• Bloomberg, Friday, December 11, 2009 10:03 AM

A year ago this month, KPMG recommended that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay declare bankruptcy for his London-based Gordon Ramsay Holdings Ltd., fire hundreds of people and close all but its best-performing restaurants. But, as William Green reports, that would have been a public relations nightmare for the star of "Hell's Kitchen," "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" and "The F Word." And Ramsay knew it.

"There was no f---ing way that was ever going to happen," he says. "That was never even an option."

The 43-year-old Scot has also published two autobiographies and lent his name to 23 cookbooks, placing him at the vanguard of a generation of celebrity chefs with so many business interests that they barely cook, writes Green. "He's perhaps the most media-enhanced chef in history," according to Bill Guilfoyle, a restaurant marketing expert at the Culinary Institute of America.

So Ramsay and his business partner and father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson, restructured the business, leaving the chef to do what he really does best -- TV -- despite his widely acknowledged skills over a hot stove. "He can't walk the streets of New York without people shouting and screaming," says Mike Darnell, Fox's president of alternative entertainment. "He's like a rock star."

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