In the space of a few months, Gordon Ramsay has been accused of losing his touch in the kitchen, having no friends, blowing his money on failed vanity projects, and - as light frosting on the sinking Gordo gateau - shaping up to become "the leading cause of death in the restaurant industry".

This last one followed the suicide of a former contestant on the American version of Ramsay's hit TV show, Kitchen Nightmares. Amid suggestions that the host was riding his cast of aspiring souffle-whippers too hard, the dead man's hometown newspaper complained that Joe Cerniglia, 39, was "at least the second" participant to have killed himself after appearing on the programme, evoking images of failed chefs shuffling en masse towards cliff faces and gun lockers.

Gordon Ramsay ... lacking friends and supporters. Credit:Getty

It's undoubtedly true - as Ramsay's people claimed - that more pertinent factors were involved in Joe's unhappy end. But it's also true that no one has ever accused Delia Smith of driving her studio guests to their deaths. "The Yanks are wimps," scoffed Ramsay when he first arrived Stateside, and the words won't go away.

Yet Gordon's not really a monster: he's just created one. And recently, it has started to devour him. Last week - a routinely bad one in the current scheme of things - saw the collapse of Ramsay's long-standing business partnership with his father-in-law, Chris Hutcheson, followed by the news that the Royal Bank of Scotland had established a legal claim on the chef's house in south-west London as security for a £10.6 million ($17 million) overdraft it had advanced him.