There is something irresistibly comic as well as sad about the reported Holly Ramsay In-laws Fallout. For those like me who never heard of the girl until now, she is the pretty daughter of the very good chef and one-time footballer, Gordon Ramsay. She is an example of that most baneful group in contemporary society, an influencer. That is to say she has a social media presence for no very good reason apart from sounding off about mental health but has no very evident claim on the basis of skills or expertise to influence anyone.
Her father was an outstanding example of upward mobility on the basis of merit. He came from a family shadowed by his father’s alcoholism and violence, but he rose above his circumstances on the back of discipline and application in a demanding professions, cooking, where skill is evident in action, though his earlier career as a footballer was cut short. In a dispiriting contemporary example of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, whereby a family loses contact with its origins in four generations, the Ramsays have managed it in one.
