"I've seen too many tragic burnouts... For my company to function, it can't be controlled by me"

Gordon Ramsay is walking – striding – through the glass-walled dining room of Lucky Cat, his new restaurant on the 60th floor of 22 Bishopsgate.

- Gordon Ramsay

It is London's highest restaurant, so far up that the building's viewing deck is two floors below. "Come here," he says, beckoning by the window. I mutter something about vertigo. Ramsay nods earnestly. "I had the same thing," he says, "until I started abseiling down the side of mountains. All of a sudden, I got over that fear - by taking on that fear." The thing is, Gordon Ramsay is not like the rest of us.

Neither is he like most chefs; most chefs don't open five places at once. He's more like an old soldier (or is it Action Man?) - lots of chat about "running drills", "taking the blows", "standing strong" - and for his latest mission has commandeered four of the building's floors: on level 58 is the Gordon Ramsay Academy, quite probably the highest cookery school in the world. Above that, launching later in the year, will be an outpost of his Bread Street Kitchen chain. On level 60, there's Lucky Cat and the 12-seater Restaurant Gordon Ramsay High, and then a large rooftop terrace opening, right on the top, with a Japanese garden and a retractable roof. "That's been an absolute head f***, I'm not going to lie. But I was having dinner with [Soho House founder] Nick Jones in West Hollywood, and this thing retracted and I thought, 'Oh my god, I have to have one."

22 Bishopsgate is a project he's fought for. "Every single heavyweight in the restaurant scene was desperate for it," he says. But does Ramsay, the world's most famous chef, really have competition? "It's a good question," he says. He praises Richard Caring ("the guy's a billionaire, how do you compete with that?") while dismissing Alain Ducasse ("he'll never invest his own money in London"). Ramsay has invested, it turns out, and heavily. "I've got skin in the game, it's personal. It's not a label slap." How much? "I'm a realist and I take these opportunities f***ing seriously." How much? "We're in excess of £20 million, plus."