http://www.theage.com.au/news/sport/ramsays-antics-open-his-life-to-scrutiny/2009/06/12/1244664851075.htmlI DON'T know much about food but I do know something about football. Some years ago, I read of how Gordon Ramsay had tried out with Glasgow Rangers in his youth, that a knee injury had cut short his career and that he had channelled his terrible disappointment into his second career as a caterer.
I've lived in Scotland. For one breathtaking month in the late 1970s, I worked on a Glasgow building site. If there were 12 men on the site,11 of them were Celtic supporters. I quickly learnt to admire the courage of the only Protestant, the only Rangers supporter, in just turning up for work each day. A covert civil war was being fought in nearby Ulster, a fact reflected in the songs sung from the terraces by the Celtic and Rangers fans in Glasgow.
I've got to be honest. My image of Gordon Ramsay had little to do with him being a chef. My image of him was that he was part of Glasgow Rangers — or, as the song says, "the famous Glasgow Rangers" — as a kid. Famous? Oh, yes. Like Glasgow Celtic, Rangers have won a major European trophy (Celtic won the European Cup before Manchester United ever did). And the fans of the two clubs met like street armies.
Gordon Ramsay's story, as I understood it, was that a knee injury had cut short his career, that he was terribly disappointed, that his disappointment was somehow mixed up with his relationship to his father, but that what he had seen at Rangers provided him with a template for success in the kitchen. I read an account of his sacking with legendary Rangers manager Jock Wallace. In one account, Ramsay named coach Archie Knox as also being in the room. Ramsay said he wanted to cry when he was told he was cut, but he wasn't going to cry in front of Wallace, just like he wouldn't cry in front of his father.
Ramsay, in other interviews, said he played two first-team games with Rangers. He was only an interchange and the games were lesser fixtures — against St Johnstone and Morton - but he had spells of 10 minutes and 20 minutes. But by this stage Gordon had crossed over into the dangerous territory of inventing his own reality. He did have a connection with the club. There is a photo of him playing for Rangers in an exhibition match but he is listed as a "trialist". There is no record of him ever having played first grade or second grade and Knox was in Dundee at the time given by Ramsay for his sacking by Knox and Wallace. This all came out in March this year.
People like Ramsay are the subjects of countless novels — they're the ones who start to live their own imaginings. This is from a 2002 interview in The Observer in which Gordon had previously spoken about playing against St Johnstone and Morton. "I started to play a lot of football as a school kid. I did very well. I was a naturally aggressive left-back, a cut-throat tackler. You may have got past once, but there was never, ever, ever a second occasion. And I was fast, I was a great 100-metre sprinter. If you were to compare me to anyone, I guess it could be Stuart Pearce." Pearce, it should hardly surprise you, played for England
In that same article, Gordon went on to describe Wallace as "a Scottish version of Mike Tyson. When he wanted to rip your arse out, he would crucify you. Some people ask me today how I can be so firm — but when you worked under Jock Wallace there is no pussyfooting around when you want standards. I still remember him telling me they were letting me go. He was f------ ruthless."
In media terms, Ramsay was always playing an extremely dangerous game. To behave like he does is to make yourself a target. No one's life can withstand total scrutiny. With everything nasty or offensive Ramsay says about another in public, he opens his own life to scrutiny in that same area. A lot of Ramsay's imagery and subject matter is sexual. Ramsay's management had to deal with the story that Ramsay was done for gross indecency in a public toilet with two other men in London in 1993 ("nothing sexual", says Ramsay). There have also been stories that Ramsay's business empire is not sailing as smoothly as before.
Some are saying Ramsay's fracas with TV presenter Tracy Grimshaw is a publicity stunt, but, even if that were true, his timing was extremely poor. The recent Four Corners program on the group sex incident involving another television celebrity, former rugby league player Mattie Johns, has been the biggest sports story in Australia this year. It is one of those stories which can be said to have changed the balance of where public attitudes lie — in this case, the treatment of women. That is the backdrop to the stage on which Ramsay then stepped with his apparently gratuitous and sustained attack on Grimshaw.
There was an interesting article this week in the English newspaper, The Telegraph, by Judith Woods. Basically, she said Ramsay is yesterday's man in the sense that the sort of celebrity he possesses has passed its used-by date. The article was about the effect of the recession on British popular culture. We have to bear in mind that their recession is worse than ours, plus it is accompanied by an apparent collapse in political values with the politicians' expenses scandal. From here, their recession feels like a depression, mental if not economic.
Woods said Brits are suddenly a whole lot more discerning about who is seriously deserving of their attention.
