CurlyMoo
Well-Known Member
I was watching the Amy's Baking Company episode on Nightmare Kitchens and started looking for more information and found an article on Gordon Ramsey by a woman who divorced her cheating husband and regretted it because her lifestyle changed so drastically.
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Tana Ramsay's right: It's not worth ending a marriage over a husband's infidelity
It's a view that will enrage many women. But a betrayed wife who bitterly regrets kicking out her husband says Tana would be wrong to ditch her celebrity chef hubby Gordon Ramsay
By Rachel Royce
Updated: 11:44 EST, 1 December 2008
There are some moments in life when the foggy confusion of everyday existence seems to clear and for a fleeting moment you can glimpse your thoughts in bright perspective.
My latest moment came as I was wandering around the polished aisles of Waitrose in Marlborough this week, covered from head to foot in Afghan desert dust.
I had just stepped off a plane from Kandahar, having spent the week in the war zone as part of my job as a reporter for ITV.
I had fearlessly (or actually somewhat fearfully) survived bullets, improvised explosive devices, bumpy rides in the back of Snatch Land Rovers, ice cold showers, Army rations and the Taliban - only to arrive back in Britain and realise there was no one at home to cook my supper, still less to soothe my tattered nerves.
Rachel Royce (L) says she knows from experience that Tana Ramsay (R)
is correct to stick by her husband, celebrity chef Gordon, despite claims he has been philandering
I am divorced. And sometimes that cruel reality sneaks up when I least expect it, just as it did in the supermarket this week.
'Do you want cash back?' the friendly cashier demanded.
No, I thought, I just want my old life back. I have been divorced for over two years, though I separated from my husband, Rod Liddle, four-and-a-half years ago.
As regular readers of this paper may recall, I had discovered he was having an affair with his office receptionist at the Spectator magazine. At the time, I was absolutely livid. I kicked him out of our home and our marriage never recovered. But now? Now, I just feel a fool for having allowed the affair to destroy my life.
Why didn't I just turn a blind eye to his infidelity? If the extent of his unfaithfulness was a fumble with the office tart, who was the real victim? Was it me, who got to keep the otherwise enviable perks as the wife of a successful man; or was it the mistress, who was treated like the proverbial piece of meat and would doubtless be binned the moment she passed her thrill-by date?
I was too proud, and it cost me
Looking back, I should have been better prepared for the decision I would have to make. There had been a previous encounter, you see. Rod and I had been together for 12 years and he'd already had one affair with a blonde bombshell from his office at the BBC.
He spent most of the week with her in London, pretending to me that early starts meant he couldn't come home to Wiltshire except for flying visits at weekends. When I found out about that affair, I decided to forgive him - after all, he wrote me amazing love letters, promised it wouldn't happen again and even proposed to me on one knee during a thunderstorm in Malaysia.
We went ahead with our lavish wedding.
Then, to my deepest humiliation, it happened again. He began another affair, this time with a stick-thin 22-year-old just as we were getting married. I was left alone on our honeymoon with the children while he flew home to see the new mistress.
I suspected what was going on, of course, and it hurt. A lot. But why, in the months that followed, did I have to press for the truth?
Why did I go to the bother of hiring and firing useless detective agencies to track his movements? Why did I put myself through the stress of sneaking out of bed in the night to check his text messages? Why did I have to rifle through his pockets and find the restaurant receipts and empty Viagra packets that confirmed everything I dreaded?
Why, oh why, couldn't I have just let sleeping dogs lie and let him get on with his tawdry after-work rendezvous in hotel rooms, so long as we still had some semblance of a marriage?
I have been torturing myself with these questions this week because Gordon Ramsay's alleged affair with a woman with the morals of an Amsterdam alley cat has brought my own situation into sharp relief.
Gordon's wife, Tana, is far too sensible to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. She probably knows if her husband has had an affair - or indeed a string of them - and yet she is standing by her man, posing in a traditional show of unity with Gordon outside their £3million Victorian pile by Wandsworth Common and almost managing a smile.
Some have labelled her a doormat, a 'mousewife' who is allowing her apparently errant husband to walk all over her. Me? I say the girl's got brains and more cojones than a Spanish butcher's slab. Why would she want to break up her marriage for the sake of some slapper from south Wales?
Think about it: she is married to one of the sexiest men in Britain, he earns millions of pounds a year, they could probably hire a Caribbean island for their family holidays if they wanted to and they have four beautiful children together.
I was left with more worries than I thought possible
It's not just the money, it's the lifestyle that goes with it. Gordon is feted wherever he goes and no swanky party in Britain would be complete without him. The Ramsays were at newsreader Kirsty Young's 40th birthday party at a posh hotel in Somerset the very morning the story of his affair broke - the staff obligingly scuttled around hiding the Sunday papers.
If Tana were to dump Gordon, she would be tolerated at those parties for precisely a year afterwards - then the invitations would dry up.
Gordon would soon be back on the party circuit with wife number two in tow, everyone would marvel about how beautiful and glamorous the new, much younger wife was, and Tana would be left sipping lukewarm Chardonnay at home alone and wondering where her lifestyle had vanished to.
I know all this, because it happened to me. As Rod's partner I used to be invited to glamorous parties with newsreaders, politicians, comedians, chat-show hosts, newspaper owners, authors, lords and ladies and women who'd once slept with Prince Andrew.
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Tana Ramsay's right: It's not worth ending a marriage over a husband's infidelity
It's a view that will enrage many women. But a betrayed wife who bitterly regrets kicking out her husband says Tana would be wrong to ditch her celebrity chef hubby Gordon Ramsay
By Rachel Royce
Updated: 11:44 EST, 1 December 2008
There are some moments in life when the foggy confusion of everyday existence seems to clear and for a fleeting moment you can glimpse your thoughts in bright perspective.
My latest moment came as I was wandering around the polished aisles of Waitrose in Marlborough this week, covered from head to foot in Afghan desert dust.
I had just stepped off a plane from Kandahar, having spent the week in the war zone as part of my job as a reporter for ITV.
I had fearlessly (or actually somewhat fearfully) survived bullets, improvised explosive devices, bumpy rides in the back of Snatch Land Rovers, ice cold showers, Army rations and the Taliban - only to arrive back in Britain and realise there was no one at home to cook my supper, still less to soothe my tattered nerves.
Rachel Royce (L) says she knows from experience that Tana Ramsay (R)
is correct to stick by her husband, celebrity chef Gordon, despite claims he has been philandering
I am divorced. And sometimes that cruel reality sneaks up when I least expect it, just as it did in the supermarket this week.
'Do you want cash back?' the friendly cashier demanded.
No, I thought, I just want my old life back. I have been divorced for over two years, though I separated from my husband, Rod Liddle, four-and-a-half years ago.
As regular readers of this paper may recall, I had discovered he was having an affair with his office receptionist at the Spectator magazine. At the time, I was absolutely livid. I kicked him out of our home and our marriage never recovered. But now? Now, I just feel a fool for having allowed the affair to destroy my life.
Why didn't I just turn a blind eye to his infidelity? If the extent of his unfaithfulness was a fumble with the office tart, who was the real victim? Was it me, who got to keep the otherwise enviable perks as the wife of a successful man; or was it the mistress, who was treated like the proverbial piece of meat and would doubtless be binned the moment she passed her thrill-by date?
I was too proud, and it cost me
Looking back, I should have been better prepared for the decision I would have to make. There had been a previous encounter, you see. Rod and I had been together for 12 years and he'd already had one affair with a blonde bombshell from his office at the BBC.
He spent most of the week with her in London, pretending to me that early starts meant he couldn't come home to Wiltshire except for flying visits at weekends. When I found out about that affair, I decided to forgive him - after all, he wrote me amazing love letters, promised it wouldn't happen again and even proposed to me on one knee during a thunderstorm in Malaysia.
We went ahead with our lavish wedding.
Then, to my deepest humiliation, it happened again. He began another affair, this time with a stick-thin 22-year-old just as we were getting married. I was left alone on our honeymoon with the children while he flew home to see the new mistress.
I suspected what was going on, of course, and it hurt. A lot. But why, in the months that followed, did I have to press for the truth?
Why did I go to the bother of hiring and firing useless detective agencies to track his movements? Why did I put myself through the stress of sneaking out of bed in the night to check his text messages? Why did I have to rifle through his pockets and find the restaurant receipts and empty Viagra packets that confirmed everything I dreaded?
Why, oh why, couldn't I have just let sleeping dogs lie and let him get on with his tawdry after-work rendezvous in hotel rooms, so long as we still had some semblance of a marriage?
I have been torturing myself with these questions this week because Gordon Ramsay's alleged affair with a woman with the morals of an Amsterdam alley cat has brought my own situation into sharp relief.
Gordon's wife, Tana, is far too sensible to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. She probably knows if her husband has had an affair - or indeed a string of them - and yet she is standing by her man, posing in a traditional show of unity with Gordon outside their £3million Victorian pile by Wandsworth Common and almost managing a smile.
Some have labelled her a doormat, a 'mousewife' who is allowing her apparently errant husband to walk all over her. Me? I say the girl's got brains and more cojones than a Spanish butcher's slab. Why would she want to break up her marriage for the sake of some slapper from south Wales?
Think about it: she is married to one of the sexiest men in Britain, he earns millions of pounds a year, they could probably hire a Caribbean island for their family holidays if they wanted to and they have four beautiful children together.
I was left with more worries than I thought possible
It's not just the money, it's the lifestyle that goes with it. Gordon is feted wherever he goes and no swanky party in Britain would be complete without him. The Ramsays were at newsreader Kirsty Young's 40th birthday party at a posh hotel in Somerset the very morning the story of his affair broke - the staff obligingly scuttled around hiding the Sunday papers.
If Tana were to dump Gordon, she would be tolerated at those parties for precisely a year afterwards - then the invitations would dry up.
Gordon would soon be back on the party circuit with wife number two in tow, everyone would marvel about how beautiful and glamorous the new, much younger wife was, and Tana would be left sipping lukewarm Chardonnay at home alone and wondering where her lifestyle had vanished to.
I know all this, because it happened to me. As Rod's partner I used to be invited to glamorous parties with newsreaders, politicians, comedians, chat-show hosts, newspaper owners, authors, lords and ladies and women who'd once slept with Prince Andrew.
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Not my fault he cheated. Deal with it. I ain't goin' no damn where. 
I'm not sure if she needs therapy or if she's too shallow for it to matter, but A) she knew he was a cheat and it made no sense to marry him and B) if she didn't come away with anything, she did it all wrong.
