Having the pleasure of seeing Mr Ramsay cook doesn’t always come cheap. I was lucky enough to get some Front row centre tickets as I made sure I was online the second they went on sale but looking at ebay just a couple of weeks before the show, I saw that a pair of tickets had sold for $350 (plus the book but lets face it, they weren’t after the book). So I hung onto my precious tickets and guarded them with my life. It’s a good year for me, I’ve already met my favourite female cook Nigella and now I am meeting my favourite male chef.
We met friend Gina, Teena and Philippe at noon and slowly made our way around the show. The crowds were thick and in a lot of cases unmoving. Gina vowed to visit next year on a Friday such were the crowds around some stands.
The line is large for Gordon and everyone is excited. They’ve expanded the size of the theatre due to demand for Gordon’s shows (they put up the price of the second wave of tickets to cover the cost of expanding the theatre).
We have brilliant seats, front row centre left, right in front of him cooking. There’s a bit of a warm up and prize giveaway prior to Gordon entering with his right hand man from Claridges Mark Sargeant whom I remember seeing on the F Word. There is a lot of clapping signalling that the crowd is restless and doesn’t want to hear any of the preamble, they just want Gordon. And after several “Here comes Goooordon Ramsay!!”, the man finally appears. He looks exactly like he does on the show and women everywhere swoon.
It’s like a culinary version of Beatlemania with two girls running up to the stage with Gordon masks on sticks and declaring him their idol and asking for hugs. Several girls stop him during the show when he walks into the audience area and demand hugs to which he happily obliges.
Gordon on stage is exactly what he is like on tv, except with a little less swearing and if you watch Hell’s Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares, a lot less anger. He does manage to insult (in his charmingly blunt way) a slew of celebrities: Dannii Minogue for being plastic and melting in front of the oven and for having body parts less than 6 months old, Lisa Wilkinson (host of the Today show) whom he says has a penis, Anthony Worrall Thompson for winning the ugliest chef award 35 years running, Jamie Oliver for being a “fat tongued fat git” who makes fattening food and Matt Moran for having a poor turnout to the show (“They moved the curtain 4 rows from the front so Matt thought that it was full of people”) and of course the Diners Club sponsor when he whipped out his Black American Express card.
He even makes fun of the audience and recalls falling in love with a French woman when he lived in France and asks if there are any French women in the audience. There is only one and he picks up a bunch of herbs and asks her “Is this the size of your bush?” to which she declares that hers is actually bigger.
During the show Matt Moran bursts on stage with a fire extinguisher which sprays both Gordon and Mark, probably as revenge for his earlier comment.
I even had an exchange with Gordon himself while he was on stage. He pretended that he’d left copies of his cookbook under our seats but hadn’t so everyone got excited for a second then realised he was taking the piss. My friend was quite vocal in her “Awwww no!!” so he said to her “Did you think I’d put 2000 copies under everyone’s seat?” and she shrugged so I yelled out “Oprah would have!” and he laughed and touched his heart and says “Oh shit, really yeah I feel bad now”. Then he said “Where’s your husband?” and I pointed at my husband sitting next to me behind the camera and he said “Well he’s a lucky man”. Aww I feel touched by god!
Hand on his heart feeling bad that he hasn’t given us the books, Oprah style 😉
While he is cooking, he gets a little more serious and explains tricks and rules to perfecting the dishes. He makes three dishes, a chorizo and bean soup, a lamb dish with a balsamic sauce which looks delectably luscious and a Pain Perdu (french toast) all intended to be dishes that you could make everyday from leftover ingredients.
After all of the cooking is done, he gives away items from the set to lucky audience members.
After this, he is off to his last book signing of the day where I tried to get my DVDs signed but they had cut the line off after a certain amount of people. As Gordon took time to chat and shake the hand or kiss and take a photo with every person in the line, the amount of people was relatively short but well rewarded. Whilst I would’ve loved a kiss and my DVDs signed I was happy with my small brush with Gordon!
