Love cheat, liar, sexist bully – Gordon Ramsay’s been getting a lot of stick. In this barnstorming confession, he takes the criticism right on his newly-Botoxed chin.
Gordon Ramsay has had his face rearranged. His wife, Tana, is standing beside him in their kitchen, her arm in a sling. Blimey. Is there a connection?
Sadly not. It transpires Tana’s broken arm was the result of over-zealous rollerblading with the kids, rather than a well-aimed blow to her husband’s chin.
Quite what has happened to his face, though, remains a mystery until the end of our interview. It puzzles me throughout. Ramsay’s face has always been the most expressive part of him. And given that this interview involves him talking about supposedly the worst six months of his life – ‘It’s been a rollercoaster, a nightmare, a s***storm, and every other f****** thing you want to call it,’ is his own inimitable summing up – his face really should look lived-in.
Ramsay on having Botox injections:I know I’ve always had a face like Freddy Krueger, but more and more people were commenting on my chin. I was getting a complex for the first time in my life, so I did it.
Botox: Gordon Ramsay’s face should look lived-in, given the year he’s had – but a rendezvous with Simon Cowell’s face doctor has ensured that is not the case
It doesn’t, though. Weird. The brow still looks like a furrowed field, but the chin is relaxed, less crumpled somehow, even when he lifts it out of his hands and gazes heavenwards (which he does a lot).
Only later does he admit why: Botox. As unlikely as it sounds, Ramsay has had a little rendezvous with Simon Cowell’s face doctor.
‘Yeah, it’s Simon’s fault. I had lunch with him and he leaned over and started prodding my chin saying, “Mate, you’ve got to do something about this”. I was like, “F*** off!”.
‘I mean, I know I’ve always had a face like Freddy Krueger, but more and more people were commenting on my chin. A make-up artist actually said to me, “God, what happened to you? Did you have an accident when you were little? Did you fly through the windscreen with no seatbelt on?” I mean, f***!
‘Anyway, I was getting a complex for the first time in my life, so I did it. Botox. A jab here and one here. And no one has f****** noticed.
‘When I was talking to my mum about all the c*** that’s been going on, and telling her I was going to do this interview, she said, “Keep your chin up”. I said, “Yeah, well at least I’ve got a new one of those”, but it went over her head.’
Now, you might say that with all the trouble Ramsay is in right now – his reputation as a family man and all-round decent guy in tatters, his business seemingly in a tangle of its own – a lined chin should be the least of his concerns. But it’s the fact that he was bothered by what other people thought of him that is telling, proof perhaps that the bolshiest people are always the thinnest-skinned at heart.
‘Yeah, well, I’m human, aren’t I? I’m not a f****** saint,’ is his response.
‘I don’t walk round with a halo, but, then, I’ve never claimed to. And, yes, these last months have had me asking, “Am I really as horrendous a person as people seem to think?”
Not perfect: Gordon admits that he’s made mistakes
‘I don’t think I am. I’ve made mistakes, f*** me, I’ve made mistakes. But not ones that deserve all this’ – he waves his arms about – ‘bulls***.
‘Not ones that have this sort of effect on my family. Tana has been badly affected by all this. She’s had to deal with all this c*** when she’d done absolutely nothing wrong.
‘She couldn’t leave the house without someone commenting on whether she looked scruffy or not.
Then there were magazines discussing whether she was too thin. And when she flew to the US to be with me, she was suddenly being called a limpet and people said she was afraid to trust me.
‘It got to the point where she told me that she wanted us to sell up and leave Britain for good.’
Would Britain care if it lost the man who has long been hailed one of its best talents, though?
The fact that the question is even being asked is a mark of how low Gordon Ramsay has sunk. When I tell people I am off for lunch at his house, the reaction is not, ‘Ooh, can you bring back a doggie bag?’ as it once would have been. It’s a shrug, a ‘What on earth will he have to say for himself?’, and a loaded, ‘Will his wife be there?’
The last time I interviewed Ramsay was in November last year. The article – largely complimentary – was printed the day before it was claimed that he had had a seven year affair with author Sarah Symonds, and that his image as a family man was nothing more than a sham.
As someone paid to observe, your heart drops at such moments. How can you spend a couple of hour
s with a man and not have immediately summed him up as one of life’s ‘s***s’, to use his own sort of language? Anyway, today I have been warned by his PR advisers that he will not talk at length about Symonds.
However, no sooner has Tana left the room, than he immediately does. ‘Did I know her? Yes, of course. She’d met Tana, for God’s sake. But did I have a torrid seven year affair with her? Did I f***!
‘I actually called her on the day it all came out and said, “What the hell are you doing? You know this isn’t true.”
‘She said later that I’d phoned her furtively, pretending to be talking to someone else. The woman is deluded. Tana was right beside me. We were on speakerphone. She was party to it all.’
The day the storm broke, Gordon and Tana had attended TV presenter Kirsty Young’s 40th birthday party. ‘It had been a lovely day; all was right with the world. Then this. It’s been pretty much an avalanche since then.’
Hot on the heels of Symonds came confirmation that his business empire was in trouble. From then things went into freefall.
