This Morning’s Vernon Kay has expressed fears of a backlash from Gordon Ramsay after discussing his controversial TikTok video joking about lambs heading to slaughter.
The TV presenter hosted the ITV daytime show alongside Rochelle Humes on Wednesday, as the pair stand in for regular hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield during the summer.
As they sat down to pick over the headlines, conversation turned to Gordon Ramsay, who has fallen foul of animal activists after posting a TikTok video of him picking out which lamb is “going in the oven first”.
The video, shared to the platform last week, shows the Hell’s Kitchen star clambering into an enclosure housing several lambs while singing: “Yummy yum yum. I’m going to eat you!”
The lambs approach him, and he asks: “Which one’s going in the oven first?”
“You!” he said before jumping into the pen, sending the lambs scrambling to the far end as he exclaimed: “Oven time!”
After playing the clip on This Morning, Vernon said: “That's Gordon Ramsay. That's the Gordon Ramsay we know, who will eat meat.”
Smirking, he then added: “He won't like us talking about him, I have no doubt.
“But, surely that's what happens when we eat meat. Animals are put to the slaughter.
“I think it's just the fact that, personally, that it's there. It's in front of him, it's graphic and it's made the vegan community so angry.”
Journalist Simon McCoy was in the studio to chat over the headlines and said: “It leaves a slightly nasty taste in anyone's mouth.”
Vernon replied: “I think it's because it's so in your face and it's so obvious. We see these cute lambs and Gordon's going to eat one.”
Rochelle replied: “I eat meat, but I wouldn't like to know which lamb it was. That's just me.”
Simon then joked: “Gordon getting caught out with a camera there as well. He must have been horrified.”
He continued: “Him saying who's next in the oven, it's just a bit tasteless – for the first time in Gordon Ramsay's life.”
The viral clip has received almost 10 million views and thousands of comments and has been vehemently condemned by animal rights charity PETA.
The animal-rights non-profit has even called on Ramsay's five children to “disown” him after posting the clip, labelling him “callous”.
Elisa Allen, PETA UK's vice president of programmes, told Joe : “Gordon Ramsay is a callous man who makes a fool of himself: intimidating gentle lambs is loutish, not amusing.
“What would be funny is if his children went vegan and disowned him – much in the way Elon Musk's daughter disowned her father.
“Those lambs are just babies who want little from life but the chance to live it and not end up in this moron's – or anyone else's – mouth.”
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV and ITV Hub.
