An ambleside restaurant boss is breathing a sigh of relief after the airing of his restaurant getting the Gordon Ramsay once-over proved less painful than he feared.

"I thought they were going to crucify us," confessed Glass House boss Neil Farrell. The 36-year-old, who let three-star Michelin chef Mr Ramsay and his film crew loose in his Lake District eatery, said he feared footage from the Kitchen Nightmare series could have been a lot worse.

Despite a sneak preview of the Tuesday night's show from a London food critic, Mr Farrell said he was still "very nervous."

But he conceded: "At the end of the day I think it was quite favourable and he even offered two of my staff jobs. But it was set up and they needed an angle and that angle was the head chef is lousy."

With a week to turn the restaurant around, Ramsay made no bones (other than the one he found in his duck balls) about telling Mr Farrell where he was going wrong quality not quantity and of course 36-year-old head chef Richard Collins.

Ramsay catalogued the head chef's culinary crimes garlic popcorn, duck balls and pomegranate risotto and told Mr Farrell to kick the Claridge's-trained chef into touch and spend his £25,000 salary more wisely.

But Mr Farrell insisted his head chef and Mr Ramsay did get on and claimed clever editing failed to show that "Gordon actually liked Richard."

He said as viewers saw Ramsay blame Mr Collins for letting the kitchen plunge into chaos on a busy Saturday night, scenes which showed a very different picture were left on the cutting room floor.

"The guys let Richard down badly that night he was crying and Gordon told him you gave it your best, nobody could have done better' but that wasn't shown.

"I was foolish to allow Gordon to change the way we work upstairs and in the kitchen it was a terrible night and most footage was of that night."

But as they say any publicity is good publicity and the old clich seems to have proved true.

"When I got in at 7am on Wednesday there were 31 messages on the answer machine from customers around the country saying we don't care what he said we think you're brilliant'," said Mr Farrell. "We were never a restaurant in trouble, we were a restaurant that wanted some guidance. I'm not in awe of Ramsay I admired him and I think he admired us."