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Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay spewed off the f-word 115 times in the first 40 minutes of a two-hour Ramsay’s Great British Nightmare, screened on Channel 4. Media watchdog, Ofcom, claimed it had received 51 complaints about the swearing, and found Channel 4 in breech of “swearing rules”.
“The sheer intensity of the language in this two hour Ramsay special so soon after 9pm meant that even frequent viewers of his normal shows were unprepared,” said an Ofcom spokesman.
In one outburst, Ofcom noted that an argument between Ramsay and a restaurant owner showed the pair screaming the word “f***ing” 30 times in a two-minute period. The watchdog said in its ruling: “The range of complaints made to Ofcom indicated that a number of regular viewers to the program were shocked and offended by the combination of the sheer frequency of the offensive language and the way some of it was delivered. Whilst acknowledging that they were fans of the show many of them simply found it unacceptable and were extremely discomforted by it.”
Channel 4 claims “the level of strong language included in the program was at the higher end of the scale,” but “it was not inconsistent with the acrimonious disputes and levels of strong language that has regularly featured across the Kitchen Nightmares series.”
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