Gordon Ramsay on cocaine
Today I wrote up my last two funds. Each had 1, 3, and 5-year commentaries and both were international funds, requiring both sector and regional analysis. In other words mind-numbing data work. To get through it, I put BBC radio on, something I rarely do. There was a series of interesting interviews. First up was Gordon Ramsay, a famous chef. I’ve never seen his shows but apparently he goes around berating bad chefs. Anyway, his brother and his top chef, a close friend, both died of cocaine overdoses. He decided to do a documentary about cocaine. The interview was so interesting that I watched the show tonight.
He starts by swabbing the staff and guest bathrooms of his own London restaurant, all of which turn up evidence of cocaine. It is rife within the restaurant trade and among the well-heeled party people who pay the large tabs at his restaurants. He then does a ride-along with a cop, who in no time stops two erratic drivers, both men, both with coke in their systems. Both were on the school run, collecting their children from school. Then he goes to a lab where they test coke worth millions of pounds every week. Then he goes on two separate busts, where two Albanians (mules, couriers) are caught with bags full of money. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of currency. THEN he flies to Colombia and, after a long and hazardous drive into the hills, interviews a coca grower. He watches as the man strips bushes of their leaves, chops them with a weed whacker, then sprinkles them with cement powder, then adds sulphuric acid, then gasoline, then battery acid. !!! All of this is put through a sieve, producing a milky liquid, which he cooks in a big stock pot. The resulting dry caky material is sold to middle men. That’s where the episode ended.
Gordon is trying to get across to the party people in Britain’s major cities that what they are ingesting is the product of a toxic chemical stew. My hat is off to him. He is clearly trying to make a difference in a trade that is cutting short too many lives.
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