The business of cooking, as Ramsey reminded us by revealing again the worry lines etched in his face, is 24/7. A pet might just be for Christmas, but an omelette is for ever.
Talking of pets, the first major test for the participants, was the slaughter of an innocent bunch of lobsters. To prepare a lobster, you first have to stab it in the neck. This, strangely enough, did not present an insurmountable obstacle to most of those present.
Given that this is one of those gladiatorial contests much beloved of TV emperors - and bearing in mind that a new season of Big Brother coincidentally starts on Friday - there is the opportunity, for the viewer to vote for people to leave the show.
It is not quite clear to me whether this might be on the basis of being crap at cooking, or just of being an unpleasant human being. If it were the former, then Edwina Currie, despite her name and the Brick Lane connection, would have to go on the basis of her failed souffle. John Major would not have put up with that, and neither should we.
IF, on the other hand, it were the latter - unpleasant human being, if you've mislaid the thread - then Roger Cook would have been tickling the fancy of the bookmakers.
Sadly, this was a first of one cook spoiling the broth. We were denied the juicy prospect of his suffering a rotten fruit fusillade by the appalling tragedy of a chair giving way beneath the weight of his self-importance, and the poor fellow being carted off to hospital.
In the final analysis, I must admit that Hell's Kitchen is the most entertaining example yet of what had become an increasingly dreary formula.
Ramsey, who once turned his crème brulée scorcher look on me with good reason, has evolved into a television natural. The ritual swearing is now the punctuation rather than the point.
