What the F-word is going on?

By ROSEMARY McLEOD

OPINION: Gordon, Gordon: you ate the raw heart of a just- dead puffin in July, then last week you shattered my still- beating heart into breadcrumbs.

For me, surely, you'd slipped so often, so eagerly, out of your chef's whites and showed your manly chest on that programme - oh, whatever it's called. You have so many programmes, so many books, so much to share, so much skin, and no singlets at all.

You knew how I watch. How we all watch. We can't get enough of you and your smooth, smooth chest down which we want to trail our delicate, delicate fingers dripping in baby oil. Or maybe walnut oil; it has more kick. Given the chance, we'd knead your toes delicately, like little Parker House rolls in the making, but there's the problem of distance and opportunity, sadly. Your toes will have to wait.

You shave your chest; you must; you know we're looking. You're always tanned; you know we wouldn't want to watch a pimply, pale Pom slithering out of his kit. You're as smooth as butter, mayonnaise, pureed mango, melting ice cream. You are officially the Sexiest Chef in Britain, as of last week's British newspaper survey, and last week you also became the Cheating-est Chef in Britain. For a moment there I almost sobbed.

It's a sexy combo though, sex and infidelity. Irresistible. It goes together like tomato and basil, bread and butter, corned beef and mustard. You gave us all hope, the promise of enough to go around - and maybe even dessert. Yes, you really are up for grabs; you weren't just flirting. How your ratings will soar. The Americans - who suspended your next series of Kitchen Nightmares when they heard the news - will get over it. I already have. It took a split second, a mere quaver beat.

Now is the era of the chef, the erotic blend of knife skills, whisk wrists, rolling in and stuffing and seasoning with; of jus and marmalades; of smoulder as well as deep-fry, gratin, simmer and stew. You smoulder so fetchingly, Gordy, and your cursing titillates us like an insouciant amuse- bouche. Your eyes are so blue. Do you wear tinted contact lenses? You have a face like a forgotten spud in a paddock, a nose like a weary truffle, wrinkles in the weirdest places. Only millions of us could love you, and the way you fold your arms just so in your crisp white jackets. Your wrinkles are etched deep, like the cuts in the skin of a pork roast you're hoping to crackle. Watch those sun lamps! And there are weird lines down under your mouth, unique to you. Nobody but me - us - could adore your tousled imperfection, so artfully contrived. We know your sperm count was low, and you and your wife, Tana, had to have IVF treatment, but what of it? You said you had few, but they were very vigorous, and we were all a-quiver.

I quiver for you, Bad Boy Gordy. I crave your brulees and tuiles.

Am I miffed about Sarah Symonds, the slag who told all last week, and may yet tell more? Yes, a little, because she would have upset your wife and family by blurting about your seven-year carry-on to the media, but on balance, no. Sarah doesn't count. You can't take a woman like that seriously enough.

She shagged that impossible old rake Jeffrey Archer, lived to tell us that he wanted her in suspender belts while he wore baggy white undies - and she thinks that makes him look bad. She's written a book, "Having an Affair," that tells us she's a tired trollop who can't get a main course of her own, and has to nibble the leftovers from other women's plates.

How she gushes on a feeble blog, her schoolgirlish attempt at sophistication. Like salted licorice, she must be a bafflingly acquired taste. Or just available.

She boasts that she has rung wives to tell them their husbands are cheating with her - and seems baffled that they didn't care. What does that tell us? Weirdly, what does it tell her?

Sprung by tabloid newspaper The News of the World with Gordy in a $1000-a-night London hotel, she had been waiting several hours for him to arrive, preparing with three doses of amyl nitrate (she says at his request) bought from a sex shop, two bottles of white wine, and crisps. Crisps. Haute cuisine is wasted on this woman. Amyl. She's so boring in bed that it takes a snort to have it off with her. And he stayed for less than an hour-and-a-half, of which half an hour would have been in the shower. It's quite possible she has bad breath.

Gordy has admitted to meeting Sarah four times, four sessions of leopard skin and black hair roots. Multiply that by 10 (men being what they are) and she's still pathetic. Over seven years, that's hardly what you'd call an affair. It sounds more like repeats, those recycled programmes you get in the off-season, or a dial-up when you're too lazy to woo a new conquest.

What we and Gordy have, on the other hand, is special. He is all promise, I'm all hope. Hope springs eternal in the breast of woman, gently sauteed, and served on a bed of wishful thinking.

God knows it's sexier than the real thing.