Coke recipe for disaster
GORDON RAMSAY ON COCAINE
ITV, 9pm
CELEBRITY chef Gordon Ramsay has long been aware of the cocaine epidemic throughout society, having seen it from quite early on in his career.
“I’ve been served it,” he says. “I’ve been given it. I’ve had my hand shaken and left with little wraps of foil in it. I’ve been asked to dust cocaine on top of soufflés, to put it on as icing sugar. “Coke’s everywhere. It’s spiralling out of control. No one wants to talk about it, but everyone wants to f***ing snort it.” In this eye-opening two-part documentary, Gordon aims to go behind the glamorous image of the drug to expose the extent of the problem. Brits consume 30 tonnes of the narcotic per year, and the criminal trade leads to extraordinary levels of violence. It’s an extremely personal mission for Gordon, who talks about his brother Ronnie’s long-term battle with drug addiction – first cocaine and then heroin. And Gordon’s best friend David Dempsey, head chef at one of his restaurants and a 31-year-old father of three, fell 40ft to his death from a block of flats in “excited delirium” after a bad reaction to cocaine 14 years ago. Having joined a police officer on patrol to catch drug-drivers in Bournemouth, one suspect (who later tested positive for cocaine) jeers: “You Gordon Ramsay? What, you trying to get some?” There’s a sober reply as Gordon explains: “No, I lost a dear friend.” To understand the scale of the problem Gordon also swabs the staff and customer toilets in his own restaurants – with alarming results. During the series the chef also travels to South and Central America where he witnesses the illegal ‘cooking’ process, meets hired assassins and a big time drug-smuggler, joins a Colombian antinarcotics unit on a helicopter raid, and witnesses the aftermath of a suspected cocaine-related murder.