One red-hot recipe for MasterChef

I NEVER cook, except for three or four basic dishes I make for myself on a loop. But when I was invited to appear on Celebrity MasterChef, I was full of my characteristic, inexplicable self-confidence, and I decided I didn’t even need to watch the show in advance, let alone practise my culinary skills. ‘It’s TV!’ I told my partner. ‘I know how it’ll work. I’ll start cooking some stuff, then they’ll turn the cameras off and someone will come out and cook it for me! They’ll pretend I have done it.’

On the day, the hosts Gregg Wallace and John Torode handed me and the other contestants a box of ingredients, and told us we had an hour to rustle up something spectacular. The clock started ticking and everyone began running around. I stood there, holding my box, waiting for a professional chef to step in.

I waited, and waited. And a terrible truth dawned on me.

I ran to the ‘market’, or studio food store, and picked up some sweet potatoes and red peppers. Well, I thought they were peppers. I had no idea they were red-hot chillies. When Gregg took a bite, he looked right surprised. ‘Have you tasted this dish, Jay?’ he asked. ‘Do you always use chillies instead of sweet peppers?’

There must have been six of them in there! I’m surprised Gregg didn’t have steam coming out of both ears. ‘Er, yeah, I like it superspicy!’ I grinned.

That evening, I thought I’d better practise my next dish. But I was staying in a hotel and they wouldn’t let me use their kitchen.

So I turned up for round two the next day, having never even cooked my chicken dish before. As you’d expect, it was an utter fiasco.

I basically presented Gregg and John with a plate of raw chicken.

So that was that. I was out. And that was the end of my Celebrity MasterChef adventure.