Piers Morgan and MasterChef's John Torode in blackberries dispute

Chef and Masterchef judge John Torode (Ian West/PA Wire)

MASTERCHEF star John Torode has defended using the term brambles when referring to blackberries after causing controversy with viewers.

Torode and fellow judge Gregg Wallace surprised some fans of the BBC1 cooking show when they discussed “brambles” while looking at a contestant’s dish of roast partridge.

So we are not to call them blackberries any more people – remember, the fashionable call them brambles…brambles! #Masterchef #MasterchefUK

— deutschmikey #FBPE (@deutschmikey) April 24, 2017

https://twitter.com/jeffsjensens/status/857135176903778305

Torode told Good Morning Britain: “In Scotland they are actually called brambles.”

Good Morning Britain’s co-host Piers Morgan joked: “We don’t judge what we call food on what the Scots call it. These are blackberries. I will fight for the right to call them blackberries. I won’t have you, an Australian, citing Scots, ordering me to call them brambles.”

Torode hit back, saying: “Nobody’s ordering you to do anything. The fact is they are called both things, brambles or blackberries.”

Viewers backed Torode, with Michele saying:

@JohnTorode1 and @GMB I'm from Northumberland and they are definitely brambles

— michele (@michele_s1) April 26, 2017

#Brambles they are and #Brambles they shall stay..@GMB @piersmorgan

— Janice Barnes. (@logansteven) April 26, 2017

Torode also spoke about his friendship with Wallace, saying: “We don’t hang out because we spend so much time together.”

He joked of Wallace, who married last year for the fourth time, that the pair hang out at “his weddings” adding: “That happens about every year, so that’s fine.”

Asked what his final meal would be, Torode asked: “Why am I dying? I don’t understand why I’ve always got to die!”

And he rebuffed Susanna Reid’s suggestion that Morgan appear on Celebrity MasterChef, saying: “Please don’t. Don’t do that to us. You keep him.”