"Mate, it pains me to tell you this, but you actively trying to fail is the only scenario in which I could say you've been doing a tremendous job. I mean, really!? What in the bloody hell is this? Customers aren't going to pay 10 quid to scrape their praline salad odd the bottom of the paper plate!"
To say that Richard was perplexed would be an understatement, but he was just drunk enough, to be loose enough, to go along with what was happening.
"Well it's easy for you then, isn't it? You get a royalties check every time a chef emotionally breaks someone on TV. Tears pay for your overhead, mate. Us honest folk have to use butter for our mac and cheese, yeah," Richard said, working himself into a proper rage for the cameras. It also gave Ramsay something to be horrified about, and Richard wanted to get him yelling at least once before they realized how badly they'd fucked up.
"You use butter for-," Ramsay cut himself off, scrubbing his face with his hands and centering himself with a sigh. "You know what, no, there's more pressing matters to address. Your dishes are appalling. You've got an entire cabinet full of novelty mugs shaped like tits!"
"One of them has a piercing. You hardly ever find them with that level of detail." Gordon was unimpressed.
"You're fucking with me," he said coldly, a white knuckled grip on one of the offending pieces of China.
"One would think that fairly obvious," the college student dead panned, starting to wonder if Gordon had realized his mistake and was going with it to save face. "I mean... This is a one bedroom flat."
"And what do you feel caused you to get to this point?" the chef asked, his face growing serious and sympathetic.
"Honestly? Trusting Janet when she tells you it's totally good shit," said Richard.
"We'll talk about your cooks later," said Gordon, throwing a friendly arm around his shoulder. "Now, I talked to your mother and she told me it was your time spent in Osaka that really inspired you to cook. We're going to get back to those roots, but with a twist."
"Then you clearly weren't talking to my mother. Look, Mr. Ramsay, you do realize I've never owned a restaurant, nor is my flat, or any other in this building serving as one at present."
"We're going to change that today."
"Have they not programmed you for logic?" Richard asked, staring deeply into Gordon's eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of humanity.
"No, but this is the BBC we're talking about. Doctor Who is a dynasty and they deleted entire seasons of it like a bad selfie to save film. Just play along, serve some Sushi to a bunch of people solely motivated by their desire to be an asshole on TV, and you'll get to sell all the furniture after we're done."
"Fair enough," said Richard, pretending to listen while Gordon stressed to him the importance of presentation in Japanese cuisine.
Alright, this was juvenile garbage but I had fun writing it.