A few days back I took some of the Roast team to a Gordon Ramsay restaurant and they were kind enough to upgrade our booking to the chef’s table.

For much of the next two hours we heard more foul language than you would find on the terraces of a football ground or a dodgy east end pub combined. None of my team is shy when it comes to colourful language or occasionally aggressive behaviour but we were all shocked that paying customers had to endure the endless torrent of abuse that the chef was dealing out to his juniors.

I think even Mr F-Word himself would have been horrified.

Kitchens in busy restaurants that have high standards do get tense but when like Roast you are on display to the public, you deal with rising tensions and conflicts out of costumer sight and sound. Our chefs are no angels – I would be the first to laugh at such a claim – but they know the difference between an open kitchen and a circus.

A few years back, a friend took a group of us to lunch at the chef’s table at Petrus. Marcus Wareing was cooking and we had a great time, except for the American investment banker who was disappointed by the oasis of calm that Marcus had created over his chefs, so he called a waitress over and asked “How much extra do we have to pay to see a tantrum?”

Maybe there is money to be made in bad manners.