Star loss drives French chef to suicide

By JOHN LICHFIELD

One of France's best-known chefs, Paul Bocuse, has accused the prestigious GaultMillau food guide of "killing" another three-star chef Bernard Loiseau, who committed suicide on Tuesday.

Bocuse, 80, a close friend of the dead man, said the gastronomic guide's decision to deduct two points from Loiseau's flagship restaurant in its 2003 edition was directly responsible for his death.

"Today we can say that GaultMillau killed [him]", Bocuse said yesterday.

Loiseau, 52, was a well-known television personality in France but less celebrated abroad. He was said to have been depressed by the GaultMillau score and by newspaper stories saying that he had come close to losing one of his three stars in the Michelin guide this year.

He was found dead at his home in Saulieu in northern Burgundy after shooting himself with a hunting rifle.

Bocuse said that he had spoken to his friend the day before his death and found him a "little depressed". He sent him a photograph of the two of them together, with the inscription: "Bernard, life is beautiful." Loiseau died before the letter arrived.

Bocuse went on to scold the food critics who "know everything and can do nothing" and the whole system of giving and taking away stars and points out of 20 to leading restaurants. The practice was being abused, he said. Leading chefs would no longer tolerate being "manipulated" in this way.

The head of the GaultMillau guide - together with the Michelin, the leading food guide in France - rejected all responsibility for Loiseau's death.

"It's not a bad score or one less star which killed him. This great chef must have had other worries," Patrick Mayenobe said.

Loiseau owned a three-star restaurant in Saulieu, the Cote d'Or, renowned for its frogs' legs in puree of garlic. He also owned three restaurants in Paris. He became the first chef to turn himself into a limited company quoted on the Paris Bourse in 1998 but his share price, and the takings of his restaurants, had been struggling.

A number of other "starred" French restaurants are said to have been plunged into difficulties by the economic downturn.

Loiseau's wife, Dominique, blamed his suicide on over-work and a "moment of madness".

Jacques Lameloise, a fellow chef, said Loiseau had once told him: "If I lose a star, I will kill myself."

"Lameloise said the guides "make sport out of us ... I think that is what made him crack."

- INDEPENDENT