Tim Hayward

I particularly like how No55. "The Best Restaurant in Wales" is apparently in London. Cymru am byth

probably a lot worse now kaupthing has just been placed in administration ← Just in case anyone's losing sleep: Link ETA: I'd be interested to hear from anyone who can clarify whether "all its corporate banking" means all the debt or just an account and a bridging loan (see Ramsaywatch passim). ← Why does this stuff always crop up in the Scottish papers and not down here? UK papers will print almost any cack they can stick a picture of his scrotal visage over yet I've never seen anything showing the slightest interest in the byzantine nature of his business. OK. I know. It was rhetorical. I, for one, will feel personally affronted if the failure of the Y&A gets blamed on global financial conditions rather than GRH ineptness.

press invites for nibbles are out, didn't you get one? You don't have to nonce around standing on tiptoe peering in at the windows surely? S ← Standing? Not exactly. I'm the sweaty fatknacker that runs past twice a day... once out... once back. I don't pay too much mind to it on the way back, I can't see through the tears and I'm preoccupied by wheezing up my ring, but, occasionally, on the way out, I take note of the great man's doings. ← It was a fun night last night, I didnt see you wheezing past though dont exercise, it will kill you or leave you looking like nigel lawson. S ← I was there, watching you. I was the bloke in the tinfoil hat sitting on the opposite side of the road in a pool of wee and yelling about aliens. I saw you all in there... all bright and sparkly... cocking your little fingers and eating pate made out of poor people and puppy tears. I was the one pressing my cankered stump of a nose against the windows, steaming the glass with my festering breath, until I was run off by an overseer with a whip. Did anyone mention a 'hard' opening date? Possibly even a semi-stiff one?

press invites for nibbles are out, didn't you get one? You don't have to nonce around standing on tiptoe peering in at the windows surely? S ← Standing? Not exactly. I'm the sweaty fatknacker that runs past twice a day... once out... once back. I don't pay too much mind to it on the way back, I can't see through the tears and I'm preoccupied by wheezing up my ring, but, occasionally, on the way out, I take note of the great man's doings.

Things are getting close to the wire here. The lights are on. People looking suspiciously like staff have been seen wandering about. Rumour on the street... well Parkway... is that the opening has been delayed a week and that there will be a soft opening period before going public. According to recent press the delay is due to issues with water... which is daft... Gordo knows he can pop round for a cupful any time

I'm going to be driving from Glasgow to Mallaig at the end of the month and need a lunch stop. Unkind friends have suggested I just drive through at high speed, munching energy bars (whatever they are) as any attempt to stop may involve fried gristle pies. Surely it can't be that bad. It's not like I'm after foie 'n' foams just anice spot of lunch. Any suggestions?

I obviously have no interest in defending Big Sweary but there are two separate issues here. What you have here are photos that would seem reasonable proof that the Narrows uses ready cut chips. That may or may not be a problem depending on your expectations from GRH's 'diffusion' offering - which pointedly doesn't actually bear El Gordo's name. I rather wish you'd hung about a bit and taken two pictures with time stamps - even sticking a watch on that hand in the frame would have helped - because without it you have photographic evidence of a temporarily unattended delivery. I'd love to obtain evidence that GordonBalls is leaving his produce out in the sun to rot... so would the tabs... so, for that matter would GRH... but this isn't really it. Any attempt to stretch it into evidence would really leave you wide open to legal demolition. Though it's great fun, all this is going to do is get some poor bastard of a KP kicked half-to-death in the walk-in and summarily fired. Shame really. You had me quite excited there for a bit

This just in... There is a skip... which a solitary, disconsolate gentleman in an HV vest is filling, very slowly.

RBS to the rescue click . ← God, I really am crap at this money business. I'm glad The Scotsman has the intelligence to unpack it into... ... because I'm fairly sure most London papers would have put 'Gordon Ramsay gets bank loan' straight on the spike and we'd have missed this. So, someone tell me - is this the first time Gordo's been to the banks for money? Otherwise the only way I can read this is that Naebody is absolutely right and, at some point after the first announcements, GRH found themselves unable to complete the Murano and Y&A projects and put them on hold while they found another source of funds. Which I find interesting from a spin-management POV. All we've seen in the press of Gordo's activities has been unrelieved positivity, and success. If news of this kinds appears in Scottish press after the fact and the only mention of 'mothballing' is in threads like this, you have to tip your hat to their flacks. (BTW. Y&A update. Definitely saw something move in there yesterday. May have been tall rat.)

Well it looks like they finally tore the bar out yesterday so things are looking better for you Andy ...course, there weren't actually any workmen there - which looks better for me Funnily enough, one of my neighbours spotted someone looking a lot like you leaving the place the previous night carrying a lump hammer and a crowbar....

http://www.gordonramsay.com/yorkandalbany/ Could be a bluff I suppose, but why? ← Actually, the estimable CNJ may have part of the answer - there's obviously a licensing issue. Their archive also turns up this Feb piece which suggests that the opening will be in May, followed by this this article in May, complete with the artists impression which now suggests September. But all this goes back to my original point. Both articles give the impression that workmen are tirelessly toiling to prepare the place for opening but in truth, the place is exactly as it was when it was locked up several months before GRH bought it and no work appears to have been undertaken under their ownership. Unless your experience of builders is very much different to mine you'd have to agree that they're going to need a time machine to get from the current conditions to the artist's impression inside three months - or at least get a few blokes in there with hammers. Or you could opine that no sensible company would pay builders to so much as lift a screwdriver if they weren't absolutely sure the place was going to open. I'll buy you lunch there when it opens in September If, OTOH the ever-grateful CNJ are thrown an 'exclusive' around Sept 20th with photos of Gordo and a new completion date somewhere in 2009, you can buy me a sandwich somewhere that's actually open.

You never disappoint, Naebody. Once again, rem acu tetigisti.

Y&A is at the end of my street so I'm obviously watching it with keen attention. It's been locked and entirely devoid of life for ages and, in spite of occasional 'leaks' to the local paper about predicted opening times (April, then June) there's absolutely no action whatsoever. The last leak featured an artist's impression of the interior which, at the very least, will involve the removal of the large bar in the centre of the main room. I'll keep an eye on the place and post the minute there's any action but, right now, I wouldn't hold my breath for an opening... ever. Maybe someone with more business acumen than me can explain this but it seems counter-intuitive to keep a place standing idle like this. Possibilties? 1. It's on some kind of negotiated, low-cost, 'holding' lease with Crown Estates so there's little impact on GRH. This might make sense if the presence of a Ramsoid establishment is seen as an asset to the value of the landlord's property in the area 2. A ready-to-roll property that hasn't actually had the chance to fail in the market is, in some way a more useful part of the GRH portfolio than a going concern. 3. Hartnett's got Gordo over a barrel - if she were to announce a departure from GRH it would be damaging. 4. It's costing them a fortune but GRH is too rich to care about the burn rate.

← Please, God, somebody do a Alien v Predator mashup. I want to be left alone in a room with Chef Sweary and an M41A Pulse Rifle. Quick poll. Which movie or video game weapon would you choose for an encounter with GordonBalls?

Get a month's worth of MRE ration packs, live off them and sell the story to a magazine

Joking aside, I don't think one should get too misty-eyed about the heritage, or indeed the Englishness of the Fry Up. Mayhew makes very few references to breakfast as a kind of meal and described working class Londoners as 'breaking their fast' with pretty much anything available - which wasn't much. Leftovers, a slice of bread and sweet tea - dripping when available. Similar story holds for the morning nosh of agricultural workers in the same period. The proper English Breakfast really only comes into it's own with Lt Col Kenney-Herbert, who's admirable tome, '50 breakfasts' begins to categorise the kind of things we recognise now. What's most important is that the meal we recognise developed in large houses with servants. The idea was that a sort of buffet of easy to prepare stuff, 'rechaufeed' over spirit lamps meant that the toffs could make a big deal out of serving themselves while the servants were occupied mucking out their rooms and laying out the grouse slaughtering tweeds for the day. First thing in the morning was the busiest time for staff at a country houseparty and things would pretty much grind to a halt if the whole lot of them were hovering around the guests getting their nosh. K-H describes pretty much everything we hold dear in the book, as if it were an innovation. Sausages, bacon, devilled kidneys and black pudding could be kept warm without any loss. Eggs were boiled in purpose built copper pans over spirit lamps. Kedgeree, porridge, and any of the cooked veg could be spooned out by even the most inbred. It's interesting that for so long the Brits felt it was unbearably rude to express any opinion about food at all but breakfast was place they felt they could have positive prejudices about cut of marmalade, doneness of toast, genre of egg etc. Basically they had to get involved because, downstairs in the kitchen was near empty. Many of the individual elements of the FB were popular in caffs for other classes - though, as in most other cultures, this is probably to do with being able to knock out the meal to complex personal specs on a griddle and a few pans. In effect, the ubiquity of the FB for the post war working class was about the technical expedience of its preparation. The ubiquity of the 'Full English' in hotels was more about aping the gentry. My Grandad ate a full fried every day of his life, from the day he was weaned to the day he carked at 64 of congestive heart failure. The poor old sod felt it was the nearest an Englishman got to a right - or possibly a rite. Perhaps he didn't eat enough grouse in between :-)

Beans? BEANS?? What kind of barbarian would put beans on the same plate as a fried breakfast? Christ, you'll be suggesting hash browns next (and as any fule kno they are only suitable for soling a Frenchman's espadrille).

Dear God... that's worse than hopeless.

I think the point about this being a PR exercise is well made but I think there's slightly more to it. The basis of the statement - seasonal local fruit and veg in the restaurants - was carefully crafted. We have to imagine that the compliance of his own restaurants would have been checked very rigorously before the statement was made and in fact, though it's a fairly new development for him, he is making a reasonable fist of living up to this. There were two things that must have made his handlers twitch, though. It's a classic PR problem when, no matter how well he's been media trained and briefed, an inexperienced Principal lets his mouth run in the excitement of the interview. The first slip was allowing himself to slip into implying a broader seasonal/local agenda than just the F&V, the second was giving the absurdly arrogant impression that he'd been reading the riot act to the PM. I don't think anyone disagreed with his suggestion that seasonal and local were better but by overstating his case this way he put himself in the position of appearing hypocritical. As you say, the result was more media coverage which is usually regarded as no bad thing. It's a common misconception outside the world of PR that any publicity is good publicity. In fact, it's the flavour of individual cockups like this that builds the broader impression of the 'star' in the public eye. No one is going to suddenly disregard everything Ramsay says, just because he let himself slip on the news. OTOH, an event like this adds another tiny grain to the mountain of opinion that his statements are for publicity rather than heartfelt and that he's now more of a media creature than a cook. The events of the last couple of days have probably enhanced his income quite a lot and eroded his credibility only a little. On balance, as you imply, he's probably happy with that.

Aaaah, the rumbling of a bandwagon....

Having clearly mastered the world of cooking, the business of catering and worldwide televisual entertainment, the way forward for Gordo is now becoming clear... G.Rex has apparently "...spoken to Gordon Brown about outlawing out-of-season produce". Thank goodness the people of Britain are finally in safe hands. Maybe we should just swap them over. At this point in their strategic development I can't work out whether the Labour Party or GRH would be happier to get rid their sour faced, dictatorial Scot.

Hmmmmm. Suggest you declare a nice ripe Stichelton as a live pet and possibly a Bradenham ham as a hunting trophy

I think he's admirably qualified. He went to my old school. Other significant alumni are, apparently, Christian Bale and Benny Hill.

OK. Call me a priss but there's something truly horrible about the waitron, hockling around down there in all the muck and oomska, jury-rigging the bloody furniture with scraps of paper. It gives me the dry heaves. I have a similar thing with napkin arrangers... 'GET YOUR F%$£ING HANDS OUT OF MY LAP'. White rubber window wedges, bought in bulk packets of twenty. I keep one clipped to my keyring and leave it in the restaurant when I leave for extra karma points.

The article has had over 200 responses, most of them indignant and rather fiery (I expect it's the heartburn). A few bloggers are raging too. ← I tried six times to get a response up to his breakfast post and got modded out every time. No swearies, no ad hominems, I just pointed out that the working class during the industrial revolution didn't often eat fried breakfast and that, according to Kenney-Herbert and others, it originated in the country houses of the aristocracy. Shame really. If I'd bartled indignantly about a my degree or spouted ill-informed drivel about low carb diets it would clearly have got through.