Gordon Ramsay

Chef / TV Personality

Gordon Ramsay is the Scotland-born celebrity chef who hosts TV's Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. A one-time teenage footballer in the Glasgow Rangers system (1982-85), Ramsay made his name as a U.K. chef in the late 1980s. He earned high praise as head chef of London's Aubergine (1993-97) and opened his own place in 1998. The public got to know him better through the TV reality shows Boiling Point and Beyond Boiling Point (1998 and 2000), and since then his fame has extended to the U.S. with his own adaptations of his U.K. shows Hell's Kitchen and Kitchen Nightmares. Both shows, started in 2004, exhibit Ramsay's zeal for perfection and his famously foul outbursts at screw-ups. He also launched another show in the U.K., The F-Word, in 2005. Considered an expert on modern European cuisine, he has published several cookbooks and expanded his restaurant and hotel empire to the U.S. and Japan. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for his contributions to the hospitality industry.