BOSS RAMSAY TOLD ME TO CHEF OFF

By Siobhan Mcfadyen, sundaymirror.co.uk 23/09/2007

EXCLUSIVE Loyal Neil axed after 10 years

Tv chef Gordon Ramsay ruthlessly sacked his right-hand man after a decade of service... because he wasn't being foul enough to the staff.

Ramsay axed Neil Ferguson, who had worked for him for 10 years, because he was being too pleasant to workers at Ramsay's flagship New York restaurant.

Now Neil, 35, who worked 17 hours a day for Ramsay, is set to open a rival restaurant in New York called Allen and Delancey.

And he has revealed that the hot-tempered chef didn't even have the guts to sack him personally - he left it to his business partner Chris Hutcheson, father of Gordon's wife Tana, to give Neil just 24 hours to clear off.

Ramsay appointed Neil, one of his key proteges, as head chef at his ultra-posh London restaurant in Manhattan, which opened last year but has since suffered a series of setbacks.

Ramsay, 40, ordered Neil's sacking in March and said: "He was being taken advantage of. I needed a Rottweiler. I had a golden retriever instead."

Now Neil has decided to speak out about Ramsay and revealed: "Gordon's business partner Chris came in and said that I need you to go home to your wife, tell her and then come back and pick up your stuff.

"My wife was so upset, she just cried and cried. Neither of us expected it. I had no idea that it was coming as there was nothing to indicate it. I wasn't given a reason for what happened. Gordon never alluded to there being any problems - it happened out of the blue."

Neil said it just wasn't in his nature to subject his staff to round-the-clock rollickings. And he says he thought that was one of the reasons why Ramsay gave him the job. He said: "I sort of understand where they were coming from but their style is to have someone kicking everyone's backside. I thought I had been taken on board so that I could tiptoe through the management. I suppose I was a little naive."

Ramsay's New York restaurant was damned by influential US food critic Frank Bruni, who said the outspoken chef had "landed with a whisper".

Neil, from Hampshire, started working for Ramsay in 1995 and spent two-and-a-half years at his Aubergine restaurant in London before leaving to go to France for two years. Ramsay then approached him to return to London.

He worked for 18 months in restaurant Gordon Ramsay in London and then went to Ramsay's Amaryllis in Glasgow. He then returned to London to the Connaught Hotel where he worked alongside fellow Ramsay protege Angela Hartnett.

Last year, when his wife was pregnant with their first child, Neil agreed to move to New York to head Ramsay's much-hyped American operation. He remained loyal to his boss even though TV viewers saw him and Angela being publicly pilloried by him in a BBC2 show about the Connaught. Neil said: "There was enough to worry about without the camera in your face."

Former footballer Ramsay worth an estimated £67million, has recently lost the lease for two of his top restaurants, the Connaught and the Boxwood Cafe Restaurant in London.

Earlier this month his flagship UK restaurant, the three Michelin-starred Royal Hospital Road in Mayfair, lost its title of best restaurant in the Good Food Guide.

Last night Ramsay's spokesman said it was commonplace for Hutcheson, chief executive of the chef's company, to deal with staffing issues.

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