One table. Three legendary chefs. Decades of rivalry. An epic history of tears, tantrums, betrayal and revenge. Sharp knives in the vicinity. And enough combustible male ego – laced with eccentricity – to flambe an entire restaurant. What could possibly go wrong? As far as we are aware the Fire Brigade wasn’t on standby when the three chefs in question – Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal – sat down together earlier this year for a rather historic meal, but there was certainly a feeling of anything-could-happen-here among those looking on.The last time these three titans of British cuisine had been in a restaurant together, things had gone a bit soap opera. The year was 2003. The restaurant was the world-famous and Michelin-starred Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire. One table. Three legendary chefs. Decades of rivalry. An epic history of tears, tantrums, betrayal and revenge Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White and Heston Blumenthal – sat down together earlier this year for a rather historic meal, but there was certainly a feeling of anything-could-happen-here among those looking onHeston was at the helm in the kitchen when he discovered, with some horror, that both of his erstwhile colleagues Marco and Gordon – once mentor and protégé, but by then bitter rivals – had booked in for Sunday lunch, separately.Efforts to seat them well apart – Gordon and his wife Tana inside; Marco and his party in the garden – hadn’t smoothed the path adequately. When a furious Marco discovered that Gordon was even in the vicinity, he demanded – in a way that only the famously volatile Marco Pierre White can demand – that Heston ask him to leave. The end result? Carnage. Gordon eventually stormed into the garden, confronted Marco with a sentence that began, ‘You fat b*****d…’The feuding pair, both rather proud of their reputations as bruisers, didn’t speak for years afterwards, except to slag each other off in press interviews. Who would win in a punch-up, Marco was once asked? He considered the question carefully before concluding that Gordon would triumph in the boxing ring, but he would win, hands down, in a street fight.So were punches thrown when the two were finally reunited, and with Heston too, for a new documentary series? We can’t reveal that, but the extraordinary reunion forms the climax of a rather delicious new three-part BBC series The Rise Of The Rockstar Chef. Executive producer Amanda Westwood reveals that it took months of ‘conversations, cajoling and negotiating’ to get to the point where all three were willing to sit down over lunch. Given that the series was made by Gordon Ramsay’s production company, one assumes it was Marco who needed most convincing. He’s filmed in the car en route, and asked whether he is looking forward to seeing Gordon and Heston again. ‘It’s always nice to see Heston,’ he replies, pointedly.‘Honestly it was a lot,’ Amanda admits. ‘I was very nervous. We were all very aware it was a once in a lifetime event. The last time they were all together it didn’t end well, so no one knew how it would play out. Where they going to turn up, and if they turned up would they stay?’ Spoiler alert: they do stay long enough to eat a splendid lunch, although even here the historic rivalry is very much on display as each chef is responsible for preparing a course.And what a supporting cast this documentary has too. Although these three chefs are the subjects, the other interviewees – all chipping in with their memories – read like a Who’s Who of the culinary scene.Huge names like Raymond Blanc, Angela Hartnett and Marcus Wareing recall what it was like to be a part of the world being rocked, as do stars like Lenny Henry and Stanley Tucci. All wanted invites to the reunion, it seems. ‘We interviewed a plethora of brilliant people, from chefs to journalists to movie stars, and when we told them what we had planned they all said the same thing: “Can I come, I’d love to see that!”’ admits Amanda.Some who were there, back in the day, are still smarting decades on, though. Sharp knives in the vicinity. And enough combustible male ego – laced with eccentricity – to flambe an entire restaurant. What could possibly go wrong? The last time these three titans of British cuisine had been in a restaurant together, things had gone a bit soap opera. The year was 2003 (Marco and Gordon seen in 1989)Actor Nigel Havers relives the astonishing moment that he (supposedly the most charming actor in Britain, literally star of a TV show called The Charmer) was thrown out of Canteen, the restaurant owned by Marco and actor Michael Caine. Marco’s party piece was evicting guests, often for the crime of asking for salt. On one infamous night, he slung out 54 diners. Havers doesn’t even seem to know what he did to warrant being booted onto the street. ‘I was quite cross at the time,’ he recalls. ‘I wanted to get a load of little mice and release them.’The series charts how these three chefs took the British restaurant scene by the scruff of the neck and gave it a good shake. Set against the backdrop of the Eighties, moving into Nineties Cool Britannia (when bands like Oasis, Blur were dominating the charts) it examines the revolution that turned a generation of chefs into rock-star figures.Leeds-born Marco was their leader, a brooding bad-boy – ‘like Jesus with a f***ing chef’s jacket on,’ as Gordon puts it, describing how he went to work for Marco in Harvey’s, the Wandsworth restaurant where he won his first Michelin star. In the documentary he likens Marco to a cult leader, the Pied Piper, and a Mafia Don. There really aren’t enough expletives to describe what it was like to be moulded by Marco. ‘It was a sh**fight,’ says Gordon. ‘You were in Marco’s mafia and you were one of Marco’s boys. The only way to succeed was to get out alive.’Let’s just say that it’s a good job that no one was as conscious of Health and Safety legislation in those days. Gordon recalls how Marco wouldn’t bother using the staircase to come down into the kitchen from the toilet upstairs – he would simply swing down through a hatch in the ceiling, dropping into the kitchen, to rally his troops.Actually it all sounds a bit akin to warfare, with a steady string of young chefs simply fleeing the restaurant by the back alley when Marco’s unique managerial style got too much. It famously got too much for Gordon too. When he declared that he was striking out on his own, the relationship turned sour. On his last day in the job, big, tough Gordon Ramsay was reduced to tears.What happened? We get the story from both men in this documentary – and it varies wildly although there was definitely a red mullet dish involved, and a contested 20 seconds during which Marco declared the fish was overdone. Gordon says he challenged his boss on this – only to find Marco grabbing him by the collar with both fists and pinning him up against the coffee machine. He recalls glass smashing, shards everywhere, the whole kitchen falling silent.Marco shakes his head: ‘Didn’t happen.’What they can agree on is that Gordon Ramsay cried during that altercation. ‘Yeah, I bawled my eyes out,’ he admits. ‘I was upset, in shock. I was leaving but this level of aggression… Marco knew I could run that restaurant without him. ‘It was a relationship that was coming to an end. He wanted to finish me before I got to someone else. I’ve never forgiven him, no. Was it justified? No. It was just another scenario where he wanted to prove he was better than me.’There followed some extraordinary years where both men seem to have set out to destroy one another. There was an astonishing debacle over a stolen booking diary. Was it stolen from Gordon’s restaurant Aubergine by a jealous Marco? Or did Gordon stage the whole thing to discredit his old boss? Perhaps it suits both men that the matter is never entirely cleared up, but we are left in no doubt that, by the mid-Nineties, they had become enemies. ‘He f***** me over,’ says Marco. Gordon says pretty much the same.Where did Heston fit in? He had also trained under Marco, becoming the mad scientist of the operation, the culinary genius whose extraordinary experiments turned cooking into an art form. He tells us there was chaos in his Fat Duck kitchen too, but it was a different sort of chaos. ‘On the second day after opening, I made the oven explode, which set my hair on fire, and I spent service with a bag of frozen peas strapped to my head.’ While Marco and Gordon were slugging it out to be top chef, Heston pretty much snuck in and stole their crown, with the Fat Duck being hailed the best restaurant in the world.It’s all quite the riot, but there are some genuinely touching moments, for instance when Marco is shown archive footage of him and Gordon going fishing. He falls silent, smiling as he watches. ‘It’s nice to hear Gordon laugh,’ he says. ‘It’s rather beautiful to watch the two of us together. Gordon and I go back 40 years. That’s a lot of life.’ Gordon’s opinion on why Marco had asked him to go fishing in the first place is also interesting. ‘He just wanted companionship. He wanted a friend.’Which brings us back to this reunion. Amanda admits that once she had stopped checking the location of the fire extinguisher, she found it very moving watching all three men (who can claim an astonishing 27 Michelin stars between them) interact again, their shared history acknowledged.‘They are undoubtedly the only three chefs in the UK who can understand what they each have done and what it took to achieve such success. They were rivals, but also hugely respectful of each other’s achievements and we were very lucky with timing that it felt like the right moment for them all. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say there was a lot of love and affection in the room.’Hidden under the still-simmering rivalry, though.Jenny JohnstonRise of the Rockstar Chef, Thursday, 9pm, BBC2.