forgotten what happened in her ten minute segment. Did she even speak, or did she stand there with those reptilian eyes, staring the camera out? I can’t for the life of me recall. By the time we got to the section where Gordon caught a facehugger in Lapland and cooked it, I’d only just come round. This section of course featured the obligatory Gordon topless shot. Every Gordon show features Gordon topless. He must have it carved into his contract in the producer’s blood.

An hour is a long time to spend on a cooking show, so obviously some junk is going to get chucked in. In series one, Ramsay had the excellent Giles Coren to fall back on for small pieces to camera about this and that, but he made his mark and has his own (far superior) TV shows to make these days, so Ramsay has called in Janet Street Porter (argh!) to fill his shoes. If anyone can tell me what was going on in her attempted assassination of Prince Charles’ food range last night, please give me a shout at the email address in the top right margin. She seemed to be trying to fit two ‘Supersize Me’ type shows into a ten minute slot and believe me when I tell you, it was a garbled fucking mess. With her narrating it, it was always going to be.

Finally, on top of this (where does he find the time? Oh yes, he’s got a whole bloody hour to fill) Gordon interviewed that very current, very ‘now’ comedic figure, Dawn French. Is that the best they could do? I know she’s still working (if you can call The Vicar of Dibley working, rather than just turning up) and she clearly digs her food, but really – how are three separate interviews with her over an hour possibly going to be any fun? Dawn has kissed Gordon! Ha ha ha! Dawn and Gordon keep saying ‘fanny’! Great! Oh look! They’re kissing! Again! Faaantastic.

The problem is, I’ll probably keep watching. The food is good and the format is hit and miss, with more hits than misses. If only Gordo would stop behaving like a 12 year old who’s taken crack instead of his normal Ritalin dose it might be a bit more bearable.

Sweet Baby James

 

Aren’t there enough celebrity TV chefs in the world? Ainsley Harriot, Delia smith, Gordon Ramsey, Gary Rhodes, Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Jean-Christophe Novelli, Anthony Worrall-Thompson, the list goes excruciatingly on.

Among the population of TV cooking arses, there stirs James Martin, of ‘Sweet Baby James’ on BBC 2.

As much as I don’t like Ainsley Harriot, at least he’s passionate. At least Ramsey swears. At least Worrall-Thompson is untrustworthy. At least Oliver has a speech impediment. Martin has no outstanding features whatsoever other than that he could be described as a fairly tall man.

This episode sees Martin return to his old secondary school to perform a food-based facelift on the canteen menu. A highly original idea other than the fact that Jamie Oliver did it yonks ago. Besides which, Oliver clearly already has his grubby mitts all over the whole school dinners issue.

In fact, Martin is like a no-frills charisma-less Jamie Oliver in more ways than one, which is saying something as Oliver himself is as bland as post-modern architecture.

While working out the point of Martin, it is difficult to avoid drawing certain comparisons. I couldn’t help thinking of him as the kind of cooking equivalent of Steve Leonard (The boring nature-twat). Leonard’s programmes frustrate me because he seems to think that his blank face is as interesting to the viewers as the wildlife he is meant to be exploring. Martin is guilty of the same. If I tuned in merely to learn some cooking tips I would be disappointed as ¾ of the programme is just Martin poncing about like the self indulgent bore-monger he patently is.

He also seems to be the masculine interpretation of Nigella Lawson (at least she has colossal thighs) in TV’s bid to present food as ‘sexy’.

I say this because Martin clearly fancies himself as quite the ladies choice. The start of the show sees him roll up to his old headmaster’s house in a sports car. I couldn’t tell you which type – cars bore me – but the point is that he seems to be eagerly putting himself forward as some type of TV lothario. The style of the shows production also betrays the programme-maker’s intentions to drum home the ‘food is sexy, honest!’ concept. The editing is sleek and vigorous and furnished with a funk/soul soundtrack giving the impression that food preparation qualifies as sexy action, with Martin being clumsily misplaced within as some sort of culinary action-man.

Let’s get this straight now – food is not sexy, and food is not art. I plan to eat it and shit it, not fuck it or frame it.

James Martin has been around for a while, but what is all this ‘Sweet baby James’ bullshit out of the clear blue sky? I can only think that it is a sickly and transparent attempt to endear an audience to a man who is the pinnacle of TV dreariness. He has no wit whatsoever and is merely a drone who can cook a bit.

The thoroughly tedious nature of the show is reinforced by a sequence late on in which he teaches a bunch of yuppie-types how to cook a crumble. How quaint. How extremely mind-numbing.

“It’s all in the marshmallows mate!” seemed to be his wittiest quip in the whole show. Laughing yet? Me neither. I do understand that he’s not a comedian, but where is the justification in his existence as yet another TV chef? Entertain me dammit!

He is simply a non-entity. He brings nothing new to the table, other than his claims to be a sweet baby who drives around in a sports car.

So why doesn’t he find his own niche? Perhaps cooking with drugs, or how to introduce untraceable poisons into a dish in order to get away with a murder?

That, I would watch enthusiastically…