MasterChef? It’s enough to make you choke on your ready meal

IT WAS the MasterChef semi-final on Friday night. ‘It’s like the 100m at the Olympics,’ said contestant Greg, who usually works in IT. No it’s not! It’s a butter-battered, fat-streaked crawl through offal and microcress past the finishing post. At least Nawamin, a doctor (why, if you can save lives, do you want to eat things that have been killed?), was the most honest of the lot, presenting his swimmer crab as a pinned exhibit in a biology lesson.

‘I’ve had lots of crabs in my life,’ said John, dead-pan. ‘We want exceptional!’ yelled presenter Greg, not bothering to add: ‘And please, nobody scratch your heads, wipe the sweat from your faces with your hands, then touch the food.’

There is no invention in this competition, even in the invention test. They all cook duck, fondant potatoes and scallops, and that’s about it.

I’m reminded of Gourmet Night at Fawlty Towers: ‘If you don’t like duck, you’re rather stuck!’ And chutney, a microdot, always. Who still eats chutney? Who likes pickled vegetables? No one!

And did you see the judges on Friday night? Fay Maschler has l ost all her eyelashes, having clearly spent too much time reviewing the theatre that is crepes suzette at various posh eateries around London, while Tracey MacLeod needs a good night’s sleep and Zoloft.

Eating out at fine dining rest aurants obviously doesn’t make you happy, but isn’t that the whole point? The thing about MasterChef is that it’s the culinary equivalent of The World’s Most Amazing Houses, or Gardeners’ World. No one’s house really looks like that: when the cameras depart there are Biros in jars and coats at the base of staircases.

NO ONE who gardens h a s Monty Don’s nonchalant demeanour: we are all swearing at sticky weeds and the fact we forgot t o r enew our garden waste subscription with the council. We all know, don’t we, that Amazing Hotels: Life Beyond The Lobby in the real world means disgruntled staff smoking out back by the wheelie bins. I once had a job washing up in a pub and the waiters’ main job was to scrape mouse droppings from the Black Forest Gateaux. No one cooks or eats like the people on MasterChef, strange creatures who never clean their plates.

It’s a panacea not a panna cotta for the masses as we dive off during a boring bit to shove a ready meal in the microwave. We will never make or eat this stuff, the same as we will never stay at the Brando hotel on a remote atoll in the South Pacific. It’s TV designed to keep us aspirational so we turn up for work, dissatisfied with our lot.

All the same, like a tot hooked on KFC, I can’t wait for Finals Week. Maybe it’s the absence of self-doubt in the contestants. Even when they burn stuff and lose, they still say: ‘I’m really proud of what I’ve achieved.’ Why does no one wail any longer: ‘My God, I’m useless’?

In a sneak preview of next week, David is heard to say ‘I’m going to take the bull by the horns’, and we all know he means that literally, especially if they go to Spain. ‘That’s made my heart thump,’ says John, tucking a napkin into his collar.

He will, finally, keel over from too many blocked arteries come Friday night. And oh dear God, it seems the cooking charabanc is coming my way: to the Black Swan at Oldstead in the North York Moors, the place where diners are asked to pay for the meal (£98 a head for the set menu) upon booking.

The world has gone mad.