No tears but don’t mention the celeriac
Simon Delaney spills the beans on Celebrity MasterChef …and reveals why it was the hardest thing he has ever done
The restaurant in Mrs Jones’ Farm Kitchen in the glass belly of a garden centre in Donabate is unusually busy for a Friday morning. Ladies sip lattes while discussing their recent purchases of saplings and various potted plants, while a father and daughter converse over scones and jam on a brown leather sofa. Yet all eyes are on the corner of the room where, in a grey and blue Manchester United tracksuit top, sits Celebrity MasterChef contestant, actor and presenter Simon Delaney.
The café we are in opened in 2013 and serves breakfast, lunch and dinner made with locally sourced ingredients. Simon’s breakfast does not disappoint. ‘It’s a gem of a place,’ he says, buttering his toast. ‘The food is incredible and simple and it is always fresh, and it is just down the road from me.’
In front of him sits his Apple laptop – the hub of his working life. Within the confines of the slick silver cover rests hundreds of ideas, pitches and scripts, his online portfolio and the flotsam and jetsam of a grafting actor and presenter.
Last week, TV3 moved Celebrity MasterChef from its Monday night slot at 10pm to Thursday at 9pm, and already Delaney says he has noticed an improvement in traffic: ‘Social media was hopping – it is a great show and I don’t regret doing it. I always wanted to do the show, even before when it was on RTÉ.
‘I had been asked before – pretty much for every series – but I wasn’t available. I always said that if I was going to do any reality TV show, that would be it. And it didn’t disappoint – it was exactly what I thought it was going to be, only a lot tougher.
‘The pressure was ridiculous. It was just something I had never experienced on any other job and I include American TV shows in that.
‘They say you bring the pressure on yourself but I don’t know. For one thing, none of us do this for a living. It is not our job and we don’t have experience of doing it professionally.
‘Secondly, you are cooking for two of the best chefs in the British Isles, two Michelin star chefs Daniel Clifford and Robin Gill who know their food.
‘And thirdly, it is a competition that is being filmed for TV and you don’t want to make a fecking eejit of yourself.
‘On top of all that there are eight cameras watching every step you make, be it cracking an egg into a pan or scratching yourself in a place that shouldn’t be caught on camera. It all adds up.’ The levels of difficulty and skill on this year’s Celebrity MasterChef have been upped from what has been broadcast in previous years, with contestants trying their hand at everything from sugar crafting to deep frying a whole pigeon carcass. Good casting, Simon says, is everything. ‘Even though we were under severe pressure I also had a giggle,’ he explains. ‘That’s the way I cook at home. I laugh my way through cooking meals. Most people laugh after they eat what I have made for them but everything you see on camera was a genuine response. ‘People who go on Big Brother talk about how you forget that the cameras are there and I think you do on MasterChef because you are so engulfed by the task. Eventually, after episode one or two you get to see the real person.
‘And I think the series is successful because there are amazing characters in there. Niamh [Kavanagh] was described as the mother hen, you have Colm [O’Gorman], who is the foodie and Sam [Mumba] who is the rock chick and cool, and me, the fat, funny bloke.
‘Then you have Oisín [McConville] who everyone is rooting for because he couldn’t boil an egg six weeks ago and Mundy who is this rock’n’roll chef.
‘The line-up was picked very carefully. You only have to look at Twitter on a Thursday night – all the chat is good. The move will help, hopefully. It is more accessible and it is more in line with when MasterChef is on in the UK. Hopefully, it will deliver a bigger audience to TV3.’
The MasterChef franchise is hugely successful when it comes to ratings and global penetration. It is made in 40 countries and airs in 200 territories.
The producers of the Irish show have come under a lot of flak for replacing Irish stalwarts Dylan McGrath and Nick Munier with British chef Daniel Clifford and Robin Gill, who is based in England.
‘It’s begrudgery, nothing more,’ blows up the Saturday AM presenter when I mention this. ‘There was a bit of outrage about not hiring Irish chefs but it just makes me laugh. Robin Gill is from Dún Laoghaire. Where does he need to be from to qualify to be Irish? He is from Ireland and works in London – why can’t we get over this f ****** begrudgery?
‘It makes me laugh because if they had got Dylan and Nick back people would have been giving out that they didn’t change it.
There was a bit of outrage about not hiring Irish chefs –it’s begrudgery
‘The show got the two chefs bang on and what is good about them is that – even though they are there to judge us – they are not there to make a show of us. They don’t want to see us fail. They want to see us improve as chefs and see us develop our culinary skills.
‘They are helping us through the process. That, in turn, gives us great confidence. And don’t forget at the end of every episode they have to eliminate someone they have coached and mentored, and who is passionate about the competition.’
On Thursday night, viewers were treated to the most emotional and high-octane challenge in the Irish history of the series.
After Daniel’s masterclass in which he taught the celebs to make an extremely challenging dish from his own restaurant – celeriac baked on open coals with hazelnut hollandaise – the contestants were given three hours to replicate the same dish.
‘Celeriac-gate, don’t remind me,’ Simon says, burying his head in his hands. ‘When we saw Daniel doing the dish I was blown away. But you have to give it your all, so you put the head down and you have your three hours to get it done.
‘I was about half way through it and I thought to myself, “I am not going to get this done.” And it was the first time I had felt like that during the series.
‘But I kept the head down – to the point where, when I heard that time was up, I lifted my head and thought I was the only person who hadn’t finished. I thought I was a gonner – and then I looked around and realised that none of us had completed the challenge. With Lisa hurt, it was tough. I had to mind our boys while competing
‘That made us all feel a bit better because that task was so difficult that none of us could complete it. But the mood that day was dreadful. We were six weeks in and it was the toughest day by far.
‘And the next day we had to come back and cook for the critics. We needed to pick ourselves up but that celeriac… Jesus wept.’
While Simon has left crying to the deities, he found the going particularly tough for personal reasons.
While they were filming the show, he was juggling a home life where his wife Lisa had broken her leg, leaving him to mind her and their children.
‘The challenges have been ferocious,’ he says.
‘I have said that MasterChef was the toughest thing I have ever done in my life and it was – because of what was happening with Lisa. She was standing on a 2ft wall and went to turn but her leg stayed where it was and then it was, “Snap, snap, snap”, and then she fell.
‘She ended up in a locked brace up to her hip from her ankle and couldn’t go to the loo on her own for three months.
‘And we have four boys – including a newborn – and I had to go out and do a 16-18 hour day on MasterChef.
‘It was tough, really tough, and that made it harder for me. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry on camera and I don’t think I did – and if I did I am going to blame it on an onion. But we got through it, just about.’
Next week’s semi-final sees the contestants take on a lunch service at the Michelin star Pied à Terre restaurant in London.
While Simon – one of the bookies’ favourites to walk away with the MasterChef title – is keeping his cards close to his chest about the grand finale he says he has taken one important life skill from the show. The importance of preparation.
‘The one thing I can take away from it. Prep. I thought “mise en place” [everything in its place] was a small village in France up until six months ago. Get the prep done and have everything ready to go, so when it is time to cook it is easy. There is no panic.
‘The key is the prep and I have taken that home. In the morning, after the school run, I get everything prepped and into the fridge, so I have it ready to go later on after school.’
‘Fail to prepare, prepare to fail.’ His hero Roy Keane would be proud. Celebrity MasterChef, Thursdays, TV3, 9pm.