But they weren't just any old bangers being scoffed in Sheffield's Peace Gardens yesterday.

He'd made them himself from local venison and pistachio nuts.

Ramsay has been in town all week to revitalise the fortunes of the Runaway Girl restaurant on Arundel Street - now renamed Silversmiths - for his Kitchen Nightmares TV show.

The restaurant was relaunched last night.

To publicise the event and the new menu the world famous chef held an assault on the world record for eating sausages in a minute.

"We're going to attempt to eat more than seven sausages in no more than a minute," he briefed owner Justin Rowntree and head chef Richard Russell for the cameras.

A production assistant had a quiet word and he did it again.

"We're going to attempt to eat EIGHT sausages..."

He wasn't going to eat them himself.

Cheered on by the crowd and with Ramsay jumping excitedly up and down and clapping his hands, poor Justin and Richard managed only one apiece.

"I'm still in the moment of it all," said Justin afterwards. "Did he swear at me? He wouldn't be Gordon Ramsay if he didn't would he?"

But chef Richard had a different story. "It's been magic, brilliant. Top man! Has he sworn. No!" Ramsay has been stopped, snapped and mobbed by the general public all week he has been in Sheffield, said a Channel 4 production assistant.

And youngsters who chanted his name needed no second bidding to rush up to the table and finish eating the remaining sausages.

The craggy faced chef, dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, told me earlier: "I love it here. In some ways it (Sheffield) is amazing."

But before I could ask him why he was shepherded away by a Channel 4 girl.

During our brief conservation he had responded politely to greetings from passers-by with no sign of his legendary abrasiveness.

Those sausages appear on the new restaurant's new menu, served with a red onion marmalade and spring onion mash.

I just couldn't resist a taste. They were F***ing good!

The programme will be shown this winter.




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