Interesting title for Gordon Ramsay’s comeback on C4 last night – no doubt the double meaning is not lost on Gordon Ramsay Holdings, in this first attempt at reputation escapology after “a shitty year” as he puts it at the start of the programme.

So Gordon’s gone to India on a culinary and personal journey to learn about authentic Indian food and show a different side to the sweary alpha-chef – a more humble, vulnerable, willing-to-learn Ramsay.

It’s an odd choice, a bit like Michael Winner seeking public redemption by reviewing kebab houses. Ramsay does genuinely seem at times appalled, deflated and out of sorts, the manic mannerisms are still there, the direct questions, but in languid India, where he’s definitely not in charge, the hyper Ramsay presenting style doesn’t quite work.

He’s not the first celebrity chef to fight for his reputation; Jamie Oliver faced a public backlash in the early noughties which he snuffed out by setting up Jamie’s Kitchen to give disadvantaged young people a start as a chef, completely changing his public image in the process.

Ramsay’s escape route seems to be about showing what he’ll suffer for his art. At times it just seems a bit contrived, there’s a moment where he supposedly stalls his classic motorbike at a railway crossing and the traffic behind is starts beeping its horns – how humiliating – and then you see that the barrier hadn’t gone up.

Still, it’s early days in the comeback; his formative career was defined by hard graft at the school of hard kitchen knocks that made him the Michelin starred chef he is – returning to those core values is the right idea for brand Ramsay, but you wonder if an Indian culinary travelogue was quite the right way to deliver it.

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