The Ramsay show - the best panto in town

In another interview, he tells why he's such a great dad (tough but fair, that sort of thing) and how he owes everything, financially, to his father in law, who is now his CEO. Then he tells us that he told his wife she needed Botox, as a joke, but wouldn't really want her to have cosmetic surgery because "I want a proper woman. I want to know that, when things get hot and steamy, she isn't going to melt all over the bed."

By Sunday, however, with seasonal suitability, the Ramsay show had turned into something more panto than Norman Rockwell. A comedy blonde mistress-type called Sarah Symonds popped up with lots of leopard-print, clutching a bottle of "legal sex enhancer" amyl nitrate.

As ever, it was the details of this union that really provided its flavour. Symonds was reportedly armed for her assignation with "two bottles of white wine and some crisps"; she met the swearing one at Chinawhite seven years ago; their date lasted for only "75 minutes". To plug her book Having An Affair? A Handbook For The Other Woman she appeared on Oprah, despite her oeuvre comprising such exciting ideas as "don't open the door wearing sweatpants".

Somewhere in this sorry saga is a victim, but who? Surely it's Tana Ramsay, long-suffering supplement heroine, with her father and husband enslaved to Mammon? But could it also be Symonds, the popper provider who got the train up from Newport to meet her love, and, we're asked to believe, didn't get so much as a free canapé? Or even Ramsay himself, slaving away in so many kitchens and not even allowed a little nibble elsewhere?

Something tells me the Ramsay marriage will survive the Symonds scandal. Perhaps we're the winners - we might be spared those shameless Ramsays-at-home shoots for a little while.

Catherine Ostler is editor of ES Magazine.