 Gordon Ramsay said he was "very happy" with the result |
Chef Gordon Ramsay has accepted �75,000 libel damages over a newspaper article claiming scenes in his hit programme Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares were faked. The case related to a story in the London Evening Standard alleging the show faked scenes to make a Yorkshire restaurant look like a health hazard.
"I won't let people write anything they want to about me," Ramsay said outside the High Court in London.
"We've never done anything in a cynical, fake way."
The article, written by Victor Lewis-Smith, related to an April 2004 edition of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares set in Bonaparte's restaurant in Silsden, West Yorkshire.
Apology
The piece alleged that Ramsay and production company Optomen were guilty of "gastronomic mendacity" by installing an incompetent chef and fabricating culinary disasters.
Ramsay's solicitor Keith Schilling said the chef and his fellow claimants - Optomen Television Ltd and its managing director Patricia Llewellyn - suffered damage to their reputations.
"No scenes had been faked [and] the kitchen was indeed untidy and a health hazard," he said.
"The restaurant was already in financial difficulty before the programme was filmed and the chef was not installed by the claimants."
Ramsay said Optomen also produced The Naked Chef and Two Fat Ladies and had a reputation for "unprecedented quality".
The Evening Standard has apologised for the distress and embarrassment caused by the article, which it has accepted was false.
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