COLIN FASSNIDGE:
my family rules, okay!
Colin Fassnidge is no stranger to getting himself into trouble on social media. The fiery Irish chef has started infamous Twitter wars with a slew of restaurateurs, including veteran chef Tony Bilson, and disgruntled diners, notably A Current Affair host Tracy Grimshaw. But his latest online brouhaha was far closer to home. It came about after Colin, who dubs himself “the king of pranks” drew a moustache on his younger daughter’s face while she slept, snapped a photo and uploaded it to Facebook.
“Maeve is quite private, a bit like me,” says Colin’s wife of 13 years,
Jane Hyland. “We had to have an intervention with him when he put up that photograph without her permission. She said to him, ‘You’re not allowed to do that.’ He was given a letter of warning.”
Like many parents, Colin, 45, is learning the limits when it comes to parenting in a digital world. For most of us it’s tough enough, but with a high-profile job as a judge on My Kitchen Rules and the nation looking on, that navigation gets trickier.
In 2015, Colin filed a police complaint after an anonymous
Twitter troll left sickening messages threatening to molest his daughters Lily, nine, and Maeve, seven.
“They told me they couldn’t find out who it was,” Colin angrily recalls. “I took the cop’s name and when he asked why, I said: ‘Basically, when I find who it is, I’m going to kill them myself and my wife will probably help. Then I’ll bury him. And then I’ll tell you where he is.”
For all his tough-as-nails bravado, the celebrated chef is not only a fierce, protective papa-bear but is complete putty in the hands of his two curlyhaired girls. It’s clear, as the family takes part in The Weekly’s exclusive photo shoot at their home in Sydney’s east, who wears the pants in the Fassnidge family. Spoiler alert: it’s not dad.
It’s the females who quietly call the shots, whether it’s the two girls taking over the barbecue while revealing they get their own back on their prank-loving father by spiking his morning tea with salt, or Jane, 42, tongue firmly in cheek, putting her larrikin husband in his place when a joke falls flat. Those trademark dimples flash repeatedly throughout the day as Colin proudly takes us through his oasis away from the kitchens – both those on set and in his multiple restaurants.
The well-tended veggie patch in the backyard, he says, “is a free supermarket” that provides well come dinner time. “I’ve got aubergines, cucumbers, three types of kale, rainbow chard, beetroot, corn – the field of dreams is growing as we speak – fennel, passionfruit, all these different types of herbs, heaps of stuff,” he proudly declares. “I’m like the old man in the allotment out the back.”
“You go, ‘Where’s Colin?’, and then you look out the kitchen window and you can just see a little head bobbing up and down out there,” Jane laughs. “It’s his happy place.”
A fateful meeting
Getting to that happy place hasn’t always been easy for Colin who earned his stripes in old-school
kitchens where yelling and screaming was the norm rather than the exception. It’s an industry where anxiety and depression, as well as battles with the bottle, are rife. You only need to look to the recent high-profile deaths of chefs Jeremy Strode – who took his life at the age of 53 after a battle with bipolar disorder – and Darren Simpson – whose long-term problems with alcohol reportedly led to his death at the age of 48.
Both were familiar faces to the Fassnidge family. Colin and Darren were long-time Twitter sparring partners, while Jane once worked in Jeremy’s kitchen.
“It’s in every industry but more prevalent in ours because people go out after hours, drink, drugs, and they socialise in the dark hours of the morning, when everyone else is asleep,” says Colin of the ugly side of the hospitality trade. “I know heaps of alcoholic chefs and heaps of chefs my age who are just angry. If I was still in my kitchens and not doing anything else, I’d be old and angry, too.”
It was a different story when Colin emigrated in 1999 to Australia, where he vowed to take over the culinary world. He also hoped to fall in love and marry a beach-going local girl, but six months later, he was working at fine dining establishment est., when Jane walked in and changed those plans. Another Irish import who had arrived on a one-way ticket in March 2000, Jane was waitressing at the restaurant, and when Colin shouted, she shouted back.
“She was tough,” Colin recalls. “Not a good thing when you’re trying to chat her up, but I was born on knockbacks.”
“He was cocky and that hasn’t changed,” Jane retorts. “But there was one thing we had in common. I wanted to meet an Aussie too – a big blonde surfer – but Chris Hemsworth wasn’t around then so you did.”
The irony of moving halfway around the world to find each other is not lost on the couple, who have continued to work together throughout their 18-year-long relationship.
In 2004, Colin took over the kitchen of what he refers to as “a crappy little pub in the back streets of Paddington”. Jane joined him, first as a manager, then as partner, in 2007. That venue was the Four In Hand. And that same little pub bistro would go on to receive an incredible two hats and rank alongside some of Sydney’s most glamourous eateries under the couple’s charge.
The pair put in gruelling hours to achieve the results. And Colin admits he was a fearsome boss in those early days.
“You had to do the 16-hour days and the screaming and the shouting to get to where we did,” he says. “I was renowned as one of the hardest chefs in Sydney and I thought that was quite cool until I realised nobody would work for you and I was standing there on my own.”
The birth of the couple’s first child, Lily, in 2009, didn’t slow things down. While they employed a restaurant manager, Jane was still working each day in addition to three or four nights a week. While she was hard at work, Lily would sleep in a cot in the upstairs office.
“I was still breastfeeding, so I’d feed her, put her down to sleep and then, at 10pm, go up and give her another feed before we would drive home – it was madness,” she says. “But the reason I did that was because childcare wasn’t available to me. The traditional childcare hours didn’t meet what I needed, which was 5 to 11pm. It’s a problem for a lot of women in
hospitality, shift workers and other industries that are not nine to five.”
Shifting focus
While Colin was still putting in hard yards at the restaurant, one thing changed with the arrival of his daughter – the cantankerous kitchen master was replaced by a softer, gentler leader.
“I used to chase chefs up the hill, waving a bunch of asparagus at them,” he says. But when Lily popped out I realised I had to calm down – there’s no point, there’s more to life. And actually the cooking got better.”
“He started not worrying about what the reviewers or his peers would say, he just focused on cooking food that people wanted to eat,” agrees Jane of her husband’s change in attitude.
When Maeve arrived in 2011, Jane still worked on Friday and Saturday nights but a nanny was enlisted to make sure the pair had enough time to enjoy family life as well as the workplace. They opened yet another successful restaurant in 2012, 4Fourteen in
Surry Hills, which continued Colin’s nose-to-tail, family-style way of cooking.
And then along came My Kitchen Rules. The reality juggernaut was – and remains – the jewel in Network Seven’s crown, with judges Pete Evans and Manu Feildel their shining stars. Executive producer Rikkie Proust tracked down a bemused Colin, offering him a starring role on the series’ fourth season.
“I said, ‘I don’t watch it, I’ve got a real job, I’m a real chef and I don’t do TV’,” Colin says, explaining how he initially turned the plum gig down.
Then Rikkie offered what seemed like a generous sum, and Jane reminded him they had a mortgage and two daughters to see through school. He reconsidered.
“I didn’t have a manager or anything and I was like, ‘That’s alright, isn’t it?’” he recalls of what he later learnt was an extremely lowball offer.
“I thought I’d be really smart and add five grand on the fee. He said, ‘Not a problem.’ I was like, ‘That was easy!’ Not realising it was bus fare.”
A rocky start
When Colin appeared on screens in 2013, he divided fans who found his blunt commentary about the contestants’ food a stark contrast to the gentler verdicts of original double act Pete and Manu. He would be bailed up at the local supermarket as viewers berated him on his approach, which he says in hindsight was maybe, “too honest”. And behind the scenes, it also wore on the couple’s marriage, as Colin admits the initial fame went to his head.
“I was loving all the attention,” he laughs. “I think 18 years, especially coming from where we have with nothing and then suddenly you are on TV, occasionally you need to be brought down a peg or two. My bag’s been packed loads of times
– not by me!”
“There’s always going to be tough times but the hardest time for us probably was when MKR first started,” Jane agrees. “Me getting my head around it and thinking, ‘What is all this?’”
And then there was the addition of two new members of the Fassnidge family. For, contrary to tabloid reports, the MKR trio are far from being at war.
“After work we hang out together,” Colin says, adding that both Pete
and Manu live just a short drive away and the three car pool to work each morning. “I usually see Pete at the pool in the morning and Frenchie I usually see here. We see each other every day and we don’t even talk about MKR – we talk about all kinds of other stuff.”
“I can’t bloody get rid of Manu,” Jane laughs, adding that their girls love playing with his three-year-old daughter Charlee in the family’s backyard pool.
“In the early hours of the morning, Jane will walk in and go, ‘Okay, Manu, get out. Either you call him an Uber or I will,’” Colin adds.
That friendship has certainly come in handy when the show comes under fire. Last year, the family-friendly series fell afoul of viewers who accused Channel Seven of promoting bullying after several shocking on-air confrontations between contestants.
“I made no bones about it – I didn’t like last year because of all the drama,” Colin says, as Jane adds that their own daughters were banned from watching it as a result of the on-air fighting.
Changing times
“It didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth, but you know what? This is the 10th year now and we are not going to let it happen again,” Colin says. “I’m very proud of this season. The contestants are all really nice people and I want them to do well, which is a rarity. Not every year you want that. I usually feel like a school teacher where you don’t have to like everybody in the class but you have to be able to teach them.”
Colin and Jane stepped away from the Four in Hand in 2016 and they shut the doors on 4Fourteen in August last year. They are still working side-by-side with food consultancy business Social Colin, as well as running several pub bistros across Sydney. But, while he used to pride himself on working full-time in kitchens, today Colin says the respite the MKR role brings is a welcome one.
There’s the physical relief. After years of bending over the benches, Colin has developed scoliosis and sees his chiropractor every week.
“My back is buggered,” he admits. But most importantly, it’s allowed the pair to finally spend their Saturday nights with their beloved girls. Instead of a hectic night of service, it’s now a cosy family movie night in. “We all sit here in the living room, make popcorn, somebody picks a movie and then the dogs look at us because we’re sitting in their seats,” says Jane.
Colin whips up the girls’ favourite foods. Maeve is a fussy eater who abhors anything green but is a sucker for dad’s famous ice-cream sandwiches. And Lily, who has a more adventurous palate, can’t get enough of his roast pork with crackling or decadent chicken bread – a sourdough loaf laden with herbs, garlic and oil which then has a whole chicken baked on top of it before being devoured.
For all his larrikin status, Colin is a devoted father who makes time to do the daily school run and takes pride in all the achievements of his family. Far more than they take of his, he jokes. “They don’t think I’m famous,” he admits. “They could be watching TV and if I come on, they flick past it. If my dad was on telly, I would have thought that was cool.”