Gordon Ramsay's wife stands by her man amid sex scandal

FOUL-MOUTHED celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay's wife Tana is sticking by him
after accusations he has been involved in a seven-year affair.

The pair presented a united front outside their London home yesterday.
They had been Christmas shopping and were about to cook a roast lunch.
It was a surreal scene after the sensational allegations published in British tabloid
the News of the World just hours earlier.
Gordon Ramsay, the F-Word and Hell's Kitchen star, 42, had maintained
a secret relationship with "professional mistress" Sarah Symonds, it was claimed.

Sarah Symonds

He was reported to have met Symonds for sex in a luxury hotel on Thursday
after she had bought bottles of a legal sex drug.
Symonds once had an affair with British peer and author Jeffrey Archer
and has written a guide for mistresses.

Ramsay and Tana kept their heads up as they arrived back at their
$9.5 million townhouse in a chauffeur-driven silver Mercedes.
The couple, married for 12 years with four children,
declined to answer questions about the alleged affair.

"It's time for Sunday lunch. I'm starving," was Ramsay's only comment
before going inside with his wife, 33.
Ramsay's spokesman was just as keen to present an image
of life continuing as normal.

Gordon Ramsay with wife, Tana

"Everything is fine. Life is good and business is good,"
the spokesman said.
But the allegations threaten to shatter Ramsay's image as a loving family man,
which he has managed to cultivate despite his famous rants and swearing.

There is also the potential for serious business disruptions as his father-in-law
Chris Hutcheson is chief executive of his company and a major investor.
Mr Hutcheson recently predicted Ramsay's restaurants, pubs, TV shows
and other earnings would bring in $238 million in revenue within two years.
The highest paid chef in the world, Ramsay has an estimated fortune of $142 million.

The story about his alleged affair appeared under
the front-page headline "He's an f-ing cheat".
A double-page spread inside was headlined "Cheat and two veg".

Sarah Symonds, 38, had reportedly caught a train from Newport, South Wales,
to London last Thursday and took a cab to the Marriott Hotel off Grosvenor Square.
She checked into room 106 on the first floor at a cost of almost $1000 for the night,
then went to a sex shop and bought three bottles of amyl nitrate,
a legal drug used to enhance sexual pleasure.

Ramsay, whose acclaimed Maze restaurant is at the hotel,
visited Symonds' room at 8.15pm and left at 9.30pm, it was claimed.
The newspaper reported an unnamed source as saying: "They had sex."

Symonds' affair with Lord Archer was exposed in a British newspaper in 2001.
She met Ramsay months later and the pair have had an on-off relationship
ever since, it was claimed.

Symonds caused an uproar when her book,
Having An Affair? A Handbook For The Other Woman,
was released last year.
The first edition included a passage about a friend
"having an affair with a world-famous TV chef,
well known for both his bad language and his good food".

The Ramsays were named Celebrity Family Of The Year last year
and he was voted Celebrity Father Of The Year in 2006.
Ramsay frequently talks about his family life in media interviews
while promoting his business interests.

(News.com)