From having sex with customer in the loos to fist fights in the kitchen

THE UK’s best restaurants used to be ruled by cocky French chefs with big hats and even bigger bellies.
But that all changed thanks to a trio of rock ‘n’ roll Brits.
Kitchen mavericks Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal turned the stuffy industry on its head with their trendy establishments, where members of the Spice Girls, Oasis and Hollywood’s finest would compete with high-society folk for the most sought-after dinner reservations going.
New BBC documentary Rise Of The Rockstar Chefs explores the rise of the three men who were blazing a trial — when they weren’t barking at their sous chefs.
Gordon sums them up as “council house rebels with a f***ing cause”, while Marco says: “Chefs have always been naughty. They were naughty before me, and they’re naughty after me.
“But the likes of Gordon and Heston made it rock ’n’ roll.”
According to Gordon, it was his mentor Marco who exhibited the most rock-star behaviour.
The Leeds-born chef won legions of new admirers by posing semi-naked in black-and-white snaps taken by provocative photographer Bob Carlos Clarke for his cook book White Heat.
And some customers couldn’t get enough of Marco, including a female diner on a date in Harveys, his restaurant serving French cuisine in Wandsworth, South West London.
Gordon, 59, said: “Marco left service, ran through the restaurant, ran upstairs, jumped in the cubicle, did whatever in the bathroom, and then jumped through the window of that bathroom.
“He then dropped down the f***ing skylight, back on to my hot plate having done whatever.
“And then she then went back into the restaurant and continued eating her dessert with her boyfriend.”
Marco also had form for fighting with customers, according to Gordon.
During his time running Harveys — Gordon’s first-ever chef’s job — seeing scruffy-haired Marco brawling in the restaurant would be a common sight, especially if a diner had the nerve to point out something was wrong with their meal.
Gordon recalls: “I remember, I think it was my second week, this customer had complained the pigeon was overcooked and Marco said to him, ‘Do me a favour. Dinner’s on me, and what you didn’t spend in my restaurant, buy your wife some new clothes.’
“This guy said to him, ‘Say that again, what did you say to me?’, and then this guy started walking towards Marco, knocks into me, and then they start going at it.
“This customer, he’s like sprawling all over the floor and I’m boning out my pigeon.”
Nick Munier, who was Marco’s maitre d’ at Harveys, where actor Oliver Reed would often be found lying drunk on the floor, revealed what happened if a customer asked a waiter for salt and pepper.
He added: “What we used to say is ‘You’ve ruined your own meal, we won’t be serving you any more food.”
“We’d start to clear the table and everything will be clear and the guest would be left embarrassed with nothing in front of them, and the only thing they could do was leave.”
Munier also witnessed Marco chuck the entire contents of his cheeseboard trolley against a wall because he was unhappy with how it looked.
He recalled: “No one was to clean them and he wanted me to see these cheeses through service, so that next time I don’t make the same mistakes.”
Celebrities were not safe from Marco’s wrath either.
Actor Nigel Havers said he was booted out of The Canteen, which Marco set up with Sir Michael Caine in 1992 in Chelsea Harbour, for commenting about waiting time.
He revealed: “I went there in the first week and it took three hours to get the first course.
“Someone came over and said, ‘How was the meal?’ I said ‘I don’t really remember the food, it took three hours’. Marco looms up and says, ‘Get out of my restaurant’.
“It was scary, and you’re paying through the nose to be harangued by this chef, this mad fool.”
Despite their rock ’n’ roll personas, neither Gordon nor Marco claim to have dabbled in drugs, although other chefs in that era certainly did.
Gordon says: “Chefs were becoming heavy drinkers, drugs were getting involved in the industry.
“Heart attacks every other week.
“Everyone thought you could stay up all night and do drugs and cook.
“That was the opposite of where I came from.”
Marco, 64, added: “I’ve never taken drugs in my life and I didn’t drink until I was 41.”
Gordon and Marco’s tumultuous relationship and rivalry is very much at the core of this three-parter, which also celebrates 60-year-old Heston’s visionary role and how he quietly equalled their three Michelin star haul from his Fat Duck restaurant in Berkshire.
The trio meet in person for the first time in decades in the third episode, but it is the coming together of Gordon and Marco which is likely to provide the most drama, given the mighty fallout between them.
The pair came to blows inside Harveys during Gordon’s last service in October 1989.
Marco secretly did not want to lose his protégé, and the skirmish became famous as it was the first and only time Gordon cried in a kitchen.
The F-Word star explained: “I got absolutely pummelled.
“It was almost like, if I can’t have you and own you, I’m going to destroy you.
“There was an issue with the timing, I think it was something to do with the red mullet and I answered him back.
“He was angry, literally two fists, chef jacket buttons flying everywhere, and he’s shaking me on this coffee machine and then a glass bowl of coffee fell and smashed everywhere, and the kitchen went silent.”
When Marco was quizzed about the alleged ruckus, he said: “Not true.”
Gordon continued: “I bawled my eyes out. I was f***ing upset.
“I was in shock that I was leaving and this level of aggression — he knew I could run this restaurant without him and it was a relationship that was coming to an end and he wanted to finish me before I got to somebody else.
“I’ve never forgiven him for that.
“It still brings back incredible moments when you read ‘the chef who made Gordon Ramsay cry’ — why is that a headline?
“Did I f**k up massively and destroy his reputation? Nothing of the sort.
“Was it justified? No, it wasn’t.
“It was just another scenario where he wanted to prove he was better than me and he wanted to dine out on it. You sad c***.”
Marco responded again: “It’s not personal, it’s service.”
Gordon eventually got his revenge on Marco by not only equalling his Michelin stars total but by becoming a household name worldwide.
Both Gordon and Heston profited from the era where the chefs became the stars by landing big-money TV deals, with the former getting further exposure by fronting a cooking show across the pond.
Marco attempted to downplay their achievements, saying in the documentary: “I don’t do TV.
“They like to manipulate, they like manufactured drama — it’s called reality TV.
“Don’t blame me for that.
“Have it, Gordon — it’s all yours.”
But that didn’t stop Marco from hosting ITV’s Hell’s Kitchen for two series from 2007 to 2009 before the show was axed, much to Gordon’s delight given he hosted the debut series in 2003.
Gordon added: “I couldn’t believe my luck.
“I was so happy for Marco to pick up the slack and step into my shoes.
“All that s**t you have given me for doing TV, now you’re following in my footsteps.
“Boy, has the tide turned.
“That was the start of Marco’s demise on TV because Hell’s Kitchen tanked.
“Of all the f***ing people, how many times I’ve told him, do not take sloppy seconds.”
- Rise Of The Rockstar Chefs starts on BBC Two on Thursday at 9pm.







