“We are back. It’s the start of something truly fantastic,” beams John Torode as he launches the new series of Celebrity MasterChef. Oh, the pathos. Little did Torode know that this would be his last MasterChef show, because a few months after filming ended he was sacked over a complaint that he used a racist term in the workplace. But here he is on screen, oblivious. It’s like seeing a pig contentedly wallowing in the mud, unaware that tomorrow he’s heading for the bacon slicer.
Torode is paired with Grace Dent, hired as a stand-in for Gregg Wallace when he was suspended for misconduct at the end of last year. And since then, she’s been installed as the full-time presenter of MasterChef, because Wallace has been sacked too. Dent remains a fan of Torode, saying in an interview over the weekend: “I absolutely adore John Torode. He is one of the kindest, most concerned, clever, thoughtful men that I know.” Perhaps she thinks his sacking is unfair, and that he was collateral damage in the BBC’s desire to cleanse the brand.
Whatever, they do work well together as a presenting duo. That’s because Torode clearly likes her, whereas one suspects he was only tolerating Wallace while cringing inside. But with yet another change coming up – Dent will host MasterChef proper next year, with the Irish chef Anna Haugh, which she has hailed as a welcome departure from the show’s “utter male energy” – you can’t help thinking: should they just scrap the whole thing and consign the show to history?
This celebrity version has just enough going for it to justify the brand’s continuing existence. But only just. After Celebrity Traitors, the line-up here is seriously underwhelming. Of course there’s a drag queen. The BBC will have one reading the news at this rate. This one is called Ginger Johnson, equipped with Rita Fairclough’s hairdo and a very loud fake laugh.
Drag queen Ginger Johnston is one of the contestants on the latest series of MasterChef – BBC Pictures
Then we have “Love Island reality star and influencer Uma Jammeh”. I had to look her up, because I’m ancient. Turns out she has nearly a million Instagram followers who watch her applying make-up and wearing clothes. To be fair to Jammeh, in the MasterChef kitchen she isn’t fazed by having to cook haggis.
Those other, ahem, household names are former Coronation Street actress Katie McGlynn, Paralympian-turned-actor Gaz Choudhry MBE (mentioning the MBE seems to be a requirement), and boyband member Antony Costa. Finally, someone I’ve heard of, although Costa is hard to recognise because he’s half the size he used to be.
The judges are overly kind – Torode describes Ummeh’s confit egg yolk as “not quite runny enough” when it clearly has the texture of a cannon ball. But what I liked about the episode was that none of them are especially brilliant cooks. There are no Strictly-style ringers.
Former Blue member Antony Costa picks up a whisk in place of a mic – BBC Pictures
Dent has appeared on the show for years as a guest critic and transfers easily to the role of presenter. She has a long-running podcast, Comfort Eating, in which she chats to people about food, so making small talk with the contestants is no problem. I like Dent. She’s unpretentious and her vibe has always been “woman who would wipe your tears in the nightclub loo then show you the way to the town’s best kebab shop”.
Her comments here lean into that. “It’s the ultimate after-clubbing comfort food. I want to feel like it’s 2am, we’ve been disco dancing and we’ve got sore feet,” she says of Johnson’s fried chicken with waffles. Or of Choudhry’s “deconstructed hummus” (an optimistically-titled pile of chickpeas): “It’s all a bit kumbaya, a bit day three at Glastonbury.” This makes a pleasant change from Gregg Wallace’s descriptions. The show is far better without Wallace on it. Torode will be a bigger loss.
Celebrity MasterChef is on BBC iPlayer and continues on BBC One, Tuesday 18 November at 8pm
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
