Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2002, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a chef, He might have been a footballer but injury cut short

his career with Glasgow Rangers. Instead he went to catering college and after a

series of menial jobs ended up in London working for Marco Pierre White. Now age 35 he's decorated

with Michelin stars and owns his own restaurants in London and in Glasgow. His dishes

like his temper are legendary. The unfriendly

restaurant critic and the incompetent souchelf have both been known to feel the

lash of his tongue because this and graft for a living. He is Gordon Ramsey. Fearsome stuff, Gordon, is it true that you've never

eaten in your own restaurant? No, you can't eat in there, no. Why not? Well, the first question you get asked, of course,

is that you shouldn't be here, you should be behind the scenes.

But that doesn't really bother me really because it's nice to see the delight and the joy on the customers faces.

And... Well you can't see that if you're stuck in the kitchen.

Well you can because you invite them through.

But it's more than that, it's your view is your places in the kitchen.

You don't do what a lot of chefs do, which is walk around the restaurant,

in a way seeking plaudits.

Exactly that.

And they stand there and their sort of starch, stiff jackets, immacently dressed, all their

beards trimmed and looked like they haven't done the day's work in four or five years,

but I'd never be able to relax in the

dying room atmosphere, known for well that I'd be too obsessed with what's going on the plate,

...