BBC Masterchef judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode - YouTube BBC Masterchef judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. The interactive transcript could not be loaded. Loading... Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Mar 26, 2012 BBC Masterchef judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode visited the new Oasis Dining Quarter at Meadowhall to decide which of the fabulous restaurants would win the Meadowhall Dining Challenge 2012. "Cooking doesn't get tougher than this" and the television cameras were there to film the competition. Category MasterChef judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace celebrate the show's 10th anniversary | Daily Star Series Two Champion, 2006 Former advertising agent Peter says his time on MasterChef made him do a career U-turn. “After 40 years in advertising, I’ve now been a chef for the last nine years,” he says.

“The programme always promises to change people’s lives and of course that’s exactly what it did.” Once the show had finished, Peter, 67, bagged a short-term chef job with Michel Roux Jr at Michelin-starred Le Gavroche and then worked in a country house hotel kitchen. He now operates as an independent chef. Peter, who is from East Sussex, has also written and published a book. He plans to be in the kitchen “as long as my feet will carry me”. WINNER: Steven Wallis and James Nathan scooped the coveted 'champion' title [PH] Steven Wallis Series Three Champion, 2007 Steven credits MasterChef for giving him the confidence to pursue a career in food. "Winning made me trust my intuition, my creative instinct, and that actually I can cook and I can cook damn well!" the 41 year old says. He says cooking is his "ultimate passion". He now has his own consultancy business called Tastebillion and works as a flavour and creative consultant for global brands and food companies. Single Steven, who lives in London, plans to open a restaurant in the south of France soon - watch this space!

James Nathan Series Four Champion, 2008 Former lawyer James admits that following his MasterChef victory he had some rather distressing times. “Hand on heart, there’s been some quite dark moments, it’s not a well-paid job, it’s very long hours, very gruelling – but being a criminal barrister you never made anyone happy,” the 40 year old says. "For me cooking is making people happy.” James, who is married with one child, has now opened a restaurant in his native Cornwall, which he hopes will become a "culinary destination". In the future James he hopes to develop a “sushi, oyster and champagne bar”. FOODIE: Previous winners include Mat Follas and Dhruv Baker [PH] Mat Follas Series Five Champion, 2009 Reminiscing about his time on MasterChef, Mat says a highlight was cooking at Noma in Denmark, which has been voted the best restaurant in the world.

“It made me realise that my hobby, which was foraging and eating foraged plants and things, was something that actually could be done at a really high level, and taught me an awful lot about it.” The 47 year old, who lives in Dorset with his wife and three children, says winning the show was "unexpected". Mat went on to open a restaurant in his home town but it closed six months ago. “It was very successful, we got a couple of AA rosettes and had mentions in the Good Food guide and the Michelin guide. With the economy as it still is in Dorset, keeping a fine dining restaurant going is a real challenge.” He now plans to open a small restaurant for weekends only, called Mat Follas at The Casterbridge. Dhruv Baker Series Six Champion, 2010 Mexico-born Dhruv has offered the new crop of amateur chefs some words of encouragement. “Cook the food your friends and family praise you for, not the food you think John and Gregg want you to cook.” The 37 year old says winning MasterChef was a life-changing experience.

“The long story short is that I get to cook for a living, which has always been my dream.” Dhruv, who now lives in London, has started a catering company, finished his first book Spice: Layers of Flavour, writes food articles for magazines and does some brand consultantcy. COOK: Tim Anderson and Shelina Permalloo have both gone on to write recipe books [PH] Tim Anderson Series Seven Champion, 2011 The heat of the MasterChef kitchen didn't scare Tim - he'd like to go back and do it all again! “I’d love to go back and show John and Gregg what I could do now – I’m so much better, so much better than I was!” When the show finished 29-year-old Tim, from London, continued cooking and now does it for a living. “I’ve been doing a lot of pop ups, and different events, some private dining, some recipe development for different companies, and most recently I’ve been finishing my first cookbook, which is called Nanban: Japanese Soul Food, and that’s coming out this year.” Tim says he’d tell the lastest crop of contestants to “have fun, and stay true to what makes you smile and gets you excited".

Shelina Permalloo Series Eight Champion, 2012 Shelina wowed judge Gregg with her Mauritian puddings, and revisited her Caribbean roots for inspiration for her first cookbook, Sunshine On A Plate. “Since winning MasterChef I spent about a year writing, testing and launching my first cookbook, which focuses on modern Mauritian food and includes a lot of traditional recipes that my mum taught me. It was quite nostalgic.” The 31 year old, who lives in London, now plans to open a restaurant serving Mauritian food. “That will make me really happy! I also plan to continue writing cookery books, travel and learn more about food and cooking techiniques.” COOK: Natalie Coleman is the reigning champion [PH] Natalie Coleman Series Nine Champion, 2013 Natalie is the current reigning champion, and since the show has finished she's been lucky enough to work with some of the nation's best chefs, including Tom Kerridge, Michel Roux Jr and Marcus Wareing. But as well as working in high-end kitchens, the 30 year old is keen to get kids in her local area of Hackney, London cooking.

“I run cookery lessons for children in half terms in East London and I’ve also been doing projects with Borough Market and Jamie’s 15, teaching the chefs there. I’ve also just finished my own cookbook, which is due out in October. It’s been busy!” Natalie says practice makes perfect and she “cooked every meal at least three times before putting them in front of John and Gregg". She says the key to winning is “cooking food that reflects you as a person, don’t try to be something you’re not!” MasterChef 10 starts tonight at 9pm on BBC One, and continues Thursday at 9pm and Friday at 8.30pm. MasterChef judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace don't spend time together out of work | Daily Mail Online comments They spend nearly sixty percent of the year together, but as soon as the knives and forks are put down on the MasterChef set, John Torode and Gregg Wallace go their separate ways. The judges - who have known each other for over 20 years - admitted that they never catch up after work, or have even been to each others' houses. 'I have never been invited. Look. We go to work. We do a job.

Then we part company.' John said on Alan Carr's Chatty Man. Not so close: MasterChef's John Torode and Gregg Wallace admitted that they never spend time together after work The cookery experts were on the Channel Four chat show to discuss the new series of the food show. Continuing the discussion on their off-screen relationship, John, 47, said: 'Usually Gregg disappears without saying goodbye. But we do spend about 200 days a year together. That’s enough. I like him but...' 48-year old Gregg weighed in too: “You can’t just keep that going in your private lives as well. We do share each others’ problems. Well, I tell John mine.' Don't dine with me! John told Alan Carr that he has never been invited round to Gregg's house for dinner Please sir can I have some more? Gregg and John have a laugh on the comedy chat show New series: MasterChef is set to return to the BBC Those problems may well include the self-proclaimed fat, bald bloke's love life.

RELATED ARTICLES Gregg Wallace, John Torode ('MasterChef') Gregg Wallace, John Torode ('MasterChef') We chat to cooking TV legends Gregg Wallace and John Torode about series six of MasterChef. Don't Miss Share July 29 2016 10:13 PM July 21 2016 9:19 PM Latest News Share 33 minutes ago 1:49 AM Share 2 hours ago 12:22 AM Share 2 hours ago 12:01 AM 3 hours ago 10:44 PM Must Read Share 14 hours ago 12:00 PM Share 8 hours ago 6:01 PM 17 February 2010 5:42 PM Shares Fans of dodgy chocolate fondants, two angry men shouting in kitchens and good food rejoice - MasterChef is back! The number one cookery show on the box returns for a sixth run tomorrow night and the dream team of Gregg "cooking doesn't get tougher than this" Wallace and John "it will change their life" Torode are back at the helm.

We caught up with John and Gregg over lunch to find out what we can expect. Advertisement - Continue Reading Below A lot of TV shows like to use celebrities as contestants, but the original MasterChef format is still very successful. Why do you think that is? Gregg: "Because it isn't celebrity TV! Because it is a real honest approach to a cookery competition. I think people can see that. We don't ask people if they are doing it for dead relatives, we don't ask them if their pets have died! All we care about is the quality of their soup." John: "You don't have to battle through the egos. These are real people who want to do something for themselves. These people are not here to further their TV careers. They are here because the show may change their life. It really does change their lives." Have there been more unemployed contestants this year following the recession? Gregg: "There's not that many people who have been made redundant, but there is a lot more people taking into consideration their career choices because of the recession.

We always get a lot of people on MasterChef who are after a change in direction." John: "I always find it weird in the UK people only suddenly realise that you don't have to hate the job you do. I couldn't believe, coming from Australia, the amount of people who hate what they do every day. How can you go to work and not love it? Why would you do that? It doesn't make sense. You should get up in the morning and do what you want to do. The issue is always chasing money, lifestyle and proving yourself to society, but if you love what you do - life is so much easier." Have there been any surprises in the latest series? Gregg: "The thing that has amazed me is the quality of the finalists. I know that we have said this before, but this isn't a strapline or me plugging the show. Honestly, I find it difficult to believe we will surpass the quality of this year's finalists. I expect at least two of them to become household names and culinary giants. I'm excited to see where they go from here, after the MasterChef light has been shined on them." Do you guys have proper rows about the contestants? John: "Yeah.

And we fight. We strip naked, get ourselves a large mud pool, we jump in it and the person who comes out with the least amount of hair in their hands wins. That's why he's bald." Gregg: "There's a lot of affection between John and I. We knew each other for 15 years before MasterChef. But we expect to fall out these days. In the first few series, I would take it personally - I remember John didn't speak to me once for two days during the first series. But now, even though we disagree with a certain amount of emotion, we recognise that it is not personal. I'm not saying, 'He should go through and you smell', I mean, 'I think you are making a mistake'." John: "I always have my back up line, 'That person is never cooking for me again'. I only use that once a series." Do you guys have to watch your weight with all the food you eat? John:"I reckon we consume on set, on a really busy day, between 3,500 and 4,000 calories. Easily." Gregg: "We lose weight between series, me and John.

Record us at the start of the series and then do it again at the end. Our days are longer and longer, we get less time to exercise and we're eating more food. Also, as you get nearer the final, the quality of the food goes up and I start having bigger and bigger mouthfuls!" Do you never feel mean when you bring down someone's dream of being a superstar chef? Gregg: "You have to be honest, otherwise they wouldn't respect you. We are not saying, 'We don't like your cheesecake, your hair's all rubbish, we don't like your taste in clothes'. It's not personal at all, we are just critiquing a plate of food. But people want to come on MasterChef to know how good they are. You can't lie to them." John: "The disappointment of course is for the person, whose family has told them all their life that they are a really good cook. It's only after we speak to them that they realise their children and wife have been lying to them all their life.

Which means from now on, every time their partner says, 'You look good today, darling', they know they are lying to them." Gregg: "Most people cook for people who love them, and people who love them tell them how great they are. I used to do rubbish pieces of metalwork at school and my mum would say it was great and stick it on the mantelpiece." What's the worst thing you have eaten in the current series? Gregg: "Cheesecake with salt rather than sugar. What was it that you gagged at?" John: "A mushroom floating in tomato scum with blue cheese vomit on the top. That's the only time I have ever gagged on anything. I mean, we will eat anything apart from raw chicken. Sometimes you can be surprised, so we always try things, but this... wholly living mother of God, it was vile! The poor woman actually thought it tasted good, which was the mad thing." What mistakes that contestants regularly make annoy you the most? Gregg: "The only thing that annoys me is people's use of jargon. I hate that. I hate it. It's only done to impress their mates down the pub.

It used to be that everything has 'off' at the end of it. People didn't fry it, they fried it off. People didn't cut it, they cut it off. Everything was cutting through everything else. And as soon as I hear the words 'rustic style', alarm bells start ringing in my ears. I know it just means scruffy." John: "The word 'cutting through' gets right on my tits. 'What I'm going to do is use the lemon to cut through the sweetness'. No, you're not, it's called a balance! It doesn't cut through anything." Gregg: "One bloke was cooking all his veg at the same time and I said, 'Mate, they take different amounts of time'. And he said, 'That's perfect, some will be soft and others will have a rustic crunch'. A rustic crunch! What on earth is a rustic crunch!" Which one of you gets the most fanmail? Gregg:"How would we know? Do you think we live together?

We're not Laurel and Hardy." John: "Darling, your post has arrived!" Gregg: "I did ask the MasterChef live event in Birmingham for a show of hands whether people thought I was better looking than John and quite a few went up." John: "That was in Birmingham, though." Gregg: "And they were probably all p*ssed by then." MasterChef returns tomorrow night at 8.30pm on BBC One John Torode and Gregg Wallace on what it takes to win MasterChef Rosie Millard 1:45 PM, 26 March 2014 Do you think you have what it takes to win MasterChef? Will you be watching the latest series thinking, “Hey, that could so easily be me, beating that egg, frying that meat, slaying John and Gregg into sobs of joy with my masterful soufflé?” Well, if you have MasterChef ambitions in your soul, then read on. And understand what you must have among the crucial battery of implements in your kitchen cupboard, if you ever want to be within a shot of hoisting that frankly rather bizarre trophy.

I’m having lunch with John Torode and Gregg Wallace, the seasoned, chatty and utterly incorruptible judges of MasterChef, who are going to give me the inside steer on how to triumph. Torode, the restaurant chef who brings more than a soupçon of Aussie bloke-ish charm to the programme, gestures across the table. “Look at what’s on this table now. Just 12 years ago, none of these foods would have been here. Look at what we have: couscous; sushi; houmous; edamame beans! The evolution of food is amazing. Twelve years from now, who knows what it’s going to be like.” Wallace, the former greengrocer whose business acumen has taken a bit of a battering of late, but who has a love of silly jokes (and whose new slim frame belies his lifelong love of puddings), nods his head sagely. “We love innovation in food on the programme. I love to be surprised. I used to be conservative, but bit by bit over the past decade on the show I’ve grown to love change.” Torode agrees. “Even now, nobody in Western Europe knows anything about, say Eastern European food. Or Chinese!

How many times have you eaten salted jellyfish? Last month I was in India eating salted pickled bracken, with lentils. Delicious.” So, first point to any potential winner: be adventurous. Get going with the pickled bracken. But not too adventurous. Mad combinations of food that have no place in any recipe, and make people’s stomachs turn, are never going to work. “You need to be able to see an ingredient, and use it to build a dish in your head,” says Torode. “Contestants who can taste food and feel it in their mouth without actually cooking it are the ones that win,” echoes Wallace. “Give me three ingredients,” commands Torode. All right, I say. How about... ginger, apple and chicken? The two judges look at me as if I have just come bottom of the MasterChef class and don’t even deserve to wear the apron, let alone hold the prize. There is a long pause. “Well, you would never put apple with chicken,” says Torode. “It’s not going to work. Ginger and apple go together. Ginger and chicken go together, but ginger, apple and chicken will never work together.

Two of the ingredients are watery and one is just... well, it’s chicken.” Clearly I am hopeless at building a dish in my head. Wallace shakes his head in despair. “That is such a common mistake on MasterChef. It happens over and over again. You picked three ingredients. People think that because ginger goes with each one, it will all work together, but it won’t. Someone may well put together pork, apple and custard. Because apple goes with each. But they haven’t considered pork and custard, have they? Are you following me?” I miserably admit that no, I have never considered a dish involving pork and custard. All right, let’s leave the ingredients for a minute. What about the actual skills? Apart from building dishes in your head, what do you need to be able to do on MasterChef in order to win? “You need to know how to make basic sauces,” says Wallace. “How to make a roux, how to make an hollandaise, how to make a decent roast and how to make a pie. If you can do all of those things, you will have a decent arsenal of skills at your disposal.

But in order to win you also have to have an ability to produce something that eight out of ten people like. Lots of people can conjure up flavour and texture combinations.” He shakes his head sadly. “They are not always... lovely.” So, second point. You have to be able to cook something that most people will want to eat. What should you avoid? Fish and fruit, according to Wallace, is a bad way to proceed. Bar mackerel and goosberries, or lemon. Everything else just makes the judges go “bluurgh”. “Fish and fruit comes up regularly, with disastrous results,” says Wallace. “The other thing is presenting something that is raw. Especially if the outside is coloured, because then you can’t see that inside it is undercooked. It’s not until you cut into it that you see its heart is still beating.” The judges don’t seem to go for things that look simply ghastly, either. “In this series we have one dish, a dessert, which is declared by a guest as being similar to a tumour. A thumping, humping, bleeding tumour,” says Torode, shaking his head. “All I will say about another one,” he continues, “is...

duck and banana.” “Duck and banana,” echoes Wallace. “Duck and banana,” says Torode again. “Duck and banana,” choruses Wallace. They go on in this vein for a few minutes. Eventally, Torode and Wallace weary of chanting “duck and banana”. Torode turns to me with a helpless look: “The contestant honestly thought it was a good idea.” So, to summarise. You have to be innovative, but avoid fish and fruit. And duck and fruit. You have to be able to see a dish in your head, but it must be a nice-tasting one. Preferably an Eastern European one. And you have to be cool under pressure. What you don’t have to be, in order to win MasterChef, is good at taking orders. You must be a leader, not a follower, say Wallace and Torode. “If you do well in the kitchen round, and the chef loves you, you probably won’t win MasterChef,” opines Torode, “because you haven’t bucked the system, you haven’t changed the mould. What you are doing is what they tell you to do.

You are a great follower, but [to win] you have to be doing something individual and different and you have to push the boundaries.” Equally, please do not view winning MasterChef as the way in to something else, such as opening your own little restaurant. You may well be on the way to something else, but that something else might not be turning into the next Gordon Ramsay. “If you win MasterChef, it doesn’t mean you are going to be a brilliant chef,” says Torode. “The programme is a springboard for someone who wants to change their life, but not necessarily for running their own restaurant. “It’s like the difference between someone who plays the piano because they love to play the piano, and a concert pianist who does the same piece of music over and over again. That’s what you have to do when you are a chef. You have to make a crème brûlée every single day on a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday for three or four years. A chef has to be able to replicate the same dishes over and over again, whereas a cook on MasterChef is doing something different all the time.” How about getting round the judges? Might that be a good strategy?

I know that Torode is pretty fond of Asian food, and Wallace loves his puds. Surely a successful method might be to play to these known qualities, right? Wrong. “People never understand there are five points to Asian food,” announces Torode. “Sweet, sour, salty, hot and pungent. And unless you grew up there and it’s your food, then few people will be able to do it. And with Gregg, if you are going to cook a dessert, well, it has to be the best dessert he has ever tasted.” Wallace smiles. “I love cranachan. It’s a Scottish dessert. But I have had nine of them so far on the series.” Something simple might be a good way to these practised tasters’ hearts. “One of the best dishes I have ever eaten,” says Torode dreamily, “was a bowl of pasta with some minced-up red mullet through it. It was absolutely delicious. It looked just like a bowl of pasta but it was outstanding.” So there you have it. Be daring. Be imaginative. Don’t follow orders in the kitchen. Know how to make a roux. Avoid Scottish puds and Asian food. And never put duck with banana.

MasterChef judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode reveal they have never been to each others' houses - Daily Record John Torode and Gregg Wallace on the Alan Carr show (Photo: CH4) Share Get daily updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again laterInvalid Email LIKE fish and chips or bangers and mash, Gregg Wallace and John Torode are rarely seen without each other – on screen, at least. But it seems that is where the MasterChef judges’ relationship ends, after John, 47, revealed they have never been to each others’ houses despite knowing each other for 20 years. He said: “I’ve never been invited. Look, we go to work, we do a job, then we part company. Usually Gregg disappears without saying goodbye. But we do spend about 200 days a year together. That’s enough. I like him, but...” Co-host Gregg, 48, added: “You can’t just keep that going in your private lives as well. We do share each others’ problems.

Well, I tell John mine.” There were rumours the pair did not get on well after they admitted in 2011 they once argued so badly they had to go for a drinking session in the middle of filming to clear the air. The foodies made their latest comments while promoting the new BBC series of MasterChef on Alan Carr: Chatty Man. And in the interview, on Channel 4 at 10pm tonight, Gregg also moaned he was frustrated by some contestants’ dreams. He said: “What does bother me is people coming on saying they want to run a restaurant that serves 10 people by the sea. Quite how they are going to make a living I have no idea.” And he revealed the pair love eating junk food too. Gregg said: “I have never understood why the love of roast quail would exclude the love of a Big Mac.” Like us on Facebook Most Read Most Recent Most Read Most Recent John Torode and Gregg Wallace on Celebrity MasterChef - Telegraph John Torode and Gregg Wallace on Celebrity MasterChef Jamie Oliver beware: the men from MasterChef are declaring war on ‘food evangelists’.

John Torode (left) and Gregg Wallace prepare for a new series of MasterChef Photo: BBC Comments As the fifth series of Celebrity MasterChef gets under way, it doesn’t seem to have occurred to its hosts that the most famous people in the studio kitchen are no longer the sitcom actors or javelin throwers frantically trying to whip up a garlic mayonnaise in under five minutes: they’re the judges. ‘I had people tugging at my shirt,’ says Gregg Wallace – ‘the bald, fat one’, in his own words – incredulously mimicking the gesture, still bemused by the overenthusiastic reaction of fans at a publicity event. Sitting next to him, his co-host John Torode couldn’t look more relaxed on the sunny terrace of his London restaurant, Smiths of Smithfield, but he admits that for the first Celebrity MasterChef, in 2006, he felt nervous to be dealing with people he recognised ‘from the television’. Since then, the pair have become famous in their own right for breathing fresh life into the MasterChef format and serving up sharp – but never vindictive – criticism of the contestants’ culinary triumphs and flops.

Nearly six million people tuned in for the finale of the most recent series, an impressive turnaround for a programme that was dropped in 2001. And if we have now become a nation that watches cookery programmes on TV instead of actually cooking, Wallace and Torode feel no urge to change that. ‘I hate food evangelists,’ says Wallace, stoutly. ‘It’s not up to us how people eat. It’s all well and good telling people to buy more expensive food but the idea of cheap, mass-produced food and nobody starving is pretty good.’ Clearly no Jamie Oliver in the making, Wallace was born in Peckham in 1964 and started his career selling vegetables at a market stall before building up a multimillion-pound greengrocers business. And, even if we now guzzle more Turkey Twizzlers than greens, 45-year-old Torode is convinced that the British attitude towards food has improved in the 20 years since he moved here from his native Australia to work as a chef. ‘At the beginning, everything was brown. Brown meat with brown jelly, brown roast potatoes – not crispy and golden, just brown,’ he remembers with a wince. ‘Food was about sustenance.

But now people have learned to enjoy it.’ Related Articles Your dinner – prepared by a MasterChef winner 16 Feb 2011 Not everything, alas, that is served up in the MasterChef kitchen can be enjoyed. The first episode of the new Celebrity series features a roux sauce of such jelly-like consistency that it can be cut with a knife, while Torode remembers trying a tomato and blue cheese dish in the last series which made him gag. ‘It was a fungal, swimmy, sludgy mess. It had the texture of a child’s running nose.’ Wallace, who enjoys teasing his co-host, joins in: ‘I looked on in horror as you shoved the whole thing in your gob.’ It can’t help the judging experience that, by the time the tasting is filmed, ‘every plate is cold’, as Wallace puts it. At least they know which dishes succeed because as soon as there is a pause in filming, ‘The camera crews descend like a pack of ravenous wolves. The best plates are licked clean.’ When the hosts are doling out their criticism afterwards, they have to tread carefully. ‘I once told a white South African woman that her food was as weak as the Rand, and she complained of racism.

Now I watch what I say,’ says Wallace. The two also admit that they are not allowed to tell contestants to add salt to their dishes because of health guidelines. The fact that the hosts focus their criticism very specifically on the food, without trying to undermine or humiliate the contestants, means that MasterChef is one of the few reality TV shows that does not leave an unpleasant aftertaste. In the new series, a whole gamut of ‘celebrities’ – from the Olympic athlete Colin Jackson to the presenter Jennie Bond and the curiously ubiquitous ‘TV personality’ Christine Hamilton – will vie to impress the judges. Challenges include the ‘invention test’, in which contestants have to invent a dish from an array of ingredients, and the ‘pressure test’ of cooking lunch at a busy restaurant. ‘Cooking is a great leveller,’ says Torode. ‘You can be a sports star, an actor, an entrepreneur, anything, but cooking strips it all away.’ This begs the question of why celebrities are needed to add tinsel to a format that does perfectly well without them. The two become a little more defensive. ‘People know these characters for a reason.

It’s fascinating to see the real them, to watch how they react under pressure,’ Wallace responds, after a pause. They are much happier when we return to their favourite topic: food. I ask what seems a straightforward question – if you had one last meal in your life, what would it be? Wallace immediately wants to know if he can travel back in time to eat it; Torode if he can travel anywhere in the world. ‘Eating is not simply eating,’ he says. Once I have given them free rein, Wallace decides that he wants ‘to be a child eating my gran’s roast lamb with mint I picked from the garden’. Returning to the present, he waxes lyrical about the cooking of his fiancée Heidi Brown, a teacher he met on the social networking website Twitter: ‘She can’t believe how much I love her cooking – shepherd’s pie, lasagne, spaghetti bolognese.’ As for Torode, he ponders for a while then concludes: ‘For me it would be sitting on a beach, under a blue sky, with sand under my toes and a big bowl of spicy Asian food. Perfect.

You could shoot me right there.’ Wallace glances at him quickly, then asks: ‘Can I have your watch?’ - Celebrity MasterChef is on BBC One on Wednesday at 8.00pm 'MasterChef' Gregg Wallace, John Torode Q&A: 'Auditions made us sick' 'MasterChef' Gregg Wallace, John Torode Q&A: 'Auditions made us sick' MasterChef judges chat to Digital Spy about feeling sick, Mary Berry and Twitter.

Don't Miss Share December 08 2016 12:01 AM Share December 08 2016 12:01 AM December 04 2016 8:51 AM Latest News Share 1 hour ago 2:49 PM Share 2 hours ago 1:15 PM Share 6 hours ago 9:50 AM 8 hours ago 7:00 AM Must Read Share December 28 2016 2:00 PM Share 19 hours ago 8:27 PM Share 8 hours ago 7:00 AM 13 January 2012 9:00 AM Shares Dig out your spatula and dust off your ramekins - MasterChef is almost back! Yes, everyone's favourite cooking challenge returns next week for more culinary catastrophes and divine dining. To celebrate, we had to catch up with everyone's favourite judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode! Read on to find out what they had to say about Mary Berry, feeling sick during the audition stages and why they want to visit the BBC Live Lounge...

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Gregg Wallace So, MasterChef is coming back! Can it get any bigger and better than last year? "That's a good question! A really, really good question. I think it can be equally good - I'm not sure it can get better." But you think you'll be able to keep that high standard and keep people tuning in? "Oh, I don't know about making telly! I only know about the food that's being produced." MasterChef was criticised a bit for its X Factor -style auditions last year - what do you think about that? "I don't really know about making telly - I just turn up and taste things. I really don't know. I mean, it seemed the same to me - there I was in a room tasting things, telling people whether they were going home or staying in the competition. It just didn't seem any different. "What we've done this year though that I really like - I really, really like - is we did a blind tasting of 70 plates over two days and decided therein.

And I really like that because we didn't see the contestants and you got to taste everybody's food over two days so it was very easy to make a decision on which 20 should stay." That way you're making your decisions based solely on the food, then. "Absolutely. Yeah, you can't be swayed by any other factors at all - it simply is the plate. Yeah, absolutely." You said you ate 70 dishes over two days - did you feel a little bit sick? "Actually, John did. John said it took him three days to recover. I just remember rolling out of there. I was just an enormous belly with arms and legs sticking out." Do you miss John when you're not working together? "We regularly meet up for dinner when we're not working together. I do, yeah. We're properly good mates, yeah, we are." Advertisement - Continue Reading Below So what challenges are in store for the contestants this series? "We're not allowed to tell you! No, we're not allowed to tell you." Okay... are they going to be difficult? "There are going to be some really tricky tests. In some very smart places." And some very discerning people to cook for?

"Always!" The show's been going for such a long time now - what can cooks do to blow you away in the first round? "It's always the same - you just have to do something delicious. The best food is food that delivers a surprise. You look at it, it looks pretty, but you think you know what it's going to taste like and actually they take you to a level that you didn't expect. That, I think, is food at its best." What did you think of that 'Buttery Biscuit Base' single making it in to the top 40? "I thought it was absolutely amazing. I love it, I really, really love it. In fact, I want to go and do an acoustic version in the BBC Live Lounge." So you're feeling like a bit of a pop culture icon now then? "Yeah! Gregg Wallace, John Torode, top 40 recording artists. Who would ever have believed it? Fantastic." You're on Twitter - do you read comments about yourself and the show? "Yeah! I try to reply to as many people as I can. I spend between an hour and two hours a day on Twitter." So interacting with fans is important to you? "Yeah.

Yeah, interacting with fans actually ended up with me meeting my wife! I met my wife on Twitter." John Torode © BBC Pictures Do you think MasterChef can get any bigger and better than last year? "I think MasterChef will continue to evolve and will always surprise and will always get better and always be exciting and the day it stops being exciting, the day it doesn't get better, it's not bigger, is, I suppose, the day that you know that's it then. We go into the MasterChef world of... I don't know what!" Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Gregg was telling us that you ate 70 dishes over two days... and felt a bit ill. "Well, yeah! I mean, I don't know if you've ever done 70 dishes in two days..." Erm, no! "No! I felt a little bit... yeah, a bit woozy, a bit queasy, a bit ooh, a bit ahh." Was it getting hard to judge by dish 70? "No, not at all. As far as palate's concerned, it's not an issue whatsoever. It really wasn't me - it was my digestive system.

It was the speed in which it could actually digest the food and actually get through so that was the hard part." Do you watch international MasterChefs, like the ones from Australia or the USA ? "I watch a little bit of Australia's stuff but I haven't watched any of the US stuff because I don't have any of those box things!" Is the British version better? "I think every single country for which it's been done is individual in its own way. Israel, they actually film the final live. Indonesia, I don't know if I'd be able to understand what's really going on! I've just done the final in Holland and that was quite good fun. "I think every single version has its own nuances for the region that's playing to its audience. America is big and brash and so is Australia, but they're all doing one thing, and that is finding great cooks. So yeah, they're great. They're bloody brilliant. But of course Gregg and I are the best. Don't forget we are the originals. We are the originals and we are the best!" What are your pet hates if you're eating out in a restaurant? "I don't really have pet hates.

If I go to a restaurant the last thing I want to do is sit with somebody I don't like because then the food always tastes awful. If you go to a restaurant and you go with people you like, your food will always taste really good. "I think restaurants and family homes and stuff are about conversation and about chatting. Food is there because you want to enjoy it and have fun with it but I'm not there to study it - I'm there to spend time with my friends." So you're one of the best judges of cooking - who do you think is the best celebrity chef? Jamie? Gordon? Nigella? "Oh, I can't comment on that. I can't comment on that, it's not fair. It really isn't fair. There are various people over time that have come and gone and done various things, but they do the whole spectrum. If there's anyone on television right now I have absolute utter respect for as far as cooking's concerned, it's... [Gregg calls over: "Gregg Wallace!"] "One is Gregg Wallace. Bloody amazing. The other one is Mary Berry. I mean, what an absolute legend.

There is a woman with a soft voice, a lovely nature, teaching people how to do something with real, real pride. I think the Great British Bake-Off is great." Will we see your catchphrases again? "'Cooking doesn't get tougher than this' is Gregg's catchphrase. Mine is, 'Whoever wins, it will change their life'. And that will continue. Whoever wins MasterChef, it will change their life." Do you keep in touch with former contestants? "Well, we see them because of the live shows. We see them because they come every single year to have a lunch or dinner with us. We get to see them and have a talk with them. Absolutely. You're not going to have somebody who's been with you that long suddenly disappear." We tried to get some information out of Gregg - can you tell us what sort of challenges the contestants will face this year? "If I told you what sort of challenges the contestants were going to go through this year I'd literally have both my legs chopped off and then they would take my feet and they would insert each foot into one nostril until such a time as all the legs were straight down inside my head, like something from a Monty Python song.

I can't tell you. All I can tell you is it's going to be unbelievably fantastic." MasterChef returns on Tuesday (January 17) at 9pm on BBC One. Gregg Wallace - Mirror 3am Gregg Wallace Likeable Londoner Gregg is now a main course on British television having served up years of memorable reactions when tasting food on MasterChef. He started out as a greengrocer and progressed to radio on the BBC Radio 4 show veg Talk. His love of food saw him graduate to the status of restaurateur, but he's most familiar as the face of MasterChef - in its many guises - as well as Strictly Come Dancing, Saturday Kitchen, Follow That Tomato and The Money Programme. Interview: Gregg Wallace and John Torode on the MasterChef final - Telegraph TV and Radio Interview: Gregg Wallace and John Torode on the MasterChef final On the day of its final, the contest’s judges tell Clive Morgan why it’s the antidote to celebrity TV chefs.

Gregg Wallace and John Torode with the three finalists Photo: BBC 6:17PM GMT 25 Feb 2009 Tonight, after six weeks of slicing, dicing and grilling, the fifth series of the revived MasterChef comes to a close as the 2009 winner is revealed. But before the finalists – Andy Oliver, Mat Follas and Chris Gates – can claim the crown they must impress the judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace with a three-course meal in a cook-off. “This year has been the most exciting competition so far,” restaurateur John Torode declares. “Every year the contestants just get better and better, which means that the judging becomes a lot more exciting.” That excitement has helped attract many viewers, with 4.5?million people tuning in to each episode on BBC Two, a figure similar to that of BBC One’s con-man drama series Hustle. MasterChef is also reportedly one of the top 10 programmes recorded on personal video recorders, such as Sky+. Torode – who owns Smiths of Smithfields restaurant in London – says this success is due to the way that the series appeals to a broad audience.

Related Articles Mat Follas wins MasterChef 27 Feb 2009 “MasterChef’s about real people and for real people,” he says. “It’s aspirational and inspirational. There’s nothing snobbish about it.” For Wallace it’s the people themselves who make the programme. “What I love is the fact that you get to see people grow as personalities; you get to know them and what it’s taken for them to get there,” he says. MasterChef’s popularity this time around, however, could also be due to the financial crisis. “There are two things that happen when there is a recession,” says Wallace, who made his name as a greengrocer. “One, more people watch telly and two, people buy more raw foodstuffs, instead of processed foods. People are being frugal. They want to spend less on going out and cook at home more. That benefits our show.” Torode, 43, and Wallace, 44, also play a big part in the show’s success.

There is an almost guilty pleasure in watching Torode sampling mouthfuls of food with tears of delight in his eyes or listening to Wallace’s grunts of satisfaction as the pair masticate their way through the dishes of the series’ 132 competitors. “We taste everything,” says Torode. “By the time we get to the end we have tasted 2,000 dishes.” But Torode and Wallace don’t always agree. “John is too hard on a lot of contestants,” says Wallace. “No I am not,” retorts Torode. “The point is that I’m not willing to put someone through who’s not good enough to work in a professional kitchen.” Differences of opinions like this have led to lengthy debates, some that have lasted for hours. “We can both be bloody-minded about who we want,” Wallace explains. “The winner is our choice. And because we have to make that decision we have our own heartfelt feelings about who should go through.” Despite these feelings, Torode and Wallace do always agree on the eventual winners. Well, almost always. There is one person who Wallace thinks should have won that Torode doesn’t.

“I think that in the first ever Celebrity MasterChef [in 2006] we got it wrong,” Wallace muses. “I think that Hardeep Singh Kohli is the winner of MasterChef that never was.” Torode, however, sticks by the actual winner, the former England rugby union scrum-half Matt Dawson. Thanks to its sudden-death eliminations, in which contestants can be dismissed after cooking just one dish, MasterChef can seem like other reality TV contests, such as The X Factor or The Apprentice. However, none of the contestants is humiliated or yelled at. “We’re not Alan Sugar or Simon Cowell,” Wallace says. “On MasterChef the critique always is about the food.” One thing that the MasterChef judges do agree on is that they don’t like food campaigns fronted by celebrity chefs. “I don’t think a 12-month TV campaign really changes what anyone thinks,” Torode says. “This takes time.” “I think that Jamie Oliver did more good for the nation’s cooking when he was just cooking than by telling us what chickens we should eat,” Wallace adds. Some celebrity chefs and their restaurants have been affected by the recession.

MasterChef, on the other hand, appears to be in good shape to survive these lean times. The final of MasterChef is on tonight on BBC Two at 8.00pm

Question: John Torode and Gregg Wallace are the judges on which TV programme?
Answer: Masterchef