Publicity seems to be such a drug for Gordon Ramsay that he must be pleased to see his antics take up half a page of today’s Times, for example. The headline of the story* though is much less interesting than the article’s closing line, which records that he’s to spend the next four weeks traipsing round Australia giving “celebrity theatre demonstrations”.
It seems that anyone who thought that – after the near-collapse of Ramsay’s restaurant empire of which he recently told the Sunday Times – he might concentrate a bit more on that business couldn’t have been more wrong. It now appears plain that Ramsay has decided that media – let’s be generous, and put the circus currently way Down Under into this category – is just more important to him than his restaurant empire. How else to explain devoting four weeks to a continent where, currently at least, he doesn’t have a single establishment?
In a business sense, this preference may be entirely rational. Media makes much more money, doesn’t it? For those of us who used to think of Ramsay as a great restaurant chef, though, it’s simply depressing.
* “You’re an ugly old pig, Ramsay tells Australian TV interviewer. And you’re just a low-life chef, retorts the Prime Minister”
PS For (unbelievably) in-depth coverage of Ramsay’s behaviour in Australia, and its aftermath, see the Daily Mail.
PPS (11 June) You can see Gordon’s seven-minute Australian TV apology interview – interesting, because it includes rare flashes of seemingly genuine introspection and contrition – on GuideGirl.
We don’t imagine for a moment Gordon intentionally cooked this storm up – and a storm it has clearly been, Down Under – but, in the longer run, it may well be that the blanket publicity will actually boost Ramsay’s profile in Australia. A cynic would say that, in the longer run, that’s all that really matters.
PPS (12 June) Both sides of the any-such-thing-as-bad-publicity argument have been rehearsed in the media. A columnist at the Daily Telegraph says Ramsay is just showing he’s had his day. Down Under, though, event professionals interviewed by SpiceNews “were of a different mind, saying that while uncouth, the spat has increased the TV chef’s standing in the brand universe”.
Meanwhile, it is alleged that the story Gordon told about why he apologised at all – that his mum told him to (how pathetic was that anyway?) – was, well, b******s. In fact, the Daily Mail reports that Mrs Ramsay senior denies talking to her son at all since the incident.
If you want to see Gordon – IF what his mother says is true – extemporising around a blatant lie, start listening around second 1.40 of his TV interview.
What was it we said, above, about the “seemingly genuine” contrition on display in the TV interview? Oh well, at least we used the word “seemingly”.
PPPS (15 June) This story has now blown up into perhaps the biggest crisis of Ramsay’s career – as the News of the World put it, “Ramsay’s finally cooked his goose”. A remarkably similar headline also appeared in the Sunday Mirror.
There are even seemingly well-meaning calls for him to take a break. A long Guardian blog piece, for example, is headed “Why it’s time for Gordon to throw in the towel”. Perhaps most interesting is a piece by Giles Coren – a self-proclaimed friend of the chef – in the Times, which seems to us to hit many of the relevant nails pretty much on the head (“Fright – the F-word that explains Ramsay”). Although he does not use the word, however, he does rather seek to present Ramsay as a ‘victim’. Harsher critics, of course, might say that Ramsay is a victim only of his own greed – the reader comments on Giles’s piece provide a good illustration on how the story is playing in various constituencies.
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