CAN WE PULL YOU FOR A CHAT?
THE ANGRIEST MAN IN THE KITCHEN IS BACK
Watch your back, Lord Sugar! Gordon Ramsay is coming for your throne in his new show Future Food Stars (which abbreviates to “FFS”, of course). Looking for foodie entrepreneurs who he will invest a whopping £150million in, the top chef is ready to put the show’s contestants through their paces – which includes them jumping o a cli into the sea. He filled us in on all the details…
THIS IS MORE THAN JUST A COOKING SHOW, RIGHT?
Yeah, it’s a food and drink, lifestyle and business show. So, fingers crossed, it’s going to rub Alan Sugar up the wrong way. I think I’ve lost a customer there, but who gives a f**k?
WE CAN’T SEE LORD SUGAR JUMPING OUT OF A HELICOPTER, TO BE FAIR…
Although I’d love to see him in a f**king wetsuit! All jokes aside, I’m a big fan of The Apprentice and, obviously, just his business sense. But this show is a chance to look at the food and drink business in the UK, knowing how many diculties everyone’s experienced, not just over the last two years, but just how hard it is to break through that market. So, it’s a sort of food and drink business show with some great products, great characters and a lot of challenges.
LIKE JUMPING OFF A CLIFF?
It’s that leap of faith. In that way of, “I’m going to invest a lot of money in one of you and I need to see that you’re committed”. I get asked all the time, “If you’re such a handson person, who does all the cooking and the business when you’re not there?” And I say, “The same people who do it when I am there”. So, I want to see what their confidence levels are like, and getting comfortable with being uncomfortable.
YOUR DAUGHTER TILLY DID STRICTLY. ARE YOU TEMPTED?
In a f**king heartbeat.
YOU WOULD LOOK GREAT IN SEQUINS…
No. Jesus Christ. No. Don’t they sew your pants into your shirt? Tilly was brilliant [on Strictly], but also just watching her do Zooms for uni… We had a big breakthrough three years ago, when Meg was
the first one to get a degree, none of us had a degree in the family. So, Tilly wasn’t giving up the opportunity, but she was so grateful for Strictly and she worked her ass o . You forget there’s a 60-hour graft for that two-minute sequence.
I have one problem, I’ve got size 15 f**king feet, so whichever female dancer I get paired with needs to be able to handle size 15 feet. ■
Future Food Stars, Thursdays , 9pm, BBC One
‘I’d do Strictly in a f**cking heartbeat’