The chef's watching on TV

Having polished off the exquisite roasted breast of quail with capers and cappuccino of white beans, your appetite has been stirred with a ferocity.

Drumming your fingers on the clean, white tablecloth, the minutes tick past.

Before long it has been 20 minutes since the plates were cleared and there is still no sign of the mouth-watering fillet of beef on a bed of spinach, celeriac puree and truffles and Madeira jus. Waiters just seem to pass by, insensitive to your growling hunger. McDonald's suddenly becomes a tempting prospect.

At Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's, however, this irritation should be a distant stomach-knotting memory. The celebrity chef has installed five CCTV screens in the kitchen of the Mayfair establishment, wired to cameras in the fine art deco dining rooms, to capture every slurp, swallow, and of course, the odd embarrassing wine spill.

Big Brother is not watching, but a big, bothered Scot is - eager to serve his TV dinners not a second too soon, or too late.

"It saves Gordon the task of coming out of the kitchen," said Chris Hutcheson, business partner of London's only three-Michelin star chef. Some diners, fearful of Ramsay's fiery reputation, may breathe a sigh of relief at this statement. "We are using the CCTV to monitor the tables and at what stage they are at during lunch or dinner. Chefs can see when people are coming to the end of their course so they can start to prepare the next."

Waiting staff at Ramsay's other London restaurants, Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea and Petrus in Mayfair, are noted for their attentive service, but the cameras were installed in Claridge's after it proved harder to monitor the progress of meals because of its size - 65 covers in the main room and 32 more in the private rooms.

However guests need not fear that amorous advances over - or under - the tables will be captured on tape, as none of the cameras can record, said Mr Hutcheson.

Ramsay, a former Glasgow Rangers footballer, is said to have been inspired by a similar system set up by French chef Alain Ducasse in his New York restaurant, and Michel Roux has been using cameras for the same reason at his Waterside Inn on the banks of the Thames in Bray.

Antony Worrall Thompson, not the best of Ramsay's friends, said: "To be honest, as much as I don't get on with the man, it is quite a good system, as long as the cameras have a wide perspective and are not trained on every single table. But in his standard of restaurant it should not be necessary, waiters do not forget to call the tables.

"You know what posey chefs are like - when they see important people come into the restaurant they rush out.

"I think it is so he can see who comes in, maybe so he can throw Joan Collins and AA Gill out again."