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"My gran could do better! And she’s dead!” From Wolfgang Puck to Jamie Oliver, Rachel Ray and Emeril Lagasse, there are plenty of celebrity chefs on television today but none hold a candle to Scotland’s very own Gordon Ramsay. Raised in England where he was a star on the soccer field, a series of severe injuries led Ramsay to reconsider his future as a “football” star and focus more on his second passion—cooking. He enrolled at the North Oxfordshire Technical College to study catering and hotel management and, in the process, became enamored by restaurant life.

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Climbing his way up the ladder by working with some of the top chefs across Europe, Ramsay eventually established himself as one of the best restauranteurs in the world and earned numerous Michelin stars in the process. By then, it was only a matter of time before his incredible talent in the kitchen was featured on a series of shows in the late 1990s before he landed his own program, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, in the United Kingdom in 2004. The following year, he made his way to the United States where his fiery temper took center stage on Hell’s Kitchen.

In the years following, Ramsay has enjoyed even greater success with several hit shows including MasterChef, Hotel Hell and The F Word where his love of cursing and passion for all things food-related continue to attract millions of viewers as well as a hefty paycheck averaging $60 million per year. And, while he obviously gets paid the big bucks to curse and insult his students as much as he likes, people close to Ramsay say he has a much softer and calmer side when the cameras aren’t rolling. Along with this gentler side of Ramsay is a man who, believe it or not, is extremely self-conscious about his looks. Shocking, right?

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Proving even the most irate and harshest critic in the kitchen is merely human too, Ramsay admits that even he worries about looking his best especially now that he’s moved from slaving over a hot stove to center stage. The father of four decided it was finally time to make a change after his children started mocking the wrinkles on his face. When his daughter tried to shove a few coins into the deepest wrinkles on his cheeks, Ramsay took the gesture as his wake-up call.

“The lines on my face were pretty horrific, like Scarface, and I was never embarrassed by it but my children helped me become more paranoid about it,” Ramsay said. Long before his daughter helped aid his self-consciousness, Ramsay knew the tabloids were having a field day with his looks as they often described his face as “craggy,” resembling a “map of Wales” or even like an “ugly, deflated rugby ball.” Despite his tough-guy attitude in front of the cameras, even Ramsay admitted, “There’s only so much s*** you want to take.”

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After his makeup artist asked if he’d been involved in an automobile accident, Ramsay finally hit his boiling point. “You put up with it, but then you get f***ing sick of it.” That’s when he turned to a friend for advice on how to fill the deep crevasses in his cheeks. As it turns out, that friend was Botox enthusiast and fellow international television personality, Simon Cowell, of American Idol fame.

Known for telling the truth even when it hurts, Cowell did exactly that for his friend as he advised Ramsay that cosmetic surgery would make him look “less threatening” on American television. Taking Cowell’s advice, Ramsay went to a plastic surgeon and had his cheek lines filled in with lasers which, according to Ramsay, took less than 10 minutes. When the tabloids caught wind of Ramsay’s new and improved look, Ramsay admitted that his friends and family didn’t “notice until I mentioned it.”

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Still receiving criticism—it is Hollywood, after all—Ramsay said he received more criticism about his new face within six months than he ever did for his wrinkles in the decades prior. As a result, he vowed he was finished with cosmetic surgery saying, “Of course I'm not going to have any more f***ing work done.” However, several years later, rumors went wild that Ramsay had opted for more plastic surgery as the creases in his forehead were less pronounced and suggested the British chef might have had a face lift.

In true tabloid fashion, the rumors didn't’ stop at Ramsay’s supposed face lift as many critics and fans argued that his hair appeared to have a transformation of its own as well. In recent years, a few surgeons have said that there are telltale signs that the 50-year-old Ramsay opted for a hair transplant to fill in parts of his already thinning hairline. Of course, Ramsay hasn’t come forward to confirm the rumors and we definitely don’t plan on asking him ourselves anytime soon.