Gordon Ramsay reveals huge regret at how his head chef David Dempsey died while on cocaine in new documentary
GORDON Ramsay has spoken out about the devastating impact of cocaine on his life after one of his chef protégés, David Dempsey, died while high on the drug.
The chef fell to his death aged 31 after going to a dealer's house for a hit - and Ramsay, who claims he had no idea David was on drugs, was particularly shocked considering he had two kids.
Speaking in his ITV documentary On Cocaine, Gordon remembered what a huge blow it was to lose David, who helped his restaurant Amaryllis win Glasgow's only Michelin star.
The 50-year-old said: "I lost a good chef, an amazing chef. He had two kids Megan and Jack, I never thought in my wildest dreams that David, my head chef, was on cocaine."
The F Word star added that he even saw David on the night he died in May 2003, which only added to his guilt following the horrific news later.
He said: "We had dinner that night he died, he just seemed agitated, restless, constantly disappearing to the toilet.
"I went back home and he went back to Chelsea. He went to a dealer's house that gave him some s*** cocaine and it f***ed him over.
"David died after falling 40 feet from a block of flats, at the inquest it was described as an 'excited act of delirium fuelled by cocaine'.
"I kicked myself for not doing more and recognising it earlier."
But Gordon's own family has suffered from a colossally devastating drug addiction - as his younger brother Ronnie, 49, was a heroin addict, who allowed drugs to "f*** [his] life up".
Gordon says that watching his younger brother become enslaved to the Class A drug changed his attitude to drugs early on.
He said: "I have been very anti-drugs from very early on in my life, having to watch my brother f*** his life up going from coke to heroin.
"I worked my a**e off to get out of the s*** mess I grew up with."
Recalling a particularly painful experience, he added: "I went to a dealer's house once and I had to take my little brother into this s***hole of a flat for a fix to get him to my father's funeral.
"That was f***ing grim, and that was a big shock for me to see how far he had gone."
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Ronnie has since been seen sleeping rough in Plymouth in 2009 following an arrest in 2007 for carrying 100mg of heroin in Kuta, Bali.
Gordon's show Cocaine sees the chef witness the drug being made - before he meets drug smugglers and officers combating the epidemic.
He's said of the two-part series: "I've wanted to understand the 'world' of cocaine ever since I lost one of my chefs at my flagship restaurant in Chelsea and I wanted to learn why it's becoming such an epidemic not just globally but specifically in the culinary world."
The dad-of-four added: "I dare anyone to watch this series and not think again about taking cocaine."
Gordon Ramsay on Cocaine begins on ITV1 at 9pm on Thursday 19 October and the second episode will air a week later on Thursday 26 October.
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