BBC cookery show Masterchef concluded its latest series last week, a series that almost wasn’t shown due to controversy. One of its presenters, Gregg Wallace, was sacked following 83 allegations of inappropriate language and behaviour, while his co-host John Torode also fell foul of an offence archaeologist and was relieved of his position too.
When the story burst through a few months back, most in the media lambasted Wallace, while a few commentators tentatively backed him amid what they perceived as a witch hunt. I had one foot in both of these camps, of which more shortly. Torode gained more sympathy, seemingly fired for repeating a burst of a rap song several years ago, one which contained that word beginning with N that has now been decreed the worst thing you can ever say. I for one hope that Torode, who has instigated legal action, takes his former employers to the cleaners.
But one thing that wasn’t discussed much, even by those on the Right, is the more general problem with Masterchef and what it’s become. Before I get into this, let me lay out my ‘qualifications’: I religiously watched the show from 2008 to 2023, barely missing a single episode. I also watched virtually every episode of Masterchef: The Professionals during that time, and several series of Celebrity Masterchef (before giving up in 2022). I even watched some Junior Masterchef! I have visited both the old Masterchef studio in Islington and the subsequent one in Newham and taken photos (sad, I know). I went to Masterchef Live and saw John and Gregg. In short, I know my Masterchef. Why did I like it so much? I guess the format of the show was just appealing – as it is to millions – and I love food: I’d usually try to watch it while eating my own, almost always inferior, grub in front of it.
As for me knowing about Wallace’s brusqueness, I was told nearly 20 years ago by a female work colleague about his charmless behaviour at a media event. Still, I never minded him on the show, and nowadays it’s not that common that you get a white working-class former Millwall football hooligan on prime-time, so I felt some affection for him.
The thing about the BBC is that it seeks to imbue its ‘values’ into every programme it transmits. Because the BBC’s values nowadays are – how would you say… progressive, global, liberal, Woke…? – very different from the original Reithian ones. Shows become vessels for its worldview. Old, established formats can be easily tweaked for our postmodern, neo-Marxist era, Doctor Who being the obvious example (a lead character who can change sex and colour! Stories that can be set in our shameful past or our glorious multiracial future!). Masterchef, a competition show akin to many on British TV, was ripe for reflecting the diversity that is the, um, glorious bedrock of our nation.
Over the last decade or so, I’ve noticed how fewer and fewer contestants are straight white men – this has especially been the case with the Professionals edition, which back in 2008 seemed to be almost entirely straight white men, reflecting the demographic makeup of British chefs, aside from the large number of Indian ones. It seems that the contestants now reflect the BBC’s long-desired plan to make every programme 50/50 i.e. 50% male, 50% female.
Okay, so what? some might say. Well, it’s the way the ‘diverse’ contestants are presented that is infuriatingly typical BBC, and reveals much about multiculturalism and UK immigration policy. Contestants are always ‘drawing on their heritage’ – I swear, if you drunk a finger for every time you heard the word ‘heritage’ on Masterchef you’d be sozzled by the main course – which could be their West African heritage, their Latvian heritage, their Martian heritage, you name it. Which reveals, through food, that these recent immigrants hark back to what they know. They draw comfort from it. It is the ‘real them’ – their food stands in for all their other tastes, ideas and beliefs they bring with them.
The number of times the voiceover intones ‘Suki came to this country in 2004’, ‘Nelson came to Britain in 2011’, ‘Aziz moved to London in 2016’ brings home to you how the Uniparty’s open borders policy has transformed the country. For me, the one – literally one – benefit of post-War mass immigration has been food, which has become more, yes, diverse and interesting (though that probably would have happened anyway in a wealthy, dynamic, enterprising, monocultural Britain) and on Masterchef this is forefronted.
It’s not just race, of course. There’s sexuality. I know from personal experience how tick-box recruitment is very real in media and entertainment industries, and Masterchef buys into this. It’s always presented as ‘hey, that’s just the way this is, this person just happens to be so-and-so, chill, it’s cool’. But a finger is put on the scales at many stages of the process to ensure minorities are well represented. I’d imagine Wallace and Torode, who are probably vaguely Right leaning, would have occasionally grumbled about this, but then gone along with it because they had a lucrative and enjoyable gig.
Minority groups aren’t just well-represented, they’re glowingly presented. When actor John Partridge got to the final three of Celebrity Masterchef in 2018, we got a short video of him going about his daily life before the cook-off commenced. Literally the very first image of the video was him kissing his boyfriend. I can’t recall in any other contestant profile video contestants kissing their partner in the first frame.
The phrases ‘her wife’ and ‘his husband’ seem to come up an awful lot. Almost like it’s an editorial policy.
The most important thing to remember is that, like the national news, the initial selection process is key. Contestants don’t turn up in the studio magically, chosen by random: they are very carefully vetted by the young PC employees acting under strict orders to achieve diversity (oh for whistleblowers!). Many of these folk shuffle on to national television because they’ve met strict criteria, specifically that they’re not male, they’re not white or they’re not ‘heteronormative’. The Professional competition gives this away most obviously in that sous chefs are frequently selected – whereas if you were going for the very best chefs to compete it would only be head chefs. Fair enough I guess, it’s good to mix it up, to give the underdog a chance, but Masterchef does not present it in those terms, it says that these are the best chefs in Britain and they are competing to be the very best. This is not so.
It’s not just contestants who are diverse (reminder that the definition of diverse is: fewer white men), it’s the judges too. In 2022 we were introduced to Jimi Famurewa, a writer who became the Evening Standard’s first ever black food critic, despite having little experience in the food industry. And then, soon after big affable white fella Charles Campion shuffled off this mortal coil and Toby Young was mysteriously sidelined, here was Leyla Kazim, a half Turkish Cypriot, half Mauritian lady previously on Radio 4’s The Food Programme. Did Jimi and Leyla get the gig because of their palate and their talent? Maybe they did. Or maybe they didn’t. The nasty fog of DEI obscures fairness, justice and merit and disgruntles all.
The ’trans community’ has also been well-represented in recent years, including the grotesque-looking Kellie Maloney ie former boxing promoter Frank Maloney. (Now there’s a person you’d love to hear anecdotes about from associates in his former life!) Who’d have guessed he was a keen cook? But here he was. Sorry, she.
Sometimes the diverse Masterchef entrants do well, going far in the competition; often they are eliminated in the early stages, as is the way on TV quiz shows that enact similar policies. What would be best for them, and the viewers, would be knowing that merit is all that counts: they got their accolade because their nettle, black garlic and hen-of-the-woods mushroom risotto with a drizzle of raspberry vinaigrette was delectable, not because of their unchangeable characteristics. Sadly, Masterchef casts that into doubt. It has a terrific concept that has been warped.
As I say, I gave up Celebrity Masterchef in 2022 partly because it got repetitive and overly dumb, partly because the diversity was strained and super-obvious, and then gave up the main show a year later for similar reasons. The only one I’m sticking with is the Professionals, but for how long I don’t know.
The other thing that irks me about the show is wondering how the critics manage to eat eight courses in one sitting…
Russell David is the author of the Mad World blog.
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(Photograph: Richard Gillin from St Albans, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Antiques Roadshow; out with the Dresden Figurines and in with the Maori Clubs (which btw the bringer’s ancestor ‘stole’ from the saintly indigenous and must be given to a museum to appease white guilt and shame on them if they don’t feel the guilt). And the presenters too must be a BBC tickbox of the favoured types.
Like Masterchef that’s another programme I no longer watch for that reason. I’m old enough to remember ‘Going for a Song’, the Beebs first antiques show with Arthur Negus. Arthur would enthuse over a piece of 18th century English furniture, noting it’s cabriole legs and ball and claw feet. Sheer antiques pornography, but fascinating. I’ve also given up on Bake Off, Sewing Bee, etc because of the fake inclusivity.
Yes ‘Going For A Song’ would never be made these days due to its ‘elitist’ experts, middle class guests, lack of diversity and only European antiquities.
Boycott the BBC by not watching it, not having a licence and belittling it to those sheeple who still are convinced it’s ethos and programming is acceptable.
Would love to know how fish can be halal given they don’t have throats to cut or, as far as I know, Imams on trawlers wailing prayers over the nets.
I’ll start with a disclaimer. I’m a seventy year old gay man with a partner, not a husband, and I’m right of centre white. I also abhor anything to do with ‘Pride’. Some of that may score Brownie points, other things would get me cancelled.
I’ve stopped watching Masterchef, Bake Off, Sewing Bee, Antiques Roadshow, etc because of the increasing amount of DEI. I used to like ‘Masterchef: the Professionals’, especially the first round challenge demonstrated by the presenters. Unfortunately by having a bunch of diverse sous chefs, with perhaps one head chef, you knew it was going to be carnage. I regard myself as quite a good cook , but I’m nowhere near professional standard, and even I could have made a better attempt at some of the dishes.
At the moment the pottery programme seems to be the only show which hasn’t sunk too far into the DEI swamp (yet), although at the start of the first episode my partner and I play the ‘spot the gay/lesbian’ game!!
So has anybody got a problem with the two new presenters, Sarah Hough and Grace Dent? Other than them being women, of course. Oh calamity, how dare they! At least they know something about food, Sarah being a chef, and Grace a food writer/ critic. I used to think Grace was a bit sour, until they had the episode where the critics had to cook – William Sitwell even cried!
It could have been worse. I thought they would massacre it like A Question of Sport, which I used to love until they ‘updated’ it, and filled it with ‘celebrities’ who knew less about sport than Anton Du Beke when he was a guest. And humour was non existent – I loved the trio of Sue, Matt and Phil.
I agree that John Torode was thrown under the bus, and I hope he sues the pants off them. I will miss him, although he’s still on ITV with his lovely wife, so doesn’t really need the BBC.
I quite enjoy seeing the colourful and complex ethnic food – they can’t show us steak and triple cooked chips for ever – but what to me comes across as false, is when the contestants are put in a professional kitchen in the second episode! That couldn’t possibly happen in ‘real life’. Not that Masterchef is real – it’s just escapist light entertainment, not something to get stressed over.
And how do you feel about Matt Tebbutt replacing Greg in The Professionals? I’m OK with that, and don’t mind the ‘sous chefs’ being given a chance. Some of the head chefs who claim to have had 20 years experience are useless. The sous chefs probably work harder.
I agree about the BBC shoe – horning their views into everything – can no longer watch Have I got News for You or Question Time – oh spare us – but I do love Masterchef and shall still watch it, or at least give it a go, now I know who the replacements are, and as I say it could have been a lot worse. I would love to se Si King (my guilty crush) on something, but maybe he’s feeling the loss of Dave too much still. I’m just relieved that they have had the sense to have food related replacements, not the ubiquitous Paddy McGuiness – no disrespect to him. Or the guy who has done everything – grocer, cook, gardener, DIY, you name it – who used to be in the programme where they raided people’s fridges and persuaded them to change their shopping habits. He was so impressive I can’t even remember his name.
I watch nothing that the british bullshit corporation transmits I am firmly of the persuasion that it functions as the labour party voice I am of the opinion that it should be defunded closed down and the managerial staff fired.
I’m with you on that viewpoint (haven’t watched BBC for ten years on account of no aerial or licence or sufficient interest in their programmes to attempt to watch online). Still though surprised when some MSM comments laughingly say BBC is right wing organ run by conservatives.
An interesting and informative read for those, like myself, who haven’t watched MasterChef for a very long time – for various reasons, nothing of much interest for commentators here.
But one reason I don’t watch it was ironically touched on in the above article, and that is the introduction of foods from all over the place – a reason, not only why I don’t watch the show (knowing I’ll never be tempted to try to cook any of those foreign dishes) but also because the fact that we can eat the national foods of China, India, Vietnam, Italy (you-name-it) is one of several reasons why, some years ago, I lost all interest in travelling abroad.
The idea of visiting countries with different food, different dress, different cultures, different languages, was an idea I’d cite in my youth as a reason for my (as it turned out) short lived ambition to travel to foreign parts. Now, thanks to mass immigration, there’s no need. I can see all the foreigners I want on every street corner, just about, and I can book a table in all sorts of restaurants – even the popular fish and chips shop in town, I noted a few weeks ago, has a large notice to advertise the fact that the fish is halal. Which reminds me that I need to check if that applies to the entire chain or just that one shop.
I’m also not impressed with the sackings of either Greg Wallace or John Torode – great personalities. Greg’s crime being his rather boorish personality (as far as I can gather) and John’s allegedly “racist” comments. I wish they’d publish these claims in full so we know precisely what was said because without that detail, I just don’t believe anyone should be sacked for saying something that annoys someone else. Someone else needs to grow a thicker skin.
So, for one reason or another, I won’t be tuning into MasterChef anytime soon – if ever.