What it's like to put your B&B through "Hell" for Gordon Ramsey
Skift Take
What happens when a couple of Idaho innkeepers invite a British chef named Gordon Ramsay to come stay a few nights at their hotel?
All hell breaks loose.
Innkeepers John and Tina Hough weren't entirely unaware of Ramsay's penchant for profanity and confrontational demeanor, but let's say they weren't exactly fans. When John Hough filled out the application to subject himself and his wife to a week of filming and Ramsay's rants, neither he nor Tina Hough had seen the celebrity chef's shows, which include "Hell's Kitchen," "Kitchen Nightmares" and "Master Chef."
"I found out when John is bored he does some pretty wacky things," said Tina Hough. "He can be a major QVC shopper ... So, I normally take his credit card when I leave town and he no longer can shop online. One night, I was our visiting our daughter in Texas. ... I was on the phone with John and he said, 'Just so you know, probably nothing will come of this, but I filled out an application for us to be on TV.' "
That's how Ramsay and producers for his new Fox show, "Hotel Hell" descended upon Coeur d'Alene's struggling Roosevelt Inn in February. The episode filmed at the inn debuts on Fox on Monday at 8 p.m.
"I figured I was in the Navy for six years. I went through boot camp. I went through some pretty hellacious stuff in Nicaragua and El Salvador, not to mention a few places in Africa. I figured if I could go through all that stuff I could certainly deal with Gordon Ramsay for four or five days," John Hough said.
When it became clear the Houghs and their small hotel in the historic Roosevelt School had made the first cut, their grown children urged them to watch a few shows so they would know what they were facing. Tina Hough could only watch one.
"We could have backed out any time until the contract was signed," John Hough said. "The truth is I am not averse to getting publicity of any kind, any time I can get it -- if somebody else can pay for that publicity, all the better. That was really the primary reason for doing this -- to get