Gordon Ramsay confronted restaurant employees after finding cocaine in his staff toilets

Gordon Ramsay was not happy when he discovered traces of cocaine in the staff toilets of his own restaurants.

Use of the class-A drug is apparently rife in restaurant kitchens and celebrity chef Ramsay is one of those who says he's seen it, and had even been asked to use it as an ingredient in cooking in some kitchens, and he wants no part of it, calling it 'the hospitality industry’s dirty little secret'.

Back in 2017, the chef launched an ITV documentary, Gordon Ramsay on Cocaine, which delved into how much cocaine usage was going on in restaurants and showed what sort of ingredients were going into the dangerous drug.

In a particularly memorable moment, Ramsay turned the spotlight onto one of his own restaurants and wiped down a number of surfaces in the staff toilets to check for traces of cocaine.

ITV

His tests uncovered traces of cocaine use in both staff and customer toilets, leading the chef to confront his senior management team with the evidence.

While they said they would 'like to hope' that Ramsay's tests had come up negative, it was entirely the opposite as he ran through a series of swabs which all showed evidence of cocaine, some to a worrying degree.

When the documentary released, people were shocked to discover how widespread cocaine use in the hospitality industry was and just what went into the white powder itself.

However, not everyone was a fan of his investigations at the time, as chef Neil Rankin told Ramsay to 'f**k off' and 'try doing something positive'.

Rankin accused Ramsay of 'glorifying kitchen abuse' and said if he was so worried about cocaine use in his restaurants he 'might want to look at their rotas and give them a good night's sleep'.

ITV

He said that Ramsay was a 'great chef' but claimed that he was part of the enforcement of 'long hours that only add to the drug problems' in the industry.

The Masterchef judge has previously spoken about how upset he gets when people assume he takes cocaine after his brother's drug addiction.

He told Spencer Matthews on the Big Fish podcast that some people have assumed 'because you’re boisterous, you’re loud and you’re excited' he's on drugs and it really gets his goat.

The chef said his demeanour in the kitchen was 'pure f**king passion' and that it was 'absolute nonsense' that he'd been on cocaine, saying he 'got upset when everyone thought that rock’n’roll status in the industry was dependent on this f**king white powder'.