Sarah Symonds lashes out at 'Being Gordon Ramsay' as six-part Netflix series spotlights 22 Bishopsgate restaurant launch
The six-part documentary Being Gordon Ramsay has prompted a public rebuke from sarah symonds, who described the series as "totally fake" and "misleading" even as the show lays out the chef’s attempt to open multiple restaurants at 22 Bishopsgate. The criticism lands amid detailed sequences of family life, menu testing and the logistics of launching five dining concepts across a single development.
Sarah Symonds: 'Totally fake' claim
Sarah Symonds, 56, has labelled the documentary a "glossed over, rehabilitated, glow-up version of a bully, cheat, liar and serial philanderer, " and said the title Being Gordon Ramsay was "totally fake - just like him. " She said she had been left traumatised by what she described as an alleged seven-year affair and warned that descriptions of the series as "unflinchingly honest" made her furious. The public statement included the accusation that, during the period she knew him, Ramsay lived a double life and "acted like a single man, " frequenting late-night social venues and projecting the swagger of someone without responsibilities. Gordon Ramsay has long denied having had an affair.
22 Bishopsgate: five dining concepts and six episodes
The series runs across six episodes and follows Ramsay as he develops five new dining concepts inside the London tower at 22 Bishopsgate and crosses the Atlantic to include Hell's Kitchen Las Vegas. The camera lingers on construction and design decisions — a 60-seat rooftop garden with a retractable roof, a 250-seater Asian-inflected venue called Lucky Cat, a Bread Street Kitchen brasserie and an on-site culinary school all feature in the project. In candid moments Ramsay frames the effort as "a huge undertaking, " "high risk, high reward" and "once in a lifetime opportunity, " even saying it was "one of my final stakes in the ground … If it fails, I'm fucked. "
Pancakes, family scenes and marriage details
The documentary opens with a domestic moment: the youngest of Ramsay's six children eating pancakes with his wife of three decades, Tana. A family exchange about the thickness of the pancakes — described as American-style rather than crepe-like — is punctuated by Tana telling him, "Darling, could you just give it a rest?" The series presents a portrait of fatherhood and family that the programme frames as central to Ramsay’s life. The couple married in 1996 after first meeting through Tana's then-boyfriend. They are parents to six children: Megan, Jack, Holly, Tilly (also called Matilda in some accounts), Oscar and Jesse. Some details about the children’s ages are unclear in the provided context; Megan is consistently given as 27 and Oscar as six.
Megan and Jack: absence explained
Four of the six children appear in the series; the two eldest, Megan and Jack, do not. Ramsay explains their absence by pointing to their professions and security concerns: Megan works as a police officer and her security needs make appearing impractical, while Jack serves with the Royal Marines and is described as a "busy boy" who for safety reasons "can't be anywhere near that. " Both children are said to keep a low profile. Ramsay has publicly celebrated their milestones on social media in previous years, including a 2019 post marking Megan’s graduation from Oxford Brookes and a 2020 post marking Jack joining the Royal Marines.
Chefs, details and brand framing
Behind the restaurant launches the series dwells on operational minutiae: menu tastings that hinge on technicalities (one production note warned a rum baba "can't be too small or it won't aerate properly"), prototype aprons losing pockets because staff tend to stuff them and vetoes on leather seating. Those sequences have led some viewers and critics to call the six-hour run an extended brand advert for Ramsay and his restaurant empire; others praise the focus on craftsmanship and the respect his chefs show for the standards he demands.
What makes this notable is the juxtaposition of an intimate family portrait with an overtly managerial chronicle of scaling multiple high-stakes venues at once — the personal moments amplify the commercial narrative even as outside voices like Sarah Symonds challenge its honesty. The release on Netflix, dated 18 February in one account, has therefore produced both warm depictions of domestic life and sharp public pushback, with timestamps connected to public commentary appearing on 22 February 2026 at 07: 39 GMT and updated at 13: 20 GMT in one published exchange.
Engagements, appearances and ongoing fallout
The series shows varying levels of family participation: Tilly appears frequently, including scenes of Ramsay dropping her at culinary school; Holly is glimpsed at her engagement party with Olympic swimmer Adam Peaty, where Adam's mother Caroline is briefly visible; the two youngest children make regular appearances. Public reactions range from appreciation of technical detail and familial warmth to allegations of image management, and the criticism from Sarah Symonds has crystallised the latter line of response.
