It’s hard to remember a time when MasterChef wasn’t on our TVs. The competition, which puts passionate home cooks through their paces in the ultimate test of culinary prowess, has won over generations of fans in the three decades since it first aired.
It has also propelled many budding chefs to new career heights and launched a number of spin-off hits.
Couple its contestants’ success with the show’s no-frills approach, and it’s a recipe that works, say judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace, who have fronted the show since its 2005 revival.
“We’re not scripted, we really care, and we work in a very safe, well looked-after environment,” Torode, 57, reasons. “We’ve never had wardrobe, we’ve never had make-up or anything like that, which has kept us real.
“So I think our survival is down to being allowed to be ourselves all the way through,” he adds. “Taking responsibility for who we are, and what we are, has made it a cool show.”
“We’re incredibly proud of it,” Wallace, 58, follows, referencing the series’ inter-generational appeal and “supportive nature”.
“I regularly get messages from people that say, ‘This is the programme I watch with my children. This is our thing. We watch it together as a family’.”
One highlight is the return of MasterChef alumni, such as last year’s champion Eddie Scott and finalists Pookie Tredell and Radha Kaushal-Bolland, who help to judge the quarter-final ahead of the knockout stages.
“I love having them back!” says presenter and entrepreneur Wallace. “You get very fond of them during the competition, but you can’t get friendly with them, because it wouldn’t look right.
“So it’s a chance to really ask them what they thought. And I think they make for very good judges.”
“I mean, you look at Eddie now, let’s remember he was a Humber pilot, and he then went off and worked in restaurants – once with Gordon Ramsay,” says Torode. “And Pookie is now cooking on her boat, which she always dreamt of doing.”
“It’s lovely to see these people living their dream and realising it,” he adds. “We saw Phil Vickery, who was an England rugby world cup winner, and he’s now got a restaurant.
“I asked, ‘How you doing?’ He said, ‘I love it, I am living my life the way I want to live my life’. And that’s amazing.”
MasterChef, BBC1, tonight, 8pm
Enjoy the convenience of having The Sunday Post delivered as a digital ePaper straight to your smartphone, tablet or computer.
Subscribe for only £5.49 a month and enjoy all the benefits of the printed paper as a digital replica.
Subscribe