Gordon Ramsay takes up TV challenge of training prisoners

The four-show series will see Ramsay provide culinary training to inmates at HMP Brixton to help secure employment upon release, creating a production line for bakery products to be sold within the prison system and to local businesses. The first episode of four goes out on June 26th at 9pm when Ramsay will be looking to pick 12 men to join his kitchen brigade from among the drug dealers, burglars, muggers and thieves in the Category B prison. At the start none can even boil an egg, but he finds out that some of them are handy with icing and glitter. Their first real test is to cook dinner for the whole prison. It is the start of a comprehensive training programme that offers them the opportunity to learn a new skill and gain some work experience which might help them find work when they leave prison. During the series Ramsay attempts to get prisoners working and paying something back into the system, while giving them the right skills to make them more employable on their release. The training offers the 12 the opportunity to gain a nationally recognised qualification as they start the pilot prison bakery business called Bad Boys Bakery. Ramsay says that by teaching the offenders culinary skills, he hopes to help them get a job in catering and stop reoffending. Manufacturer Electrolux Professional has teamed up with Gordon Ramsay to supply and install the kitchen for the series. A textiles workshop at the prison, which was previously used as a kitchen, has been converted into a state-of-the-art commercial kitchen. It now includes Touchline two air-o-steam combi ovens, six 6-burner XP oven ranges, a separate convection oven, gas fryers, refrigeration and storage racks from the Electrolux Professional range. Doug Walker, head of region for UK & Ireland at Electrolux Professional, said: "We feel very privileged to be involved in a project such as this one. It gives prisoners an opportunity to learn new skills and a chance of a fresh start when they are released. "It shows the quality, performance and flexibility of our equipment that we were able to supply a prison kitchen, which is normally such a heavy-duty operation, with products which are suitable for the mass production of bakery products."