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Mouthing off

June 10

Gordon Ramsay has been true to form on his trip to Australia – swearing, skewering and steaming his way into the headlines over his comments about A Current Affair’s host Tracy Grimshaw (which you can read about, blow-by-blow, here and here. Even Kevin Rudd has put his two cents in. Given the show’s journalistic track record, I can’t say I’m keen on A Current Affair, but Ramsay’s comments about Grimshaw, particularly after what’s been said about her regarding the Matthew Johns interview (which Spike blogged about here), bring him again to a predictable low. Of course the media loved it and, frankly, perhaps Ramsay’s publicist loved it too, because this type of chauvinistic behaviour, in no small portion, is what he’d famed for. One has to wonder how much he has become this towering, blustering, ranting media personality, and if playing up to this stereotype has become almost instinctive by now.

Mark Dapin met the chef in April last year to conduct an interview for a big profile in The Good Weekend, but was promptly seen out after just 15 minutes and 31 seconds. He writes the encounter and the difficulties that come with the ‘celebrity feature’ the current edition of Meanjin:

I interview people and write about them for Good Weekend magazine and, each time the process is over, I feel both cheating and cheated, and wonder if I should ever do it again. My disquiet came to a head in April 2008, when I was ejected from ‘celebrity chef’ Gordon Ramsay’s house in Wandsworth, South London, at about 8.20 a.m., a quarter of an hour into what was supposed to be an hour-long interview. The third time I tried to ask him a question about his drunken, violent father, Ramsay replied:

“Out of respect for you and your magazine, I’ll call my publicist in Australia and call it a day … I’m not here to talk about my father … Everything that you’ve got on there [he pointed to my digital recorder] for the last, 17 [sic] minutes is about, you know, ‘How do you see in yourself your father …’ I’ll talk to the magazine. It’s all on tape. We’re just gonna switch to food. Total respect. Your position … Good to see you. Let me see you out.”

He was measured, polite and smiling. On the doorstep of his home, he asked if I was a freelancer or a staff writer. I thought he was trying to make small talk...


 

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