I'm not sure I like Celebrity Masterchef (8pm, BBC1, 28 July). Perhaps it's because, unlike the plebs, the slebs are known quantities (some of them anyway) and less interested in food or cooking than giving their sorry little careers a boost.
What makes the craven publicity-seeking even less palatable is the fact that even the non-thesps are prepared to have a stab at acting. Witness former Olympic decathlete Dean Macey, who seems to have taken a leaf out of Liz McClarnon's book.
The winsome ex-Atomic Kitten-cum reality TV star won the contest in 2008 despite supposedly having next-to-no cooking skills at the outset only an interest in fine dining cultivated by eating out a lot. I remember my chin itching at the time and so it was again when I heard Macey protest his inexperience in the kitchen.
Apparently, he'd only started cooking "last Monday". So what do you suppose his first dish was? Home-made fish and chips? A hearty stew? A chilli? Nope. Pork Almondine. Novice cook, my arse! And sorry, Dean, but no amount of tentative pronunciation will convince me otherwise.
Wallace and Torode bought it, though. Macey got fast-tracked through to the final round, while the other four had to fight it out for the remaining three places. Not that they put up much of a fight.
Tasked with identifying the ingredients in a Venison Wellington, none of them identified the meat, all bar one thinking it was beef (not entirely surprisingly but the other one thought it was duck!). The BBC's former royal correspondent Jennie Bond (note they're all 'formers') and Marcus Patrick (no, me neither) seemed relieved to progress no further, their rictus smiles clearly paining them by this point.
And Wallace and Torode seemed to be finding it equally hard to maintain the façade, their exchanges so scripted and joyless I started to believe the rumour that the reason they're never in the same shot when debating the participants is that they hate each other.
The one saving grace was that Dick Strawbridge, presenter of It's not Easy Being Green and the only one who seemed to have a genuine interest in food, made it through. As, predictably, did Macey. Funny that.
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What makes the craven publicity-seeking even less palatable is the fact that even the non-thesps are prepared to have a stab at acting. Witness former Olympic decathlete Dean Macey, who seems to have taken a leaf out of Liz McClarnon's book.
The winsome ex-Atomic Kitten-cum reality TV star won the contest in 2008 despite supposedly having next-to-no cooking skills at the outset only an interest in fine dining cultivated by eating out a lot. I remember my chin itching at the time and so it was again when I heard Macey protest his inexperience in the kitchen.
Apparently, he'd only started cooking "last Monday". So what do you suppose his first dish was? Home-made fish and chips? A hearty stew? A chilli? Nope. Pork Almondine. Novice cook, my arse! And sorry, Dean, but no amount of tentative pronunciation will convince me otherwise.
Wallace and Torode bought it, though. Macey got fast-tracked through to the final round, while the other four had to fight it out for the remaining three places. Not that they put up much of a fight.
Tasked with identifying the ingredients in a Venison Wellington, none of them identified the meat, all bar one thinking it was beef (not entirely surprisingly but the other one thought it was duck!). The BBC's former royal correspondent Jennie Bond (note they're all 'formers') and Marcus Patrick (no, me neither) seemed relieved to progress no further, their rictus smiles clearly paining them by this point.
And Wallace and Torode seemed to be finding it equally hard to maintain the façade, their exchanges so scripted and joyless I started to believe the rumour that the reason they're never in the same shot when debating the participants is that they hate each other.
The one saving grace was that Dick Strawbridge, presenter of It's not Easy Being Green and the only one who seemed to have a genuine interest in food, made it through. As, predictably, did Macey. Funny that.
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