Dishing out verbal beatdowns ... TV chef Gordon Ramsay. Photograph: Sutton-Hibbert/Rex
Never one to back away from a potential ruck, Gordon Ramsay spent much of this month promoting his new series of The F Word by advocating fines for restaurants who sell food out of season. If the argument sounds familiar it's probably because fellow TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has been advocating seasonal cooking for some time. With Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Spring starting last night, could it be that Ramsay was attempting to steal his rival's thunder?
It's hard to imagine a starker contrast. Fearnley-Whittingstall, the old Etonian who discovered cooking while studying at Oxford; Gordon Ramsay, the son of a welder, who discovered cooking after being ruthlessly culled by Jock Wallace at Glasgow Rangers. Fearnley-Whittingstall, the failed chef who objected to having his head "dunked in the stock pot, and being called a 'talentless cunt' a hundred times a day", who drifted into journalism, that well-known scoundrel's refuge; Ramsay, the beast of the jungle who took his lumps coming up under Marco Pierre-White until he became the one dishing out verbal beatdowns to hapless staff. The machismo of Ibrox and Harvey's that forged the young Ramsay informs everything about his work today.
Fearnley-Whittingstall has a gentler, more consensual approach, wrapped up in a heartfelt appeal to get back to nature. Ramsay, on the other hand, is a force of nature, possessed by some elemental perfectionism, leaving crushed egos and immaculate cuisine in his wake.
That said, it would be wrong to characterise our Hugh as a soppy conformist toff. He earned Channel 4 a reprimand for serving up a placenta pâté on TV Dinners, has campaigned for humane treatment of farmed chickens and his desire to tempt vegetarians into eating meat seems likely to rattle a few cages.
So occasionally the twain will meet, like when the two joined forces with Jamie Oliver to face down the supermarkets and improve our eating habits. But there are fundamental philosophical differences between the two. For Ramsay, cookery is something to be conquered, a quest for perfection. For Fearnley-Whittingstall it is a spiritual journey of discovery, something to connect him to the earth. Just be aware as you watch both shows that you're watching a battle for the very soul of cookery. Don't say you weren't warned.
