Marco once radiated sex appeal... now he looks like a dissolute toad: CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews Rise of the Rockstar Chef

Published: 17:20 EDT, 5 November 2026 | Updated: 17:22 EDT, 5 November 2026 Rise of the Rockstar ChefRating:Rating: Four stars Wonders will never cease. Gordon Ramsay, whether he's haranguing luckless cooks on Kitchen Nightmares, pratting about with Fred and Gino, or presenting some abysmal game show, is always the biggest ego on display.But as he paid uneasy tribute to his mentor Marco Pierre White on Rise Of The Rockstar Chef, Gordon seemed cowed and diffident — so nervous that at one point he even forgot to swear. His last day working for MPW, he said, was 'an absolute fricking shambles'.The man he calls 'the Great White' was his mentor, head chef and boss of a dinery called Harveys at the dawn of the Cool Britannia era. One food critic named Marco 'the Mick Jagger of the Aga' but that misses the point: he and Gordon were haute cuisine's version of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis, a pair of foul-mouthed yobs whose fame was fuelled more by their obnoxious antics than their self-proclaimed genius.Tracing MPW's rise from council estate runaway to becoming the most famous chef on Earth, the first episode of this three-parter wallowed in his manic misbehaviour. Today's top restaurateurs heaped praise on him, without concealing the magnitude of their own egos: each caption named the chef and counted up their Michelin stars. Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal ripped up the rulebook of fine dining to try and put British cuisine on the map in the Rise of the Rockstar Chef Marco once radiated sex appeal... now he looks like a dissolute toad, says Christopher StevensSlack-jawed with admiration, Gordon told how Marco once followed a female diner from her table and had sex with her in the bathroom upstairs.As she returned to her boyfriend in the dining room, the chef climbed out of the window onto the kitchen roof and jumped down through the skylight, landing on Gordon's hot-plate.Actor Nigel Havers was less impressed with his treatment. After pleading for a table, he had the temerity to complain when his starter was three hours late. Enraged by this murmur of criticism, MPW threw him out.Honestly, if anyone is daft enough to wait three hours for a dead pigeon in gravy, I have no sympathy. But that's why people went to Harveys: for the histrionics. The actual quality of the food can probably be judged by the fact that MPW chain-smoked Marlboros, even at the chopping board. His taste buds must have been kippered.But back then, Marco radiated bad-boy sex appeal, posing for magazine shots bare-chested, his dark ringlets falling around his face like a Renaissance assassin. Gordon called him 'Jesus with a f*****g chef's jacket on'.Today, none of that remains. Even Marco, 64, gazing at the lifesize pictures of his young self covering the walls of his home, admits he is unrecognisable.Grossly overweight, with the bloated face of a dissolute toad, he was walking with difficulty.I worried he wouldn't get to the end of the first hour.The documentary is building towards a reunion with Gordon and Heston Blumenthal, another one-time renegade who now looks seriously unwell. The real rock stars of the 1990s have aged far better.Carbon copies of the week: Keira Knightley is back in Black Doves (Netflix) as a wife with a secret life as a killer-for-hire. Meanwhile, Keeley Hawes returns today in The Assassin (Amazon Prime Video) as a middle-aged mum who is secretly a hit-woman. Are there no original ideas left?