I'm A Celebrity Chef...Get Me Out Of Here!

And so the celebrity chef cull continues...

The latest to bite the dust is John Burton Race. Remember him? You know, the guy who made a tit of himself on ITV reality show I’m A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here, stuffing himself on kangaroo testicles and other nasties, and falling out with ex-supermodel Janice Dickinson.

You know, you’ve seen him, the guy who had that programme set in France when his kids kept turning their noses up at his cooking. It was back in the early noughties, some time, right at the reality TV peak when you could pitch an idea about living in a septic tank with a load of conger eels and some commissioning editor from the Beeb or Channel Four would bite your hand off.

No? Jesus...

The guy who’s just signed a deal with some Kent pubs. You’ve seen him, he still runs a Michelin star restaurant in Devon. The New Angel. Gordon Ramsay tried to buy it off him for a knock-down price, wanted something that he wouldn’t have to do much to, apparently, just parachute his staff in and get cooking the next day. Long way to drive to drop off the boil-in-the-bag meals, mind...

Well, anyway, the poor sod (Burton Race not Ramsay – hold that thought) has only gone and gone bankrupt. Was it the recent divorce? Was it greedy pensioners quibbling over prices at his Dartmouth restaurant?

Was it the fact he’s not on TV much anymore? Probably. After all, there’s not much lucre to be had running restaurants, not compared to a nice fly-on-the-wall in France or a string of book deals. Why do you think sleb chefs are never in the kitchen anymore?

Burton Race, 52, reportedly made the application just two months after his ex-wife Kim was herself made bankrupt after an application to the High Court from a creditor who was owed £15,000.

It means his assets are effectively frozen, and creditors will have to apply to an insolvency practitioner to be paid.

After walking out on his wife and their six kids, and moving in with mistress Suzi Ward a couple of years ago, he was forced to sell the New Angel after it famously closed with debts of £1m when he was filming I'm a Celebrity in Australia.

But he is now back working there as head chef, after it was bought out by his friend, internet millionaire Clive Jacobs.

Burton Race was unavailable for comment, but the Western Morning News spoke to his ex-wife Kim, who said neither she nor the children had any contact with her former husband.

She said she felt "saddened" for any independent businesses which may be affected by Burton Race's bankruptcy. Ouch!

"I'm glad to be rebuilding a life for myself and my children, and away from the whole sorry mess," she said, insisting reports of a massive divorce settlement were "absolutely ludicrous".

"I lost my home, and suggestions that I got more than £3m are just ridiculous – hence I now live in rented accommodation," she was quoted as saying.

The chef, who now lives with Ms Ward at her home in Strete, near Dartmouth, was declared bankrupt on March 27.

It means he cannot get credit, and his creditors will have to apply for a share of his wages until the bankruptcy is automatically discharged on March 27 next year.

Poor sod. Gone for a Burton.

If someone took a share of my last paltry chef pay packet, I’d been drinking cider on a bench with Anthony Worrall Thompson. Now there’s a thought...

Stool Pigeons And The Fat Duck

We finished the day doing the worst job on the prep list – cutting pistachio kernels in half. There were thousands of them, and even before we were a quarter-way through, my fingers were numb with exhaustion. Every time I looked at the bag it seemed to get bigger. It was soul-destroying work, and luckily one that only had to be done once a week or so.

The halved-kernels were caramelised as a garnish for the pigeon dish of poached breast pancetta, and pastilla of confit leg meat with cocoa and quatre-epices. There was a photo of the dish on the prep room wall, and it showed the hellish green kernels next to the pastilla – so much effort for such a small part of the meal.

“Why the hell do we have to cut them in half?” I snapped, trying to stifle the urge to run to my car and drive off in a hail of gravel and forgotten tortures.

“Probably for the colour. Huh?” said Paul.

He’d perked up a bit. He was off to the Hinds Head the next day, and let us know all about it.

A new stagier called Eric had joined that day, and looked incredulously at the ever-growing bag of pistachios in front of him. I could tell he was finding it as hard keeping it together as I was. Occasionally, he would let off near-silent moans and sighs.

Eric worked mainly as a private chef, cooking for Russian billionaires on yachts in Antibes. He was full of stories of wealth and vicarious glamour. He talked endlessly about how rich his clients were, and it just made me feel more pitiful about my own existence.

I should be the one lounging on those yachts, drinking cocktails and munching lobster. And here I was, working for nothing; cutting mountains of pistachios in half.

I know it was all supposed to be for something, so I could put ‘Fat Duck-trained chef’ on my CV (no-one would ever find out it had been mostly grunt work), but no restaurant of mine was ever going to use halved pistachios. Not unless someone else was doing the chopping.

I tried veering Eric away from yachts and Zadora timepieces, and on to less irritating subjects. But he’d be back on it whenever he could. Later that afternoon, he told us a story about the worst thing he’d ever seen in a kitchen. He was working in a burger bar at the time, getting himself through college.

“This dude came in for a job,” Eric began. “He was about 17, and had never worked in a kitchen before, and they put him on the fryer. He was wearing this elaborate watch – I couldn’t see what it was, maybe a MontBlanc or Rolex, but it looked more like one of those expensive German makes or something...

“And I said to him, ‘Buddy, you wanna lose that watch, buddy you DON’T wanna wear that in the kitchen!’

“And he says something like, ‘it was given to me by my grandfather’ or something, and carries on wearing it. And then half-way through service, the watch slips off into the hot fat...and without thinking he puts his arm in to get it out...

“It was like a reflex action, man. You could see the flesh disappearing on his arm like cooked meat. He said something like ‘hey guys’ and went down like a tonne of fucking mash! Man, that was gruesome! Worst thing I ever saw...”

:: This blog eventually became a bestselling book, called Down And Out In Padstow And London by Alex Watts, about my disastrous attempt to train as a chef, including stints at Heston Blumenthal's Fat Duck and Rick Stein's kitchens in Padstow. You might like it if you're a foodie or have ever entertained the ridiculous idea of entering the padded asylum of professional cooking. It's here on Amazon as a paperback or Kindle book if you want a read...