Lowlife 113 – The Party's Over

The Party's Over

By Dominic Horton

Recently I have taken to watching Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA when I get back in from the Flagon & Gorses on a Sunday night. I am sure that you are aware of the format of the show in which the chef Gordon Ramsay visits a failing restaurant in America and tries to turn the ailing business around: Ramsay is at first all smiles as he meets the restaurant owners and staff; his smile quickly disappears when he samples food from the menu, which he always labels “disgusting”; he tells the owners a few home truths about their awful food and loss making business; the owners at first refute Ramsay's comments and claim that their food is the best in the district; in between shouting and swearing at the owners Ramsay tells them that if they don't heed his advice they will be bankrupt by Christmas; the owners cry but Ramsay says don't worry, he'll make it all better; Ramsay makes it all better.

The wonderful Richard Adey performing at

The Locked In Festival

Given the lateness of the hour I usually only get to see the miserable part of the show - where Ramsay shakes his head at the archaic and madcap practices of the eatery and bellows at everyone to “get a f*cking grip” - as I usually fall asleep on the sofa halfway through the broadcast. Ramsay is sober, energetic, ambitious and driven but conversely the post-pub audience who are watching the show at that time of night are drunk, sedentary, apathetic and the only thing that they are driven to do is drink. By the end of the show the restaurant's chef (who could barely boil an egg before) is effortlessly banging out top quality gourmet nosh, which puts my supper of cheap Tesco frozen pizza to shame.

Like a lot of light entertainment television programmes Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA is highly formulaic and as viewers we find that comforting as we know what to expect and we are safe in the knowledge that there is going to be a happy ending. Given that the show has been running for quite a number of years it is amazing that the restaurateurs featured have not heeded the simple advice that Ramsay gives in all previous episodes: trim the menu and keep the food well cooked but simple; give the restaurant a spruce up; be organised in the kitchen; be nice to the customers. It shows how incredibly dim the owners of the show's businesses are.

The Gordon Ramsay of the footballing world is the pragmatist Tony Pulis, who is currently in the process of saving West Bromwich Albion from the precarious position that they were in at the wrong end of the Premier League table. Ramsay's winning formula can apparently be applied to turning round any struggling institution as Pulis's approach is not dissimilar – trim the squad and get rid of any fancy Dans or slackers and keep tactics simple; give the squad a spruce up when the transfer window opens; be organised on the training pitch; be nice to the fans. Also Pulis follows in Ramsay's wake by shouting, swearing and gesticulating to get his charges to do what he wants.

Gordon Ramsay, Glasgow Rangers FC.

Ramsay now appears to have moved on from restaurants and is trouble shooting in hotels but his next venture could be Ramsay's Relegation Nightmares where like Pulis he tries to save football clubs from the drop. After all, Ramsay was an apprentice footballer at Glasgow Rangers before injury ended his career. Or was it because he was sh*t, I can't remember now. I can just picture Ramsay having a heart to heart with Aston Villa's former manager Paul Lambert: “Paul, you can't stop losing, what are you going to do about it?” “I think we'll be fine Gordon,” “But you have only scored 11 goals all f*cking season Paul, get a f*cking grip !!!”

We nearly had a kitchen nightmare at the Locked In Festival that I helped organise with Cradley Heath Creative as the caterer pulled out at the eleventh hour leaving us without a morsel for attendees to chomp on. Luckily the irrepressible Holly Bush Dave Francis stepped in to the void and provided tasty tucker to sustain peckish festival revellers. At the day-long free festival we had an extensive art exhibition and an installation, eleven hours of varied performance on stage, art/ sculpture/ reading workshops and a variety of films about the local area. The festival took a lot of organising but it was fantastic and well attended, a number of my fellow inmates from the Flagon & Gorses were even granted day release to pop down and have a look.

Like a fool I had offered to write a play for the festival and I also offered to act in it, something that I have not done before, well not since primary school nativity plays (by the time I went to High School my theatrical involvement was limited to pulling the curtains open and shut on account of me being a petty delinquent who could not be trusted with the responsibility of a role in the school play.) The play is entitled Two Men in a Pub and it has a Lowlifian theme of drink and gloom. My writer crony D G Depardieu contends that I am a one trick pony who can only write about booze and misery in a small Midlands town and my play only adds fuel to his argument. Mind you, Depardieu can only seemingly write rodent based children's books, so he is no more versatile than me.

The Author hosting a shared reading group at the Locked In Festival.

As the day of the festival started to draw near and rehearsals got under way it dawned on me that I was actually going to have to get up on a stage in front of an audience and I had a growing anxiety that I would not remember my lines. My memory is awful at the best of times so add stage fright into the equation and I thought that there would be more chance of Gordon Ramsay going through a whole episode of Nightmares without swearing than me being word perfect. It didn't help that a story broke that the esteemed stage and screen actor Michael Gambon has had to give up acting in the theatre as he is increasingly struggling to remember his lines – if such a legendary and skilled actor as Gambon is having difficulty I thought what hope would I have.

Despite me and my two fellow actors, Holly Bush Dave and Vicki, slaving over our lines we didn't have a rehearsal where we managed to run through the whole play without a hitch, so I was fearful that things would go awry. My thespian associate Harry Stottle advised me not to drink before the peformance but on the day of the festival Vicki had a drink in her hand every time I looked at her so I was fearing the worst. But I was generally so busy meeting and greeting performers during the festival that I didn't have a great deal of time to get nervous but I had to delay our play at show time to accommodate another act, as he had to leave, so then the jitters started to grow.

The talented Pete Williams performing at the Locked In Festival

At the start of the play I was backstage waiting to go on – at the Holly Bush, the festival venue, “backstage” is the entrance hall of the pub, right by the main front door. Just as I was about to go on Bobby Woods and his band arrived through the front door of the pub, so I couldn't avoid introducing myself and saying hello but as we were shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries I realised that I had missed my cue and that I needed to get on stage immediately. I tried to explain to Woods that I was acting in a play and due on but he was bemused by this and I think he thought I had lost my marbles. And he was probably right.

Fortunately the play went swimmingly well and we all remembered and enacted our lines relatively beautifully and at the end of the play I thought to myself, I don't know what all the fuss was about. And with the acting out of the way it meant that I could finally have a celebratory pint to toast the success of the play, which went down quicker than one of Fred Dibnah's chimney stacks.

Like Christmas, there was a long build up to the festival and things got more frenetic as it came closer. I had a magical day but when I woke up on Sunday morning I realised that the party was over and it was time to get back to cold reality. Which means in the short tern finding a job. Despite my dalliance on Saturday I think being an actor is out of the question. But I wonder if Gordon Ramsay needs a sidekick …..................

© Dominic Horton, March 2015.

Lowlife is dedicated to the memory of the late Jonathan Rendall

Email: lordhofr@gmail.com