PRESSURE cooking!

GREGG WALLACE on what to expect as more famous faces pull on their aprons...

- VICTORIA WILSON

CELEBRITY MASTERCHEF

WED-FRI, TIMES VARY, BBC1 COOKERY

Chopping boards at the ready! BBC1 serves up an 18th helping of its ever popular cookery competition Celebrity MasterChef this week.

The new run will see a fresh batch of 20 famous faces (see our guide, below) pull on their aprons and showcase their culinary skills in a series of challenges in a quest to impress returning judges Gregg Wallace and John Torode.

‘I love watching people, celebrities or otherwise, develop a passion for cooking,’ says Gregg, 58, as he joins TV Times for an exclusive interview. ‘You’ve got to be prepared to roll your sleeves up, get stuck in and soak up information like a sponge. It’s not the best cook at the beginning who wins, it’s who learns the quickest.’

Here, Gregg tells us what’s on the menu this time…

Are you pleased the celeb version of the show is back for another outing?

Yes, it’s really good fun, and because these people are used to the camera, for most of them, the TV studio isn’t a scary place, so they’re fairly chilled out. But some of them cannot cook at all, so we get undercooked dishes, strange concoctions and lots of disasters!