Mystery of Gary Rhodes’ death at 59
Chef was warned of risk of further head injuries after a near-fatal road accident at age of 19
WHEN Gary Rhodes was six, his father Gordon, a caretaker, ran off with the woman next door, sold the family home in Gillingham, Kent, and left Gary, his younger siblings and their shell-shocked mother, Jean, to fend for themselves.
Suddenly, they were living in a council flat and Jean was back working all hours as a secretary to pay the bills.
But instead of wailing about the unfairness of life, little Gary stepped up. He helped look after his little brother and baby sister Cheryl. He put aside his dreams of becoming a racing driver or policeman and, aged 13, became the family cook.
‘By the time Cheryl was six or seven, I was picking her up from school, taking her home and planning what I was going to cook for her that evening,’ he said.
He started with cottage pie and soon progressed to Sunday roasts, with lemon sponge pudding for afters.
‘With my father [gone], it made me so much stronger,’ he once said. ‘When I look back, I realise I had quite a responsible head on young shoulders.’ So while his mates were off playing football in the park or bunking off school, the budding chef was busy ‘keeping house’ and embracing any extra jobs his mum asked him to do – cleaning, washing - but keeping it secret for fear his mates would find out.
‘If she left me the washing and asked me to switch the machine on, I’d make sure that when she came home it was all sorted and folded, too,’ he once said. ‘I wanted to impress and do more than expected.’ It became his life philosophy. Rhodes’s self-control and work ethic were legendary – propelling his stratospheric rise to become one of Cool Britannia’s most successful chefs, winning a record five Michelin stars, presenting endless TV shows, writing 18 (often rather challenging for the novice) cookery books – some of which featured his signature faggots – and working 18-hour days to service his empire of restaurants and ever-expanding business interests.
It was this focus that led to him becoming both student and chef of the year at catering college in Thanet, Kent, when he was 15. ‘I realised I could chop a carrot quicker than anyone else and I began to have a feeling of confidence,’ he once said.
This self-discipline helped him overcome a horrific accident in Amsterdam on his first day off from his first job as commis chef at the Amsterdam Hilton.
He was running for a tram, looked the wrong way and was hit by a transit van. His head smashed into a brick wall causing a blood clot on the brain, which led to the removal of part of his skull.
Doctors warned he might never speak again and be brain-damaged for life. They advised a year off work. But despite losing his sense of smell – catastrophic for a fledgling chef – he was back in the Hilton’s kitchen in six months. While his smell returned, albeit playing a few olfactory tricks over the years, according to close friend and food writer Thane Prince, the vivid scar from his surgery changed his hairstyle for ever.
‘That was why he wore his hair spiky for so long,’ she says of the trademark hairdo that divided fans and took him up to an hour to perfect each morning with gallons of hairspray and mousse gel.
It was Rhodes’s remarkable drive that, for decades, shoehorned him out of bed at 4.30am every day to complete a brutal 30-minute gym regime – before he even tackled the hair. And all that before a long day in the kitchen. (At the weekends and on holidays, he’d up the workout to two and a half hours.) He also ate next to nothing. ‘He was hugely self-disciplined,’ says Prince. ‘He used to eat like a flea – lots of muesli and healthy food, but he was incredibly kind and supportive.
‘He would always go that extra mile and was probably one of the most hands-on restrained, encouraging chefs I have ever met. There was no violence or shouting in his kitchen.’ (Unlike those of his culinary peers, Marco Pierre White and } Gordon Ramsay.)
For while Rhodes was hard on himself – he considered four hours’ sleep a night perfectly adequate – he was wonderfully kind to friends, family, staff, customers and fans.
YESTERDAy, along with endless glowing tributes from every famous chef you can think of, Twitter was awash with tales of his quiet kindnesses.
Actor Kadiff Kirwan tweeted: ‘In 2008 on my gap year, I worked at his restaurant in Marble Arch to save for drama school. Gary was always so lovely. When I left to go to drama school he gave me one of his signed cookbooks, I opened it and there was £200 inside.’
A chap called Gareth Dimelow recalls how, back in the 90s, Gary helped a brother of Gareth’s friend perfect one of his recipes after he’d got