Gordon Ramsay is not Gordon Ramsay

Sunday's News of the World suggested that the chef Gordon Ramsay has grossly exaggerated his achievements as a footballer to "fuel his ruthless bid for stardom:

For Ramsay NEVER “signed” for the Glasgow giants and NEVER played first team games for them—despite saying so on radio, in his autobiography and in a series of interviews.

I am not surprised.

Today I was reading Nick Cohen's new collection Waiting for the Etonians. In one article he writes:

People in the business told me that in his kitchens Gordon Ramsay is not the foul-mouthed thug of his TV appearances. He just plays the bully for the cameras to please the watching mob.

And the other evening the Money Programme special on The Rise of the Superchef showed Ramsay's first ever television appearance. Sweet-faced and sweet-voiced, he was almost unrecognisable.

But then the safest assumption to make about television is that nothing you see it true.

Just take Ramsey's fellow chefs. The flat where the young Jamie Oliver was shown living and entertaining his friends was not his real home.

Were they even his real friends? I certainly have my doubts about those carefully multiracial dinner parties you see Nigella hosting.

And going further back, British cooking's favourite married couple Johnnie and Fanny Craddock were not really married.