The younger brother of the celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay is facing up to ten years in prison after going on trial in Bali accused of possessing heroin.

As he was led into court in handcuffs, Ronald Ramsay, 39, made a desperate appeal, through his lawyer, for help with legal fees.

His defence attorney, Erwin Siregar, said: “I will seek as short a sentence as possible ... months. Please ask his brother, Gordon, to contact him. He needs his help.”

Mr Siregar announced that his client would plead guilty and had letters from doctors stating that he was a heroin addict. The drugs were for personal use, not distribution, he insisted. Ramsay spat and cursed at journalists as he was led into court after spending four months in prison awaiting trial.

He listened to an interpreter as a prosecutor at the Denpasar District Court set out the case, stating that police who searched Ramsay outside a supermarket on the holiday island in February found 100 milligrams of the drug in his pocket.

“The defendant had the heroin inside a red Marlboro packet,” Agung Kusumayasa Ciputra said, as he read out three pages of charges.

Under Indonesia’s drug laws Ramsay could face a maximum of ten years in jail, although penalties are generally less for possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use.

Traffickers are routinely sentenced to death. At the end of 2006, 134 people were on death row, including 37 foreigners and 97 Indonesians, most of them for drug-related crimes.

The former docker’s drug addiction has been well documented. In his autobiography, Humble Pie, Gordon Ramsay revealed how he paid for heroin to get Ronald to attend their father’s funeral. The chef has reportedly spent £300,000 trying to help his brother with rehabilitation, accommodation and job training, but after his latest lapse he is understood to have washed his hands of him.

In a recent interview, Ronald Ramsay insisted that his brother had refused a request for £6,000 to pay for a lawyer, saying: “With a lawyer, I could be out in a few months, but without one I will be left to rot in this hellhole for the full ten years. I could die here.

“He told me that he loved me but said he couldn’t give me the money ... I think it’s a combination of tough love and because Gordon is fed up with me.”

Gordon Ramsay, 40, built up his £60 million fortune as a restaurateur and television chef. After opening his first London-based restaurant in 1998 at the age of 31, he established a string of Michelin-star restaurants and now owns businesses around the world.

His spokeswoman said: “This is a personal, private family matter and he has no comment.”

Black sheep

It is a story as old as Cain and Abel — siblings torn apart by the success of one and the descent of the other into a life of fecklessness and criminality

— Wayne Lineker, the sports bar-owning brother of Gary Lineker, the former England footballer, was jailed last year for two-and-a-half years for a £220,000 tax fraud. His sentence was later reduced by 12 months on appeal

— Bill Clinton was the charismatic Yale graduate who went on to become US President. His brother Roger, on the other hand, is a convicted drug dealer

— Eric Douglas, the brother of the Hollywood actor Michael Douglas, died of a drugs overdose aged 46, a hopeless addict who believed himself a failure in comparison with his brother and father, Kirk

Source: Times database

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