As with most things in life, Gordon Ramsay has strong feelings about Hawaiian pizza. In this case, they’re of visceral disgust: “You don’t put fucking pineapple on pizza,” he yelled while hosting an episode of Britain’s Nightly Show back in March — Hawaiian pizza’s worst month since at least the Great Canned-Pineapple Shortage of mid-2001. Ramsay’s diatribe came a month into an epic bash-a-thon of pizza’s most polarizing topping. The first of several heads of state to weigh in was Iceland’s president Guðni Jóhannesson, who outright said he’d ban the fruit on pizza if he could, before reassuring its fans, “I do not hold such power.”
The debate’s finally cooled off, but Ramsay is never one to let sleeping dogs lie: He’s decided to rile everybody up again by vowing to voluntarily consume this “god-awful” crime against pizza if enough people donate to a charitable cause that he’s supporting. He made the news Instagram-official yesterday evening:
“If we can hit 500 donations in the next 48 hours,” he writes, “I will eat this f**king god-awful PINEAPPLE pizza on Facebook Live.” The post was one of those multi-photo jobs, and the second pic is a ham pizza that has “EAT ME” spelled out on top using canned-pineapple chunks (as opposed to the fresher, more humanitarian alternative, which must be like salt in Ramsay’s imminent wounds). The money is earmarked for Great Ormond Street Hospital, a children’s hospital in London supported by Ramsay’s foundation. The donation deadline is 11:59 p.m. ET tomorrow, and the minimum is $10, which is a bargain for this caliber of Schadenfreude. So, go — make sure Ramsay regrets this decision.
