MasterChef Monica: I’m so scarred by trolls I won’t even watch my own show
MASTERCHEF judge Monica Galetti is so scarred by vicious trolling that she won’t watch the hit cookery show when it is broadcast.
Asked on today’s Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 how she coped with online abuse, the 45-year-old says: ‘I just stopped watching the show whenever it was out. It used to give me panic attacks knowing it was happening.’
The chef, who has been a judge on MasterChef: The Professionals since 2009, adds: ‘I remember some nights when the show would come on, I’d jump into bed with my daughter just, like, to shut it out. Eventually you harden up to it and you learn to ignore it. It’s not a real judgment of who I am as a person, as a mother, as a chef. It’s people with a pretty big keyboard and they have nothing else to spend their time on.’
Mrs Galetti, who is Samoan-born and was raised mostly in New Zealand, admits she was hurt at being dubbed ‘nasty Monica’ for her ‘very direct approach’ to contestants. The owner of Mere restaurant in London says she toned down her approach after being compared to fiery chef Gordon Ramsay.
She made her name at the prestigious Le Gavroche restaurant, but reveals she once smashed up the office of her boss, Michel Roux Jr, after being called there to take a call. ‘It wasn’t a good phone call. My partner at the time, who was back in New Zealand, had passed away overnight so I had to leave and go home,’ she recalls. ‘I remember I trashed Michel’s office. I think I absolutely destroyed Michel’s office.’
She was forgiven by her ment o r and continued to work at the restaurant.
‘You harden up… it’s not a real judgment of who I am’