Gordon Ramsay says chefs can't be fat

He runs marathons to keep the weight off

Sunday, 8 October 2006

TV chef Gordon Ramsay says he would never employ a fat person to work in one of his restaurants - because they are not fit.

In an interview on Radio 2 he attacked overweight restaurant staff insisting they are not healthy enough to cope with stress of working in top venues.

'You shouldn't be fat as a chef. It's hard to spend all your time in a hot, busy kitchen when you are overweight,' he said. 'It's physically demanding. You don't get fat footballers.'

But the 39-year-old dad of four did admit that he was once on the chunky side himself. When his wife Tana was pregnant with their twins, she put on a huge amount of weight and he 'overindulged to compensate for her'. It made him even more irritable than usual.

'I had to do something about it,' he explained. 'I'm on my eighth marathon now. When I started there were just a few other people from the business who joined me now there's around 37 of us.'