The secret behind the relationship is that we didn't overindulge in each other's company
WHEN it comes to coping with your celebrity husband's alleged infidelities there are two ways to go. You can rant and rave and accuse him of smelling of fish à la Ingrid Tarrant. Or you can take the more dignified approach, adopted by Nancy Dell'Ol
io, of matching a hauteur with a succession of carefully chosen designer outfits and showing the world that the two-bit floozy your man's accused of skulking off to hotels with isn't fit to lick your Jimmy Choos.
This is the path Tana Ramsay chose last week after a tabloid newspaper claimed "family man" Gordon had been having a seven-year affair with "professional mistress" Sarah Symonds – and it seems to be paying off. In the seven days since the News of the World made its claims, Tana has been photographed again and again – sometimes holding her husband's hand, sometimes going about the business of a middle-class housewife alone – but always immaculately groomed in dressed-down yummy mummy clothes: a vision of domestic contentment.
To some the brave face the 33-year-old is putting on over her husband's alleged philandering is an embarrassing throwback to a time when women stood by their men, particularly since, after a brief burst of contrition, Ramsay chose to make jokes about "cheating" at a live cookery demonstration at Birmingham's NEC. Tana has always admitted that she is an old-fashioned wife, untroubled by Ramsay's reluctance to change nappies and willing to look after the home while he travels the country making his many TV programmes. But the one-time Montessori teacher now has a burgeoning public profile of her own: as a writer of down-to-earth cookery books to rival her husband's. And while last week's show of stoicism was doubtless motivated chiefly by thoughts of her 12-year marriage and her four children – Megan, 10, twins Jack and Holly, nine, and Mathilda, six – the snaps of her smiling and unruffled are unlikely to have harmed sales of her recently published collection of recipes, Home Made.
As she faces up to fresh coverage in today's newspapers, Tana is well aware just how much depends on a convincing show of unity; the Ramsay brand – and the estimated £60m fortune and £3.5m Georgian home in Wandsworth it has yielded – is, after all, partly based on their wholesome family image. Their cute, Boden-outfitted children regularly appear in TV programmes, such as The F-Word, and in glossy magazines. And the couple are always dishing up intimacies about their own relationship: the way they retire to bed with a bottle of champagne on a Sunday night and sneak off for a fortnight's holiday in the Seychelles once a year. "Tana is my wife, my lover and the person I want in my bed and in my arms every night," Gordon has said.
Any suggestion the volatile chef has been a hypocrite has the potential to damage his career, particularly since his father-in-law businessman Chris Hutcheson helped him set up his first restaurant and is now the CEO of Ramsay Holdings. But there are those who believe it will in fact do the reverse. Chef Jean-Christophe Ansanay-Alex claims the publicity could attract more customers to his restaurants, and – just days after the allegations were published – 42-year-old Ramsay was voted the sexiest TV cook in a Onepoll survey.
Tana's professional life, on the other hand, depends almost entirely on her relationship with Ramsay. Her cookery books sell only because they are marketed as an antidote to her husband's more exotic fare and because Ramsay makes snide remarks about women in the kitchen. Who would be interested in yet another recipe for fish fingers or shepherd's pie if it wasn't being brought to them by one half of the most famous cookery duo since Fanny and Johnny Cradock?
It's a strange turn of events for Tana – short for Cayetana – who had no passion for cooking when she met Gordon in her late teens. Brought up on a farm in Kent, her childhood was idyllic. While her husband lived on council estates with an abusive father, she and her siblings roamed around the countryside. "I was a real tomboy," she says. Back then – though her mother made all their meals from scratch – Tana's interest in food was confined to eating it.
By the time she was 17, the family had moved back to London, where she worked as a Montessori teacher. She was living with a friend of Ramsay's – a sous chef at Le Pont de la Tour – when she was introduced to him at a party and dismissed him as "arrogant". Later, when she and her boyfriend were on the brink of splitting up, Ramsay turned up at their flat to pick up the motorbike he was keeping there and she decided he wasn't so bad after all.
At that time, Ramsay was head chef and part-owner of Marco Pierre White's restaurant Aubergine, which won two Michelin stars under his direction. But he was desperate to strike out on his own so – two years after the couple wed in 1996 – he left and, with Hutcheson's backing, opened Gordon Ramsay restaurant on London's Royal Hospital Road. Those early years were tough. A combination of fertility problems meant the couple needed to resort to IVF, which led to the birth of three babies within 20 months and very little security. Then, as the restaurants and Michelin stars started to stack up and Ramsay's face became a ubiquitous presence on TV, Tana was left to run the household alone. She embraced her role as homemaker, priding herself on her efficiency. "My priority is always the home," she has said. Even sitting here, I'm thinking: 'Did I do this?' or 'Is everything sorted for today?' But I love it that way."
As Mathilda, who was conceived naturally, in 2002, reached nursery age, however, Tana began to develop business interests of her own: she opened an Indian-themed homeware shop in Knightsbridge (which has since closed); started writing her books, appearing in programmes such as UKTV's Market Garden and started campaigning on green issues.
To outsiders, the dynamics of her marriage may seem strange. With Ramsay working long hours, the couple have never been able to spend much time together. But it seems to suit them. "The secret behind the relationship is that we didn't overindulge in each other's company," Ramsay has said, while Tana insists she could not have coped with a husband who came home at 5pm every night and expected his tea on the table.
Whether Tana is now reappraising this judgment; whether or not she is convinced by Ramsay's protestations of innocence remains to be seen. But what is clear in her "business as usual" manner is that – whatever went on in the London hotel room with Symonds – Tana intends to ride out this storm with her dignity intact.
• Tana claims the Ramsay children prefer her cooking to Gordon's.
• Her guilty pleasure is Walkers crisps and dips.
• Tana is friends with Victoria Beckham, right. Last year she and Gordon watched David play football for LA Galaxy.
• "It takes me forever to chop an onion. It's done in the most erratic fashion, but it works. But when Gordon sees me chopping things he covers his eyes." Tana Ramsay on her culinary skills.
• "He's so capable and that can make you feel amazing. I never saw him as a risk. He's physically very big so when he puts his arms around you, you do feel safe. If I call him at work the first thing he'll says is: 'What's the matter?' and the second thing will be: 'Don't worry.' It's hugely comforting." – Tana on Gordon's previously steadfast personality.
