The harrowing scale of Gordon Ramsay's kitchen nightmare has been laid bare in the chef's latest accounts, which show an almost 90% fall in profits for his London restaurant empire.
The accounts reveal how ambitious expansion plans combined with the downturn to take the celebrity close to running out of money.
Profits at Ramsay's London restaurants fell 87% to £383,325, down from more than £3m last year.
Documents filed at Company House showed that Ramsay and his father in law and business partner Chris Hutcheson had to put £5m into the business to stave off collapse.
The group's net debt more than doubled from £4m to £9.5m, with interest payments ballooning from £279,485 to £545,563.
During the period it accumulated an unpaid tax backlog totalling almost £8m, which is only being repaid this month.
The crisis was fuelled by a furious programme of expansion in 2007 and 2008, with Ramsay opening 10 restaurants at home and overseas during one 10-month period.
But four of his London restaurants have since had to close - two of those, the Connaught and La Noisette, will not re-open.
Ramsay has admitted that "ambition overtook me, we thought we could do anything, that we could not fail".
But it appears that Ramsay's lucrative TV and book deals saved him from heading the way of fellow celebrity chefs Antony Worrall Thompson and Tom Aikens, whose businesses fell into administration.
And there seem to be signs that his restaurants are back on the boil.
Trading in London this year is said to be "robust" and earnings are tipped to grow quickly into next year, when Petrus and the Savoy Grill will resume service.
New banking terms covering the next two years have recently been agreed with Ramsay's lender, RBS.
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