Ready Steady Crook: Fake Chef Faces Jail

A bogus celebrity chef who claimed to have flushed Jamie Oliver’s head down the toilet as a kitchen prank is facing jail after admitting a string of gastro-pub frauds.

Kenny Goldsmith faked his credentials by claiming to have worked with some of the cheffing industry’s biggest names.

And he appeared on UKTV Food after boasting of working with Oliver, Gordon Ramsay and Ken Hom, taking viewers through his "simple but tasty" meal of beef brochettes served with mustard garlic cream.

But he had actually honed his knife skills – not at the foot of the Greats, but in a prison kitchen. And he had never worked with Ramsay and Hom or won a Michelin star. Or for that matter helped train Oliver – or , sadly, bogwashed the Naked Chef star as a "prank".

Oliver and Ramsay were asked to give statements to police during the fraud inquiry - and confirmed they had never met him.

A UKTV spokeswoman said the channel was now washing its hands of the chef following his appearance on Great Food Live.

“As part of that appearance, his recipe was uploaded on to uktvfood.co.uk. We will now remove the recipe from the website (they have),” she said.

His lies were finally exposed after he left a trail of bounced cheques and bad debts, cheating unsuspecting gastropub owners out of a total of £120,000.

At one pub, the St Vincent Arms in Norton Disney, Lincs, he even ran up a £4,000 bill for a helicopter trip to a food festival in London.

He is now behind bars, facing a lengthy jail-term after appearing before Lincoln Crown Court to admit a string of fraud charges.

Goldsmith, 39, cooked up an elaborate story of how his love of fine dining developed at an early age.

It was the usual sleb chef rites-of-passage-guff that the punters lap up. According to his website, his journey was inspired by his grandmother and the "traditional, homely food" she served.

"She was well travelled and had an in-depth knowledge of international cuisine. She shared her passion for good food with Kenny,” it gushed.

"She encouraged him to learn and cook alongside her, and her enthusiasm created a longing that ultimately led him to a career as a chef.”

He also boasted of having been crowned Seafood Chef of the Year in 2000 and said he was the holder of a Michelin star and ran the European Cooking School, based at a French chateau.

In reality, however, he ran a dating agency in Grimsby, Lincs, with his partner Kirsty Emmans.

Goldsmith, from Winterton, near Scunthorpe, admitted 20 charges of fraud and two of theft. Emmans, 38, of Grimsby, admitted 11 fraud charges and one of theft.

Jamie Oliver was unavailable for comment on Goldsmith's claims of having trained him, and his outlandish boast that he’d once flushed his head down a toilet during a bout of horseplay.

He and Emmans will be sentenced later.

...Blimey, a chef with a worse reputation than Gordon Ramsay. But my favourite bit of all is the blurb for Goldsmith’s European Cooking School...

“Can you imagine what it is like to stay in a French Château which is an authentic Fourteenth century castle complete with moat, working drawbridge, arrow-slits and battlements? Can you imagine what it would be like to extend your cooking skills under the tutelage of a top British chef?”

The plug comes with a grinning mugshot of Kenny, his arms crammed full of delicious peppers and garlic presumably foraged from a nearby 14th century market, and is accompanied by his recipe for orange sorbet. Rather appropriate now he’s in the icebox.