It's nearly 10 minutes into the interview but famously potty-mouthed British chef Gordon Ramsay is disappointingly expletive-free. The tape could go out on any radio station in the world without edits, bleeps or warnings to the sensitively disposed. Is this the same man whose red-faced, profanity-laced tirades have reduced kitchen staff on two continents to blank-faced terror, tears and even violence?
Perhaps the rumour that he has banned cursing from his restaurants is true. Ramsay gives a stare that could curdle the creamiest Hollandaise sauce, and I know that first bleep is on its way. 'That was an April Fool's joke by The Independent. It was bulls***. I don't check these things because I'm not an internet buff, and thank f*** for that.'
Ramsay is in Tokyo to check on his restaurant, Gordon Ramsay at Conrad Tokyo, and to shake things up. 'It was a disappointment not winning the [Michelin] star last year,' he says. He has since appointed 34-year-old Shinya Maeda as chef de cuisine at the modern French dining venue, the only Asian to head one of his restaurants.
One imagines his staff running for cover the moment his jet touched down in Narita Airport, but Ramsay says he retains more than 80 per cent of them, despite the wear and tear.
As others have noted, there appear to be two Gordons. Outside the kitchen, he is politeness personified.
But surround the 42-year-old with stainless steel cookers, pots and pans and a couple of hapless young commis chefs and he turns into the Alex Ferguson of haute cuisine, a foul-mouthed taskmaster who pushes people to their limits in the cause of three-star cooking.