Robert Irvine, the nerdy, crewcut, heavily muscled celebrity chef who rose to fame with his show "Dinner: Impossible" on the Food Network, may be suffering from a serious case of pants-on-fire. Irvine had big plans to transform the fine dining scene in St. Petersburg, FL with two new fancy restaurants. He ran around town entering partnerships, hiring consultants, and generally proclaiming himself to be a food VIP. But the local paper noticed that, three months after the scheduled opening date, the new restaurants are still unfinished construction sites. So they did some investigating [SP Times], and it turns out that most of Irvine's big-shot credentials are just a huge pile of unseasoned poop!

The paper found that Irvine lied about being a knight in England; lied about the nature of his college degree; was not really a full-fledged "White House chef;" has bragged about a "Five Star Diamond Award" that is basically available to any asshole with a credit card; and owes thousands of dollars to people who worked with him on his unopened restaurants. He also may have acted like a jerk while out in St. Petersburg restaurants, possibly the biggest sin of all for a food industry guy. They do acknowledge that he's a good cook, though.

This video repeats a lot of the assertions about his experience; might not get to hear those again. If the cooking thing doesn't work out for him, he'd make a good contestant on "American Gladiators."