Three years after a former contestant on one of Gordon Ramsay’s cooking competition reality shows committed suicide, another one of the chefs berated onscreen by the abrasive, foul-mouthed British restauranteur has taken his own life. His body was found near the George Washington Bridge in Washington, D.C., says the New York Post, from police reports.
A former chef at Gallagher’s Steak House, Joseph Cerniglia appeared on the British TV personality’s show “Kitchen Nightmares,” where he was told by Ramsay that his New Jersey restaurant was in such a bad financial state it was “about to swim down the f-ing Hudson.”
Rachel Brown, another aspiring chef who was eliminated in the fifth episode of Ramsay’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” killed herself in 2007.
Perhaps the titles of these shows — “Kitchen Nightmares,” “Hell’s Kitchen,”and others — have lost any of the edginess they once had, and are now simply morbid.