Gordon, my hero, I hate your guts

‘If I never speak to that guy for the rest of my life,” says Marcus Wareing, “it wouldn’t bother me one bit. Wouldn’t give a f***.” The chef uses this month’s issue of Waitrose Food Illustrated to throw a custard pie in the face of his former mentor, Gordon Ramsay, after the two fell out in murky circumstances. The lease of Pétrus, the celebrated London restaurant that Wareing runs for Ramsay, will pass to Wareing next month.

It was Wareing, 38, who earned Pétrus its second Michelin star, and he is determined to become the capital’s second three-star man. He says he has been “constrained, confined and trapped” by his boss. “Gordon loves being the only three-star here. He’s milked it for years.”

The rebellion of his protégé must be painful for Ramsay, who is not used to dissent but he can take a little comfort from the ambivalent feelings that emerge in the interview. “I was the first chef Gordon employed,” Wareing said. “We were best mates. The guy was best man at my wedding.” Though not vice versa, it would appear. “Half of me thinks he’s a sad bastard and the other half still adores him.”

Since the two met, at the end of the 1980s, Ramsay has tried to remake Wareing in his own image. “I used to grab cooks by their aprons so the straps tore,” Wareing admitted. “I was very unapproachable. I bollocked people like Gordon did. I acted like Gordon. I tasted my sauces like Gordon. I couldn’t get him out of my head.”

They had a fiery relationship. “One day I was having a major bust-up with Gordon and he said, ‘You know what, Marcus? You should have a look at yourself before you start judging others around you. Maybe you’re the reason people are not working for you.’ That hit me like a sledgehammer. I thought, ‘That’s rich, coming from you.’ But he was right.”

The feeling in the foodie world is that this war is only going to escalate. Wareing had chilling advice for Ramsay: “Put a gun to my head, shoot me, put me in a box and bury me, because if you don’t, I’ll come back and I’ll come back. I’ll never give up till I get to where I want to go.”

Meat cleavers at dawn.

British first lady concedes defeat

For a woman, posing next to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is just about the toughest gig on the political circuit, Sarah Brown confirmed last week. “I didn’t stand a chance, did I?” she told The Times.

The prime minister’s wife was taking part in a celebrity accessories swap for charity with Ruby Wax, Fay Weldon, Ronni Ancona and many other grandes dames. She was phlegmatic about the press’s uncomplimentary coverage of the Jaeger jacket she wore to the meeting with Bruni-Sarkozy. “I try not to take too much notice,” she said. “How can I?”

She said she tried to wear British designers as much as possible, but that she had been in a lose-lose situation. “I was standing next to a supermodel. With all due respect to myself, I knew that day I couldn’t win.”

Oi! Behave like a lady, will you

Dame Eileen Atkins is not a fan of laddish female television presenters. “I think: ‘Stop – this has gone completely wrong,” she told the Radio Times. “This isn’t what we meant by feminism.” She said that such women “make my skin crawl”, reminding her of the drunken types she encountered as a seven-year-old doing song-and-dance routines in working men’s clubs.

Atkins, who grew up on a London council estate, has become an upper-crust staple of costume drama, most recently the BBC’s Cranford. She claims to have an edge over her peers Dame Judi and Dame Maggie: she was propositioned shortly after her 70th birthday by Colin Farrell. “I didn’t accept,” she said, “but the offer did me the world of good.”

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