‘I am very thrilled to see MasterChef on our screens’

Former contestants rally around the cooking show in crisis

- LYDIA SPENCER-ELLIOTT

Former MasterChef winners have rallied around the BBC series as it faces criticism for returning to screens, with the new episodes featuring sacked hosts Gregg Wallace and John Torode.

MasterChef champion Thomas Frake, who won the series in 2020, and Greek chef Irini Tzortzoglou, who was crowned in 2019, have both said they support the BBC's decision to air the controversial episodes.

“The past few months have been very, very sad,” Tzortzoglou, who released the cookbook Under the Olive Tree and began hosting culinary retreats across Europe after her MasterChef success, told The Independent.

“If I had gone through all that – the highs and lows – then somebody said to me, ‘Well actually, we may not show the three months of your life when you spilled your blood and guts to see how far you could go,’ I’d be very unhappy. I’m very thrilled to see it on our screens.”

Frake, owner of The Silks pub in Marlborough, Wiltshire, credits his time on MasterChef with his subsequent success in the hospitality industry. The chef noted the programme is a “huge operation” and said pulling the series would have affected the livelihoods of both the contestants and production crew.