Celebrity MasterChef, review: tired, dated, but still exerts a vice-like grip
As frontwoman of Eighties power balladeers T’Pau, Carol Decker topped the charts for five weeks in 1987 with China in Your Hand. You’d think this would be a gift to Celebrity MasterChef (BBC One), but not once when Decker was holding crockery did anyone point out that she had "china in her hand”. Honestly, I despair of my fellow humans.
Decker was joined in the kitchen for this first heat by actor Keith Allen, rugby-player-turned-pundit Martin Bayfield, singer Josh Cuthbert (a member of boyband Union J) and TV presenter Michelle Ackerley.
First they faced the mystery box of ingredients and had 50 minutes to whip up, as Aussie judge John Torode called it, “a grade plade-a-food” from its contents.
Two of the quintet opted to cook chilli con carne. Decker’s was decent but Ackerley’s rice stuck together in a glutinous lump. “You know you’ve overcooked your rice when you offer your guests a slice of it,” leered Humpty Dumpty lookalike judge Gregg Wallace.
The celebrities then tackled the challenge of cooking in professional kitchens for paying customers. At a towering 6ft 10in tall, Bayfield was in constant danger of braining himself on an extractor hood. Allen struggled with presentation, breaking his cod fillets and slopping on sauce like a generous school dinner lady. “It looks like a bomber has dropped my food onto the plates,” he cheerfully admitted.
All five clearly relished the exhilarating, adrenaline-pumping buzz of a busy service, even though they were sweating like Pavarotti in a heatwave.
For their final test of culinary creativity, it was back to the MasterChef kitchen to prepare a two-course menu of their own design. Bayfield and Decker were the comfortable standouts, even though Decker cooked a chocolate fondant dessert - a cookery show cliché to rank alongside raspberry coulis, pea purée and "deconstructed" puds.
Cuthbert’s ambitious flavours saw him safely through, so it was between Allen and Ackerley who would suffer the ignominy of being sent home first. Ackerley was duly dispatched for the twin crimes of serving “mulchy" lettuce and a fish pie with too much mash (is there such a thing?).
It was a relief when Allen survived by a silvery, stubbly whisker because he was by far the most entertaining contestant, accompanied by a permanent frisson of danger. It felt that at any moment, he could swear loudly and storm out of the kitchen. And frankly, who hasn’t felt like that?
MasterChef has now been on-air for 28 years in total and this is the 13th celebrity contest. Unsurprisingly, it’s looking a little tired. At times it feels like Torode has rolled in from an all-night shift cooking in a busy restaurant, while Wallace’s waistcoat-clad gastro-geezer schtick is wearing as thin as his non-existent hair. Even the font, that Eurostile typeface which appears in the logo, captions and credits, looks a decade out of date.
Yet somehow the cooking still exerts a fiendish grip. This programme is nothing if not consistent: smartly edited, slickly paced, hypnotically compelling. Slice of rice, anyone? Mulchy lettuce leaf? Suit yourselves.
