The Neck Up Award

Just got back from six days in Dublin and thought I'd update the site.

Christ, the Monopoly Pub Crawl has topped 3,000 words already and I'm only up to the sixth pub. An epic event like this deserves an appropriate write up, but the shit's starting to look like Homer's Odyssey - I've already spent more effort on this then I did in my entire time at University (providing that drinking games don't count as effort).

It's time for a break, and it's the perfect opportunity to introduce you to this month's Neck Up Award.

"What in Blue Thunder Fuck is a Neck Up Award?!" I can hear you scream, well let me explain you impatient shits.

It is an accolade I'll be giving to a chosen human being I think has deserved the privilege of being told to just plain SHUT THE FUCK UP. It will almost always be a celebrity, and the first one up to the plate is a TV chef.

I've never really seen the point in cooking shows. The only people who have any interest in the dishes on display most certainly don't have the time to dick around with the pause button on the remote as they keep up with the presenter as he boils some thinly sliced Ginger. The ones who do have the time are the jobless stoners and single mums who'd rather pop into KFC than organise some chopped Kokum or a pinch of Melegueta Pepper. It's this Catch 22 that should have rendered these shows obsolete years ago, yet strangely hasn't. However my grief isn't with the medium but rather with one of it's presenters, and more particularly with one comment he made.

For those of you lucky enough not to know, Gordon Ramsey is a British Football Player turned Chef, and like most of the celebrity chefs here in the Old Dart has at least 500 shows to his name. The one in question is titled Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares in which Ramsey provides his 'expert' advice and tutelage to struggling chefs and restaurant owners whose kitchen procedures need a desperate overhaul (which I admit isn't so bad an idea for a show).

On an episode last week Ramsey was helping out the kitchen staff on a big re-opening night, offering up his wisdom to the various members of staff. At one point he turned to a young apprentice chef with the sagely advice (and I'm paraphrasing here) to "Take out his anger on the pasta, not on his fellow worker".

Meaning that if the stress gets too much, work harder on your food than resorting to bickering and swearing at those around you. And he said it without a hint of irony nor sarcasm.

I don't really know what else happened after this scene, as the TV refused to work with my foot through it.

I mean, WHAT THE EVERLOVIN' FUCK?!

Gordon Ramsey is an aggressive bully who made himself famous by being the most intimidating prick on TV. Every episode you would tune in and watch him render the staff of his kitchen into blubbering worthless wrecks with a tirade of verbal abuse and name calling. The kitchen would be open nary 10 minutes before the F words would fly, and so would the tears. I've also seen him start up on his customers on more than one occasion. He's such a sadistic antagonizing Shit-Whore that he can't even have a show without the words "hell" or "nightmare" somewhere in the title.

I'm not pissed at the way he treats anybody stupid enough to work with him. I'm often told he is one of the best chefs in the world (though usually by somebody who hasn't come within a continent of his restaurants). It's his fucking hypocrisy that has my nuts in a twist.

His pigheaded audacity to instruct a wiling student to "not take aggression out on other workers", when he's damn near throwing knives himself.

What a rotten Fuck-Maggot. Screw him, you're better off getting Cooking tips from this guy:

Gordon Ramsey, Celebrity Chef and Hypocritical Prick.

Winner of the inaugural Neck Up Award.