Gordon Ramsay by Neil Simpson Read Free Book Online

at work and was refusing to contribute to the housekeeping budget even though the final reminders were piling up. Unable to shake off his own depression, Gordon split up with the girlfriend he had been dating for nearly four years.
    ‘Although the football pressure was gone I felt the family pressure more. Dad was still doing nothing but criticise me – at one point, he even suggested that I was exaggerating the injuries. Now I look back and wonder how any father can be so unsupportive and unloving towards his injured son. I know it’s an awful thing to say but I was beginning to despise him. A month later, our relationship had deteriorated so much that I knew I had to get out and I went to stay with my sister Diane down in Banbury.
    ‘Shortly after that, I got a call from Yvonne to tell me that Mum was having to wear sunglasses again to disguise the bruises on her face. As if that wasn’t enough, Dad had also stopped paying the mortgage, so the building society repossessed the house – the home of her own that my mother had longed for all her life. She was humiliated again, and her dream was shattered.’
    Amazingly, the family stayed together. They all moved toa five-bedroom council house in Bridgwater, in Somerset, and Gordon’s mum found new work – ironically, in a women’s refuge run by social services which Gordon still supports financially to this day.
    Meanwhile, Gordon had stumbled upon an idea of what he might do next. Before moving up to Glasgow, his mother had worked at the Cobweb Tea Rooms, in Sheep Street in the middle of Stratford. With their oak beams, low ceilings and traditional menus, the tea rooms were the ultimate in hushed English gentility. But, when he had visited his mum there on Saturday afternoons, Gordon had found out that behind the scenes it was a completely different story. In the kitchen, there was activity, panic, energy. Everyone seemed to be moving at once, everyone had a role and everyone was simultaneously an individual and part of a team. It’s a football team, Gordon had realised, in a moment of revelation. If I’m not going to be a professional sportsman, I’d be happy to work here, he thought at the time – which was one reason why he’d enrolled at a catering college in Oxford just before being called up to Ibrox at 16.
    Nearly four years later, he wondered if he would get the same buzz out of that kind of environment. After he left Rangers, the Police and the Royal Navy had both turned him down on finding out he had failed all but two of his O levels, and now he was struggling for both money and direction. Desperate for cash, he got a part-time job in a restaurant and fell in love again with the environment. It would change his life. ‘That year, I had six weeks of being a waiter, which was a disaster. I only lasted four days working the tables and spent the rest of the time in thekitchen. And I loved it. I loved it instantly, big time. The boisterousness, the hassle, the shouting, the screaming, the activity. I found a sense of freedom there.’
    Some of the kitchen staff suggested he reconsider full-time catering training and found him details of a foundation course he could try. And the more Gordon learned about it, the more he thought they might be right. But this time he knew he had to be sure before signing up. ‘Now the football had ended I knew that I couldn’t afford to mess up a second time. That very first day after I had been kicked out of Rangers I can remember sitting down and thinking to myself, OK, the next thing I do, I’ve got to get it right. I was obsessed with never again being told that I’m not good enough. I had failed once in life. I swore I would never fail at anything ever again.’
    If the 19-year-old Gordon Ramsay was indeed going to become a chef, he wanted to be the best chef in the world. ‘If I can’t have an FA Cup winner’s medal, I want a third Michelin star,’ he said years later when he realised how he could prove himself