Sara Stewart, who had a five-year affair with Gordon Ramsay's father-in-law and former business partner Chris Hutcheson, is suing the shouty British chef for breach of privacy. As the Daily Mail explained Saturday, Stewart claims that Ramsay hired a private detective to take "intimate" photos of her while she and Hutcheson were having the affair. Stewart has said that Ramsay threatened to go public with the shots. About nine months ago, Ramsay won a £250,000 lawsuit against Hutcheson claiming that his father-in-law had hacked into his e-mails. A month later, the two settled an unfair dismissal claim from Hutcheson out of court.
Two years ago, Ramsay admitted to having hired a private detective to follow Hutcheson, "whom he suspected of financial misconduct and reading his personal emails." At the time, in an open letter to his mother-in-law, Ramsay wrote, "The very complex life that Chris leads has seen many of my key staff feeling that they had to cover on his behalf. His away days were rarely what I thought they were." Stewart claims that Ramsay sent her son a text message that read "Please tell Sarah [sic] to close her curtains in Ascot there's a footpath right outside her window. Shots are amazing. Happy to pass the whole ******* lot to the News of the World."
Ramsay's legal feuds aren't limited to the Hutchesons. He most recently hit another former business partner, Danny Lavy, with a suit over his Kmart kitchen line, and back in March, he sued the same guy after being fired from a consulting position in Canada. The Stewart case will be heard later this year.
· I'll grill you in court: Ramsay sued by father-in-law's mistress over 'secret filming' through bedroom window [Daily Mail]
· All Gordon Ramsay Coverage on Eater [-E-]