Celebrity chef Ramsay upsets the apple cart

GORDON RAMSAY, the celebrity chef renowned as much for his four- letter outbursts as his four-course meals, is being sued after a fly-on- the-wall documentary showed him biting the hand that fed him.

The ungarnished, inedible truth bubbled over last week during Channel 4's Ramsay's Boiling Point. Viewers heard the former Glasgow Rangers footballer brag how he earned pounds 5,000 from the Bramley Apple Growers Association (Baga) for promoting their fruit - and the association's chairman was, he declared, a "plonker".

That was bad. Even worse, he was filmed switching the Bramleys for Granny Smiths as he prepared a caramelised apple filo pastry for an assortment of foodie writers. They wouldn't know the difference, he claimed.

The enraged Baga is now taking legal action. It says Ramsay is inflating the amount he was paid - it was actually pounds 3,500 - and the growers want it back.

"He was very quick to take our money and very quick to stab us in the back," said the association's spokeswoman, Jo Rimmer, last night.

"We feel we have been cheated. It might not mean much to him but to hard- pressed, cash-strapped apple-growers who have faced a couple of very difficult seasons, it is a big deal."

The growers had commissioned Ramsay to create a dish, not knowing what he felt about Bramleys. He confided to viewers that it was the type of fruit his mother used when he was a child and justified taking the money by adding a small drop of Bramley puree. That, he told the cameras, would allow him to get away with it.

The master chef is as well known for his temper as for his cooking. He recently evicted food critic A A Gill from his London restaurant because the writer had said he was a lousy soccer player.

Maybe the Bramley growers should have done their homework before parting with their cash. Ramsay serves "creme brulee with Granny Smith juice" at his restaurant.