Ramsay: I'm rampant

"He used cocaine to hide his hurt, but he was also someone who tried to become a mini me. He knew how much hurt my little brother's drug addiction plays in my life and the constant responsibility I have... he knows I would have slapped him if I had found out." Ramsay's younger brother, Ronnie, 35, has been a heroin addict for more than a decade. As Gordon Ramsay, who is worth £15 million, was preparing to go in front of the cameras, Ronnie was entering Clouds rehabilitation centre in Salisbury for the fifth time. Each and every visit is paid for by his older brother.

Their father cheated on their mother and drank and smoked himself to death. Is that what is driving Gordon Ramsay: fear, that he might turn out just like his dad?

"I'm not fighting a battle. I know I have made significant improvements to where he was at 37," he says. "When you are not impressed with how your dad treated your mum, it takes you years to come to terms with it.

"I shouldered all the responsibility for my brother's addiction to heroin. I was the father of the family because of my strength and confidence: I put my brother through therapy, bought my mum a house.

"My father drove a clapped-out van and lived in a 60-quid-a-week flat. I never believed for one moment I would ever stoop so low."

His one regret is that his father never ate at one of his restaurants. He had booked a table at the eponymous restaurant in Chelsea the year that Gordon won his third Michelin star, but three weeks before he was due to come they fell out again. His father died at the age of 53 and never met Gordon's wife, Tana, or the children, Megan, six, the four-year-old twins Jack and Holly, or Matilda, now two.

So, how did food save Gordon Ramsay? At the same time as his mother and father were breaking up, Gordon's football career with Glasgow Rangers was coming to an end due to injury. "The spark that led me towards food was that I was able to get out, run away, and I haven't stopped running. I did an HND course in hotel management so that I could look after the family.

"But then I got excited when I found out about the amount of freedom involved around food - each and every season is so different, each and every customer is so different. I had no idea I was going to be good at it."

But now that he works 16-hour days, can he possibly be a good father? He says that Angela Hartnett, who as well as being one of the instructors at Hell's Kitchen won a Michelin star at the Connaught, is able to have a rewarding personal life as well as being a great chef: "It's about finding the right balance."

But he admits he hasn't found it yet: he is too excited, still far too selfish. Has he ever changed a nappy? "Do I look like I've ever changed a f***ing nappy?" he says. "I think it's more important Mum is there for them in the first few years of their lives, there is a bond that men just don't have."

He says his payback is that the children have 10 times more than he had as a child.

"But I want to be more involved. I took Jack to football for the first time on Saturday and," he says proudly, "as soon as this programme is over we are going on holiday together for the very first time. Last year they went to Butlins in Minehead with Mum, but this year we are going to a waterpark in Barbados."

For two weeks? "Eight days," he says. "I don't want to spoil them. I didn't get on a plane until I was 21." Although he dilutes his children's tomato ketchup with real homemade stuff, he doesn't want them to grow up overindulged. He says a diet of ham, eggs and chips never did his palate any harm.

So, what gave him more pleasure, winning his third Michelin star, or the birth of his first child? "I wasn't there for the births of any of my children," he says. "but I can still remember the night we made love."

How on earth, with his Stakhanovite work ethic, do they ever find time to have sex? "I'm rampant," he says. "Standing in the heat is a great turn-on.

"I always ring Tana before I leave and say, do you want to make love tonight, or shall I run home? She'll say, get your arse back home, keep your whites on and jump into bed."

Tana never seems to give him a hard time. A former Montessori teacher, she met him when she was an 18-year-old waitress. They live in a huge house in Wandsworth with a £500,000 kitchen that only Gordon is allowed to use. He says he never swears at home, although Megan did ask her mother recently: "What does up your own arse mean?"

He says that as soon as Hell's Kitchen is over, he is going to have a six-month break from TV. But, apart from the eight days in Barbados, it is pretty much business as usual.

He will be opening a new restaurant, his seventh, in Grosvenor Square at the end of the year, as well as a venture in New York. His biggest challenge, though, will be to run a 60-mile marathon in South Africa in aid of a children's charity. (He ran the London marathon this year in three hours 29 minutes, beating "Michel F***ing Roux".)

He uses running to cope, not only with sexual frustration, but with stress. His blood pressure, which he takes at the end of every night, is 112 over 80: phenomenal.

He isn't, though, about to do a Marco Pierre White, whom he first trained under at Harveys, and retire. "I love Marco dearly in his whites, but he turns into a different monster out of them - I never got on with him until the day he left the kitchen," he says.

"Anyway, I'm nowhere near my sell-by date. I still love food."

I turned up to meet Gordon Ramsay believing him to be an egomaniacal monster. Instead, he seems almost schizophrenic: the chauvinist who thinks that only women should change nappies, but that they can also earn Michelin stars. The hard man of the hotplate who was asked to go down to Horseferry Road to identify the body of his friend but could not bring himself to do it.

So what would he cook for me, a nonleatherwearing vegan who has never cooked anything in her life. "How about some roasted baby gem hearts, with garlic and thyme, and some beautiful asparagus?" I tell him that sounds nice - but, I say, please don't swear at me.