To Hell and Back

One of our wine clients has teamed up with Hell’s Kitchen and Gordon Ramsay for a yearlong promotion featuring wine pairings with the infamous chef’s recipes. In order to generate awareness and excitement amongst wholesalers and consumers, I had to write a few scripts for Mr. Ramsey. (Needless to say, I sprinkled enough f-bombs in these scripts to put the FCC’s knickers in a twist.) The outcome of this was that, a couple of weeks ago, some coworkers and I got to visit the set of Hell’s Kitchen to record Gordon Ramsay saying these very Ramsay-esque things.

When we arrived at the set, the first thing I noticed about it was how much it looked like a real restaurant. It was stunning! An epic crystal chandelier hung over the translucent, blue-lit HK double-door entryway—much like something you would see at the Bellagio in Vegas. There were a series of curved booths with padded seats along both sides. All of the tables on one half of the “restaurant” had red plates while the other half had blue, to represent each of the teams on the show. The enormous kitchen was located at the front, with one portion red, and the other blue.

We set our purses and coats aside so as to be out of the peripheral view of the camera. I wasn’t sure if we could affect the set design, so I set my coat, sweater and purse on the floor—unbeknownst to me, over a hot light. About 10 minutes later, I suddenly started to feel the early stages of a headache. I returned to my purse and knelt down to dig some Advil out of it when I detected a powerful burning smell. I looked over and saw that my coat was smoking! Immediately, I picked my coat up to discover that the hot light had ignited my gray, wool sweater. The nearby teleprompter girl and I shared a nervous laugh over it. (Later on, I learned that it had actually burned a perfectly, round, floorlight-sized hole in my sweater.) Yes, I almost started a fire in Hell’s Kitchen.

Ramsay arrived over a half-hour late. He apologized with the excuse that he was sick with something vile—‘yellow fever, typhoid fever…some kind of fucking flu.’ We knew right away that he was in sour spirits.

He danced around, on-edge and rattled off the first of four scripts that I wrote—which were scrolling through the teleprompter.

“Bloody hell! Who wrote this?” He spouted.

Immediately, I wanted to hide underneath one of the Hell’s Kitchen tables.

After a few more reads, he ranted again, “Fucking who wrote this?”

“He hates me,” I whispered to his rep, Monica, as I cowered behind the scripts in my hand.

“This tastes like poodle shit!” Ramsey said to the camera. Then he turned to us, “Do I fucking say this? Really?”

“He’s just shocked to realize that he cusses so much,” Katrina, one of his other agency reps, assured me.

As Ramsay bounced around on his feet like a highly caffeinated white-clothed demon, he finally made it through both wholesaler scripts, one of which featured all of the expletives. (Hey, nothing gets sales guys fired up like a good old-fashioned f-bomb or two delivered by the ornery King of Criticism.) After that, Ramsay read the consumer script, which was pleasantly ‘fuck’-free, so as to not offend Mom in the grocery store. Lastly, he breezed through the website sound bites. In my favorite one, he said, “Do me a favor: Fuck off!”

Several more times through the recording of the scripts, he cursed to himself and the teleprompter. Then he commented dryly, “Whoever fucking wrote this must be a fucking HUGE fan of the show.” (Note: I’ve never actually seen the show. But I watched a lot of YouTube clips and read several interviews in order to accurately capture Ramsay’s speaking manner and persona.)

Once the taping was finished, each of us got our photos taken with him. When I asked if he would pose in a picture with me, he warmly put his arm around me, squeezed my waist tightly, and beamed, “Look at this tall, beautiful woman beside me!” Whether he truly meant it or he simply felt bad because of his earlier remarks, I blushed, and immediately, forgot all of his insults. That Ramsay, he’s a charmer!


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After all of our photos were taken, Gordon Ramsay thanked us heartily, commended us on our brilliant promotion, and then headed out the door with fire at his heels to start prepping the kitchen for that night’s episode of Hell’s Kitchen.