Humble Pie

Humble Pie
Gordon Ramsay

Everyone thinks they know the real Gordon Ramsay: rude, loud, pathologically driven, stubborn as hell. But this is his real story…This is Gordon Ramsay’s autobiography – the first time he has told the full story of how he became the world’s most famous and infamous chef: his difficult childhood, his brother’s heroin addiction and his failed first career as a footballer: all of these things have made him the celebrated culinary talent and media powerhouse that he is today. Gordon talks frankly about:• his tough childhood: his father’s alcoholism and violence and the effects on his relationships with his mother and siblings• his first career as a footballer: how the whole family moved to Scotland when he was signed by Glasgow Rangers at the age of fifteen, and how he coped when his career was over due to injury just three years later• his brother’s heroin addiction.• Gordon’s early career: learning his trade in Paris and London; how his career developed from there: his time in Paris under Albert Roux and his seven Michelin-starred restaurants.• kitchen life: Gordon spills the beans about life behind the kitchen door, and how a restaurant kitchen is run in Anthony Bourdain-style.• and how he copes with the impact of fame on himself and his family: his television career, the rapacious tabloids, and his own drive for success.

Humble Pie

Gordon Ramsay

Copyright (#ulink_dbf8ad3b-925d-5fbe-be5e-7cd74632693f)

Harper

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2006 This edition 2007

Copyright text © Gordon Ramsay 2006, 2007

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN: 9780007229680

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2010 ISBN: 9780007279869

Version: 2015-03-18

To Mum, from cottage pie to Humble Pie – you deserve a medal.

Table of Contents

Cover Page (#u56ac6ce9-12de-5986-865a-20878aee661f)

Title Page (#u3e4c007b-3496-5cb5-9849-fca6663ba39b)

Copyright (#ueb8840ef-c461-5b81-99a4-fcd9809a7b93)

Dedication (#u4be18776-eb1f-5aaf-8726-da54b414eba2)

Foreword (#u5ebbcbcc-41b5-543e-891b-23cbf6730204)

Chapter One: Dad (#u8fdb6ba8-4453-587f-a36d-5909e3ed3552)

Chapter Two: Football (#ub658f90f-910a-58e2-9af1-8f2ca2d4f25a)

Chapter Three: Getting Started (#udc2c4459-5682-545d-a1c1-b372c9bda3b8)

Chapter Four: French Leave (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five: Oceans Apart (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six: A Room Of My Own (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven: War (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight: The Great Walk-out (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine: The Sweet Smell Of Success (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten: Ronnie (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven: Down Among The Women (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve: Welcome To The Small Screen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen: New York, New York (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen: Family (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen: The Important Things In Life (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Picture Credits (#litres_trial_promo)

Index (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

FOREWORD (#ulink_5a17936e-3f6c-558f-b99d-e4c6a70eff2a)

IN MY HAND, I’ve got a piece of paper. It’s Mum’s handwriting, and it’s a list – a very long list – of all the places we lived until I left home. I look at this list now, and there are just so many of them. My eye moves down the page, trying to take in her spidery scribble, and I soon lose track. These places mean very little to me: it’s funny how few of them I can remember. In some cases, I guess that’s because we were hardly there for more than five minutes. But in others, it’s probably more a case of trying to forget about them as soon as possible. When you’re unhappy in a place, you want to forget about it as soon as possible. You don’t dwell on the details of a house if you associate it with being afraid, or ashamed, or poor – and as a boy, I was often afraid and ashamed, and always poor.

Life was a series of escapades, of moves that always ended badly. The next place was always going to be a better place – a bit of garden, a shiny new front door – the place where everything would finally come right. But it never did, of course. Our family life was built on a series of pipe dreams – the dreams of my father. And he was a man whose dreams always turned to dust.

I don’t think people grasp the whole me when they see me on television or in the pages of some glossy magazine. I’ve got the wonderful family, the big house, the flash car in the drive. I run several of the world’s best restaurants. I’m running round, cursing and swearing, telling people what to do, my mouth always getting me into trouble. They probably think: that flash bastard. I know I would. But it’s not about being flash. My life, like most people’s, is about keeping the wolf from the door. It’s about hard work. It’s about success. Beyond that, though, something else is at play. Is it fear? Maybe. I’m as driven as any man you’ll ever meet. I can’t ever sit still. Holidays are impossible. I’ve got ants in my pants – I always have had. When I think about myself, I still see a little boy who is desperate to escape, and anxious to please. The fact that I’ve long since escaped, and long since succeeded in pleasing people, has made little or no difference. I just keep going, moving as far away as possible from where I began. Where am I trying to get to? I wonder…Work is who I am, who I want to be. I sometimes think that if I were to stop, I’d cease to exist.

This, then, is the story of that journey – so far. The tough childhood. My false start in football. The years I spent working literally twenty hours a day. My battles with my demons. My brother’s heroin addiction. The death of my father, and of my best friend. I’m just forty, and it seems, even to me, such an amazingly long journey in such a short time.

Will I ever get there? You tell me.

CHAPTER ONE DAD (#ulink_682e990d-e41b-5d25-ae53-570c88cfe7b3)

THE FIRST THING I can remember? The Barras – in Glasgow. It’s a market – the roughest, most extraordinary place, people bustling, full of second-hand shit. Of course, we were used to second-hand shit. In that sense, I had a Barras kind of a childhood. But things needn’t really have been that bad. Mostly, the way our life was depended on whether or not Dad was working – and when I was born, in Thornhill Maternity Hospital in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, he was working. Amazingly enough.