CELEBRITY chef Gordon Ramsay's troubled brother is selling the Big Issue on the streets of the UK to "get by''.

While his famous sibling has built up a multi-million dollar fortune, Ronnie Ramsay is battling drug addiction and poverty.



Ronnie, 41, was sentenced to 10 months in Bali's Kerobokan prison after being convicted of heroin possession in 2007.



Photographed this week for the first time since his return to the UK, he still holds a physical resemblance to his older brother.



But in almost every other respect, the lives of the two men could not be more removed.



Selling the $3 homeless magazine from outside a department store in Plymouth, in England's south, Ronnie said he was completely cut off from his family.



"I'm down on my luck and haven't had any contact with Gordon or my mum for a while,'' he told reporters.



"They have wiped their hands of me and this is all I can do to get by.



"Things have gone bad for me since I was in Indonesia. I've been back in Britain for ages but the family won't talk to me.''



Gallery: Gordon Ramsay

In Bali, Ronnie was found with 100 milligrams of heroin in a cigarette packet in the tourist hotspot of Kuta.



At the time, he complained that his brother had ignored his pleas for help with legal fees, food and toiletries in the same prison Schapelle Corby is serving her 20-year drug smuggling sentence.



"I asked Gordon for his help, he knows I need help. I've heard nothing from my family. It's heartbreaking,'' he said after his arrest.



However the painful family division stretched back much longer, through almost two decades of addiction.



Chef Ramsay's 2006 autobiography Humble Pie recounts how he helped his brother into treatment five times before cutting him off.



After their father's 1997 death, Gordon had paid for heroin so his brother would attend the funeral.



Ramsay, 42, estimates he spent 300,000 pounds ($603,000) trying to help his brother, but told of enduring threats to his own safety and to his children's safety if he did not hand over more cash.

"It's the one thing I feel I've failed at. I find it hard knowing that there's nothing I can do to help,'' he said in the autobiography.



Originally published as Ramsay's brother selling on the streets