He Who C(L)ooks Best

While there are supporters for both Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White, it's clear that the chef with the screen persona gets the cake (hint, it's Ramsay)

I don't know if you remember Marco Pierre White. There was a time when the English-speaking world looked on with bemusement as the French venerated their chefs and treated them like movie stars. Paul Bocuse was a household name. Joel Robuchon was on TV every week. Brits and Americans (and therefore, Australians and the rest of us who subscribe to global media) shared this bemusement.
It wasn't that we were unused to the sight of people cooking on TV. There were cookery shows hosted by the likes of Julia Child, Fanny Craddock, Graham Kerr, Delia Smith and even Madhur Jaffrey. But these people were not chefs. They were, in essence, cookbook and recipe-book writers who were trying to do on TV what they had done so successfully in print.
And then, sometime in the late 1980s, Marco came along. The important thing to recall is that he wasn't a TV chef. Nor did he cook in some well-known restaurant. Instead, he made a name for himself cooking French food in a London suburb at a restaurant that nobody had ever heard of called Harveys.
But he was such a brilliant chef that journalists flocked to interview him. And the stories piled up. He was born on a council estate, we were told. He had not grown up eating this kind of food. Actually, he had never ever been to France. But because the food was so good, even the Frenchies at the Michelin Guide had no choice but to give him three stars.

THE YOUNG PROTÉGÉ: Gordon Ramsay trained with Marco Pierre White at the latter's London eatery Harveys, before Ramsay left after getting tired of "the rages and the bullying and violence"

And Marco revelled in the publicity. He became a sex symbol. Critics wrote that he had such intense eyes that he could glaze a crème brûlée at 30 yards. And then, he played up his bad boy image. Every second word began with an 'F'. He threw customers out of the restaurant if they were not respectful enough about the food.
On one famous occasion, a guest asked for chips (French fries) with his meal. He was told they were not on the menu. But surely the chef knew how to make them? The customer took the line (not uncommon in those days) that he was king and it was the job of the kitchen to serve him.
Marco cooked him his chips. But when the bill came, the guest was horrified to find that the price of the chips vastly exceeded that of the main course. Well, said Marco, if you order off the menu, I can charge you anything I bloody well like.
The incident passed into legend.
I saw Marco on TV the other day. He was a guest judge on the Australian version of MasterChef and though the show did its best to build him up, he looked like a prop left behind from a horror movie. Put simply: he was rubbish on TV.
Marco has tried making TV shows before but his career has never really taken off in that medium because he is just so bad on camera. By some coincidence, another channel was showing the American version of MasterChef. And among the judges was Gordon Ramsay.

PIONEER: Marco Pierre White is widely regarded as the first celebrity chef

The legend of Ramsay is an offshoot of the legend of Marco. Gordon worked in Marco's kitchen and learnt many of his tricks. Then, in the Nineties, he left to become chef at Aubergine and, eventually, he started his own restaurant.
Much of the behaviour we now associate with Ramsay is the sort of stuff we used to expect from Marco: the arrogance, the swearing, the show of temper etc. And the two men have never really gotten along since Ramsay broke out on his own. It didn't help that while Marco announced that he was abandoning the kitchen to run restaurants (most of which then went on to fail), Ramsay went from strength to strength. He became the favourite of Michelin, won three stars in London and travelled the world picking up more stars. Even his unsuccessful New York restaurant (where he no longer runs the kitchen) got two stars from the French.
In recent years, Ramsay has had his problems. He fell out with his father-in-law who used to run his business. He fell out with Marcus Wareing, perhaps the most talented of his chefs. Many of his protégés broke away from his group and found success on their own: Jason Atherton and Angela Hartnett, most notably (both were chefs in Dubai when Ramsay had a restaurant in the city). And critics say that standards at his restaurants have fallen.
But none of it matters.
Because Ramsay is brilliant on TV. The new slim-line, botoxed Gordon who appears on American TV screens has the whole continent looking up to him. No matter what the critics may say, millions of Americans think that Ramsay is the world's greatest chef.
I sometimes think back to the days - before chefs took over TV - when Marco taught the English-speaking world that the French had it right: chefs were the new rock stars and the new sex symbols. In those days, Gordon was Marco's spotty sidekick.
People will always argue about which one of the two is/was the greater chef (I can't decide myself). But frankly, the battle has already been decided. He who looks good on TV always has the edge.
That's modern cooking for you!