Humble Pie. Gordon Ramsay

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СКАЧАТЬ reputations, but this place was something different. We were a tiny, young team, and we were blazing a trail. White Heat, with its arty black-and-white photos and its breathless fucking commentary, was well named.

      The first time I saw Marco pummel a guy, I just stood there, my jaw swinging. It was a guy called Jason Everett. He got bollocked and I didn’t know where to look. I mean it. He was physically beaten, on the floor. Another time, Egon Ronay was in the restaurant, and we had this veal dish on the menu. Well, Jason had overcooked all the kidneys. So Marco went bananas. ‘Okay, Marco,’ Jason said. ‘I fucked the kidneys. I’ll go and apologise to Egon Ronay. I’ll go out there and apologise. Let me go. I’ve had enough.’ He went out into the alleyway outside the restaurant and that’s when Marco said: ‘Those chef whites, those trousers, that’s my fucking linen. You fucking take them off and walk round in your underpants.’ So that’s what the poor bastard did. He ripped off his whites and his trousers and he was bawling his eyes out, and then he had to walk past the front of the restaurant half naked.

      We were all young and insecure, and he played on that. A lot of us were guys with a lot of baggage. He’d find out about your home life while you stood there peeling your asparagus or your baby potatoes. Then, four hours later, when you were in the middle of service and you’d screwed up, he would say: ‘I fucking told you that you were a shit cook. You can’t fucking roast a pigeon because you’re too busy worrying about your mum and dad’s divorce.’ One time he turned round and said to me: ‘You know the best thing that’s happened to you, Ramsay? The shit that ran down your mother’s leg when you were born.’ But if you answered back, you only made things worse. Best just to get on with boning the trotters, or whatever. Once, he was telling us all some outlandish story about jumping off a train. Everyone was laughing. But then I said: ‘Bullshit.’ He picked up his knife, then he threw it down, then he grabbed me and put me up against the wall. It was almost like being back at home with Dad. Maybe that’s how I was able to put up with it for so long.

      Another classic occasion was when Stephen Terry, another of the chefs, attended his grandfather’s funeral and made the mistake of going to the wake afterwards. When he got back a bit late, Marco said: ‘I told you that you could go to the fucking funeral but that you couldn’t go for tea and biscuits. I want you back in the fucking kitchen.’ Steve was really crying. We were making tagliatelle that day, and Marco was shouting: ‘Come on Steve, fucking turn it, fucking turn it, you cunt.’ So he said: ‘Yes, Marco, I’m fucking on my way.’ That was it. Crash. Marco slapped him in the face.

      ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘Get out of here. You may as well fuck off underground and join your granddad.’

      After Jason Everett had left, we were all in the shit. Working at Harvey’s was physically exhausting anyway. On Sundays, you would sleep all day. But once we were a man down, no one got any breaks at all. Then one day Marco called me upstairs to the office.

      ‘I want you to do something for me,’ he said. ‘Jason is living in your flat, isn’t he?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Well, I’ve sacked him – and yet he’s still in my kitchen.’

      I had no idea what he meant.

      ‘I mean that he’s sleeping in your house, and you’re working for me. When you come into work in the morning, you’ve slept under the same roof. I want you to go home tonight and kick him out. I want you to put his clothes, and all his knives, and any chef whites out on the street.’

      I told Marco that I couldn’t do this. I loved my job, but I couldn’t do as he asked. ‘Are you going to sack me?’ I asked.

      ‘Sit there,’ he said. The next thing I knew, he was on the phone. He rings some restaurant, and says: ‘Hi John, it’s Marco here. Look, I’m in the shit. My sous chef (that was me) is being fucking awkward.’

      I couldn’t believe it. Awkward? After all the work I’d done?

      ‘So John, three cooks next Monday.’ Then he put down the phone and said to me: ‘You’re leaving. You’ll leave in a week’s time. I want your notice.’

      I went back downstairs. ‘Everything okay?’ said the guys.

      ‘Yeah.’

      I started making ravioli, because by then I was completely running the kitchen. I finished the first one and then something in me just snapped: I hurled it at the wall. Fuck this, I thought. I walked out and I went to the train station opposite, where I tore off my whites and threw them in the nearest bin. I went back to the flat in Clapham.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Jason. ‘It’s only six o’clock.’

      ‘Get changed, mate – we’re going out to party. Marco’s asked me to kick you out and I can’t do that. He’s told me I’m going in a week’s time. Why should I wait a week?’

      Fifteen minutes later, we’re just getting changed when suddenly Steve Terry and another chef, Tim Hughes, and all the French waiters come in. ‘Marco’s closed the restaurant because you walked out,’ says Steve. I couldn’t believe it. The restaurant manager had to ring all the customers to make excuses for Marco closing the restaurant.

      It was a Saturday night. We NEVER had a Saturday night off. So we went to the Hammersmith Palais and we got absolutely mullered. The next night, we all piled off to a pub called the Sussex. All the chefs in London used to congregate at the Sussex on a Sunday. It was about nine o’clock. I was a bit tipsy when all of a sudden the music stopped and someone shouted: ‘Is there a Gordon Ramsay in here?’ There was a phone call for me behind the bar. When I took it, a voice said: ‘Gordon. Marco.’ I mouthed his name to all my mates and they all started shouting abuse.

      ‘It’s clear that you’re with your mates,’ he said. ‘But I think we should talk.’

      I told him that I had booked a holiday: I was off to Tenerife the next day.

      ‘What are you going to that shit hole for?’

      ‘Marco, after what you did to Jason and what you did to me, to be honest I can’t take it any more. You’ve pushed me to my limit. I’ve got to go.’

      But he was insistent; he needed to speak to me, and I gave in. Why? The truth is that, in spite of everything, he was a strong influence on me. I’d confided in him. The abuse I’d had from Dad had no point. But with Marco, the more he screwed you, the more he turned you over, the more you felt yourself becoming better. It sounds crazy, but I was becoming grateful for the bollockings. My saving grace was that I could take it physically, even when it was like SAS training camp.

      We arranged that I would meet him at Harvey’s at midnight.

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