Gordon Ramsay is showing his vulnerable side.
In Netflix’s new documentary series Being Gordon Ramsay, the celebrity becomes emotional and breaks down in tears multiple times as he talks about his wife Tana, their six children, and his strained relationship with his alcoholic father Gordon Sr., who died of a heart attack in 1997. He was 53 years old.
“I think it’s healthy to cry,” Ramsay told me over Zoom a few days before the series premiere, adding, “I wouldn’t be human.”
Being Gordon Ramsay chronicles the most ambitious project of his nearly 30-year career: building a complex of five restaurants and a cooking school atop London’s 22 Bishopsgate skyscraper.
Ramsay has made it clear that his father never valued his culinary pursuits. His father died just as Ramsay was about to launch what would become his vast restaurant, hospitality, and media empire.
The older Ramsay wanted to be a musician. “I grew up watching my dad pursue a career in music, but it didn’t happen. It just didn’t work out for him,” Ramsay says. “My friends in the music industry have asked me, ‘How do you know so much about Gibson and Fender Strats and Telecasters? How do you know about synthesizers?'”
Those unfulfilled dreams resulted in an unstable childhood. “I was carrying that equipment in and out of bars and in and out of Glasgow where he was playing for $60, $70 a night,” Ramsay recalls. “Then he disappeared to Nashville. All the collectors were on the doorstep, and my mom was on the doorstep in tears because people were coming after her for the money that my dad owed her.”
He previously opened up about his father’s emotional and physical abuse of him, his mother, and his siblings in his 2006 memoir Humble Pie.
“I don’t know if he was interested in what I did,” Ramsey says. “I remember seeing him holding a glass of red wine. He tried to tell me it tasted better, so he poured me some Sprite. I thought, oh, Jesus Christ. If the sommelier saw this or my chef heard this about my dad, they’d think I was a fucking idiot. ‘Okay, dad, why?’ “Well, the grapes are coming out.” I just sat there and thought, “Oh my god.” My head was in my hands. ”
“I’ve never cooked for him, and I think in many ways I’ve lived with it. Maybe that’s for the better. I think things happen for a reason, and I’ve had him pampered and pampered even when he’s not sitting at the table at my restaurant. I don’t know if he could handle that, to be honest.”
Meanwhile, his mother Helen is “one of the most important women in my life,” Ramsay says.
“I’ve always been a motherfucker,” he says with a laugh. “When I got my first Michelin star many years ago, I said to Tana, ‘Look, I’m embarrassed. My mother lives in a high-rise tenement and can barely pay the rent. I’m going to take out this loan.’ She must have been 19 when she had me. She was in her late 40s and had never owned property.”
He bought her a three-bedroom bungalow. “For me, that was more important than getting my first Michelin star, because my mom always talked about having your own home, having your own bedroom, bathroom, backyard, and all the plants and decorations and everything else,” Ramsay says.
Adam Peaty, Holly Ramsay, Tana Ramsay, Oscar James Ramsay, Tilly Ramsay and Henry Farrow attend the launch of “Being Gordon Ramsay” on February 16th in London.
Getty Images for Netflix UK
Ms Ramsay, who turns 60 in November, admitted she feels guilty for putting time with her and Tana’s eldest son Megan and fraternal twins Holly, Jack and Tilly ahead of her career. The series shows him doting on his young sons Oscar, 7, and Jesse, 2.
“I want to be a father to a family that I didn’t grow up with,” he says. “I’m the exact opposite. Everything I’ve grown up with, everything I’ve seen, is the exact opposite. I’ve never, to this day, walked around the dining room drinking champagne, fooling around, drinking with customers. I don’t do that.” (In one of the docuseries’ most heartbreaking moments, Ramsay details his brother’s struggle with heroin addiction.)
And just when viewers of the series thought Bishopsgate might be his swan song, he says this to Tana in the final episode – spoiler alert! — He’s considering opening a new location in New York City. “What on earth should I do?” he said when I asked him if he had ever thought about slowing down. “What am I going to do? Go drink matcha lattes and go to a fucking yoga class every day and be a fat lazy chef who wants to sit there and roll around on a boat? No, no, I have a responsibility to my talent and I’ve made my bed and I want to sleep comfortably in it, so I don’t want to retire.”
“Being Gordon Ramsay” is available on Netflix.
